Abstract
This paper starts from the premise that Western states are connected to some of the harms refugees suffer from. It specifically focuses on the harm of acts of misrecognition and its relation to epistemic injustice that refugees suffer from in refugee camps, in detention centers, and during their desperate attempts to find refuge. The paper discusses the relation between hermeneutical injustice and acts of misrecognition, showing that these two phenomena are interconnected and that acts of misrecognition are particularly damaging when (a) they stretch over different contexts, leaving us without or with very few safe spaces, and (b) they dislocate us, leaving us without a community to turn to. The paper then considers the ways in which refugees experience acts of misrecognition and suffer from hermeneutical injustice, using the case of unaccompanied children at the well-known and overcrowded camp Moria in Greece, the case of unsafe detention centers in Libya, and the case of the denial to assistance on the Mediterranean and the resulting pushbacks from international waters to Libya as well as the preventable drowning of refugees in the Mediterranean to illustrate the arguments. Finally, the paper argues for specific duties toward refugees that result from the prior arguments on misrecognition and hermeneutical injustice.
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Notes
- 1.
I here concentrate on so-called Western states as the group of relatively wealthy, liberal democratic states, mainly because they play a powerful role in producing and reproducing the harmful policies that refugees suffer from, they are the most discussed destination that some (though less than is often thought, see Betts and Collier 2017) refugees are trying to reach, and they often have the economic, political, and cultural means to fulfill their duties and obligations toward refugees. This is particularly important for my discussion of such duties in Sect. 3, and, hence, when I speak of institutional duties, I refer to Western states as such and when I speak of individual duties I focus on citizens of these states.
- 2.
I say more about the relation between recognition and moral obligations in Sect. 3.
- 3.
While I think it can sometimes be useful to distinguish between misrecognition, absence of recognition, and, broadly, failures of recognition depending on what needs to be described, for the sake of this paper, I will use them synonymously. The important point to drive home is that all failures of recognition have significant consequences for our self-development and all failures of recognition are fortified by hermeneutical injustice—a point I am making below. I say more about recognition as a moral injury in Sect. 3.
- 4.
I here assume that different acts of misrecognition can harm a person’s identity. For an explanation and a critique of Honneth’s view that distinct acts of misrecognition harm distinct parts of one’s identity, see Hänel 2020, 7.
- 5.
Black, disabled, trans, or gender non-conforming individuals are statistically in greater danger than others to become homeless or estranged from their communities, and, hence, many indeed suffer from permanent misrecognition and dislocation. Yet, Black, disabled, trans, and queer communities are also extremely emancipatory in their abilities to care for each other and provide safe spaces for each other, not because they are better equipped to be caring but because they had a greater need to develop care due to the historically grown systems of racism, sexism, and ableism.
- 6.
Dübgen (2012) makes this claim: analyzing misrecognition as a form of epistemic injustice.
- 7.
- 8.
One might want to object by saying that we should not be concerned with misrecognition in these cases but rather with a denial of (human) rights that these people have. I say more about this objection below. I am thankful to Gottfried Schweiger for raising this point.
- 9.
For a different example and a brutal interpretation of the ways in which refugees are robbed of their humanity by being denied autonomous agency, see Boochani 2018.
- 10.
For this last claim and an analysis of statelessness and misrecognition, see Staples (2012).
- 11.
The relation between hermeneutical injustice and misrecognition is often further fortified through testimonial injustice; e.g., the inability to adequately articulate an experience is often due to the lack or distortion of the necessary concepts and credibility deficit of the speaker due to harmful prejudices about the speaker’s social group, and the lack and distortion of the dominant hermeneutical resource is often causally linked to existing prejudices against certain social groups that prevent them from being regarded as credible and capable of contributing to the said resource. In this paper, however, I concentrate on hermeneutical injustice.
- 12.
One might want to object that misrecognition in the form of abuse, rape, and torture is well understood by nearly everyone. Yet, this is not the case for more subtle forms of misrecognition as present in messages of unequal worth. Furthermore, what is often not understood is the interplay between racism and forms of misrecognition due to white ignorance. Unfortunately, for lack of space, I cannot outline the precise relation between the dominant framework and the denial of assistance, refugee camps, and detention centers. I am grateful to Gottfried Schweiger to have pointed out this objection.
- 13.
- 14.
See Betts and Collier (2017) for a proposal of how to think about refuge in refugee policies. Rethinking the ways in which we provide refuge also implies to think about our duties toward those that are incapable of finding refuge themselves, for example, children (and their families). For a powerful argument about our duties toward children in conflict areas, see Schweiger 2016.
- 15.
In this paper, I will not consider the particular responsibility or specific duties that we—as privileged Western citizens—have due to our causal role in specific refugee-producing conflicts, the histories of colonialism, or the illegitimacy of the international order. For a devastating analysis of the deeply problematic involvement to uphold the international order from colonialism to now, see Hickel 2017.
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Hänel, H.C. (2021). Epistemic Injustice and Recognition Theory: What We Owe to Refugees. In: Schweiger, G. (eds) Migration, Recognition and Critical Theory. Studies in Global Justice, vol 21. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72732-1_12
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