Why is economic impoverishment not a basis for refugee status? Though the United Nations recognizes many kinds of refugees—political, religious, and national among them—economic refugees are not among those offered legal protections and asylum. In this talk, I connect this unequal protection to the history of European imperialism. Drawing on the French colonial case, I explore how imperial labor systems, which drew justification from racialized conceptions of colonial workers as unskilled, indolent, and accustomed to minimal standards of living shaped postwar understandings of economic migration. In the colonial moment, these depictions justified imperial labor policies while masking systemic violence and the deep structural inequalities produced by empire. In the postwar and postcolonial era, these stereotypes informed legal codes that deem poverty an insufficient basis for refugee status.

Elizabeth Heath, Associate Professor of History at Baruch College, is the author of Wine, Sugar, and the Making of Modern France

 

THURSDAY, MAY 13

4:00 – 5:30

 

Register at http://bit.ly/ARC-S2021

Sponsored at the Advanced Research Collaborative (ARC)

 

If you would like a tape of this presentation, please contact: kpowell@gc.cuny.edu