Let go of our refugee-saviour complex
A rather sweet tweet caught the eye of thousands this Canada Day weekend.
Peace by Chocolate from Nova Scotia, whose bio describes it as “a family run Syrian chocolate company” whose factory was bombed in Damascus, “forcing us to immigrate to Canada” tweeted: “Happy #CanadaDay from our family to this beautiful country that stands for freedom and human rights. Thank you for considering our differences a reason for strength not weakness. Thank you for bringing families together not tearing them apart. Thank you.”
More power to this family for their continued resilience in circumstances beyond their choosing. While their tweet isn’t quite accurate (differences in this country are indeed seen as a reason for weakness, families are indeed torn apart), they are entitled to extrapolate from their own experiences in this land.
Gratitude is immensely personal. While many refugees are grateful to be here, that same gratitude can become a chokehold when it is the only acceptable emotion “allowed.”
Should the same chocolatemakers eventually encounter systemic barriers and tweet out their displeasure, they would be scolded for not being grateful enough.
“Refugee status can become like a straitjacket if people are expected to behave in a way that reinforces the saviour credentials of the host society,” said Christopher Kyriakides, a York University sociologist.
Mustafa Alio is a former refugee to Canada who cofounded Refugee Career JumpStart Project, an organization that helps refugees find career-enhancing jobs. He says when refugees sometimes say they want to go back, this is perceived as ingratitude.
But Alio says, “They want to go back to the life they had. Who doesn’t?” He likens refugee uprooting to losing a true love. “It’s not easy to find a second love. If you do, you become very protective about it … I’m very in love with this country. They just need to be given a chance. And they’ll be attached to their second love.”
It’s been seven years since the world left Syrian refugees in a crisis. Canadian academics studying aspects of their lives here say refugees are seen through the lens of two narratives: threat or victim.
The threat narrative, long in the making, has been brought into sharp focus by Europe’s can’t-take-what-it-dished-out phobia of “outsiders” and U.S. President Donald Trump’s racist contempt. More recently, the New York Times exposed Denmark’s practices of separating “ghetto” children from their parents and indoctrinating them with Christian holidays and the Danish “way of life.”
The less-discussed victim narrative, the well-meaning one, also bears exploring, because even within that rela- tionship, researchers have found a power imbalance, a sense of moral superiority.
A sense that Michaela Hynie, who is part of a York University study exploring mental health issues for Syrian immigrants, describes as, “We help you and therefore it makes us feel good.”
“The discourse that people use to encourage engagement with refugee issues … is one that really plays on empathy, that plays on particular images of refugees being vulnerable. They have to be perfect victims. They have to be passive. Horrible things (have to) happen to them.”
In reality, these are people who would have made major life decisions such as when to leave home, where to go, when to get the family and how to stay together.
“These are incredibly resilient people,” she said. “They have been exposed to negative events and they are experiencing loss. But the majority of them, if they can build a life and settle, will be fine. They will recover.
“Our insistence on focusing on their victimhood and on their trauma also makes us see them as individuals who aren’t capable, who aren’t making a contribution, who are a burden on society.”
Seeing them only as a homogenous group of victims “actually acts as a barrier to individuals being able to build a life here,” Hynie said.
Kyriakides, who works at the centre for Refugee Studies at York University, has been examining refugee relationships in two other studies in the Canadian context over the past year and a half.
The life of refugees doesn’t begin with the conflict, he said, nor does it begin when they come to Canada. Just as they had a life prior to refuge, they want a life after refuge.
It’s really important to let refugees know that “I see you as a person who had a life before you came here,” he said.
Kyriakides said that in moving away from danger, refugees rescue themselves.
“The West isn’t saving anyone. We’re not saviours. As well-meaning and as beneficial as we can be, we’re supporting the self-rescue.”
In opening our doors to a small number of refugees, all we do is act on our conscience. Gratitude must be left up to theirs.