What We Miss When We See the Plight of the Refugee

In Bangladesh, the Resettled Rohingya in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp Lead Complicated Lives

In 2015, the image of a Syrian child, drowned and washed ashore near the Turkish town of Bodram, went viral. This singular, visceral image of the hapless refugee victim spoke to what the political philosopher Hannah Arendt—herself a refugee who survived the Holocaust—called the “politics of emotions”: our unstable, image-driven will to humanitarianism. But even as images like this spurred donations and the opening of borders, countless simultaneous narratives portrayed Syrian men seeking refuge as rapists and violent aggressors. Both stories showed the refugee as either victim or perpetrator, closing …