For the hope of better opportunities, you travel thousands of kilometres. Everything you once knew, you leave behind. Your mother waves goodbye as you leave a trail of dust behind. You dare not prolong the goodbye; it’s too painful. Inside your chest something is already missing although you have barely even left. The car ride is silent; the radio is off. You could turn it on, but you wouldn’t focus anyway. You drive past signs, perhaps the last ones you’re familiar with. Your car slips into an old pothole. You’ve slipped into it many times. This time it isn’t an annoyance; it too says its farewell. You’re on your own, driving into strange smooth roads, without potholes.
A paper, a uniform, a gun, barbed wire. It’s for border security, they say. The paper with the cold short notice ‘entry denied.’ The uniformed man is once again following orders. He doesn’t see the immigrant as human, but rather as a problem to be managed. A little of his own humanity got lost with years of holding the baton. Trained for years to be numb towards the violence he inflicts. Told that the immigrant is alien, illegal, dangerous. A life to be disregarded and dealt with.
In today’s age where ethnonationalism and fascism is on the rise across the world, immigrants, especially refugees, are among the most vulnerable of marginalized groups. Lacking legal representation, financial means, and the seeking of safety politicized, the mistreatment of immigrants is more often than not systematically condoned and perpetuated. The history of colonialism and its effects cannot simply be ignored while it echoes through in today’s dehumanization of immigrants. Criticism of this rhetoric is crucial to challenge the systems that benefit from the suffering of the marginalized.
Social identity and prejudice
A myriad of scholars, academics, and ordinary people alike have grappled with the question of how humans are capable of inflicting extreme violence on one another while simultaneously using weaponizing language in the media to gain consent from the public.
How is dehumanization justified? The social identity theory and “Cognitive aspects of prejudice” by Henri Tajfel, tackles the sociopsychological roots of dehumanizing behaviour. His main focus lay in understanding how the ‘ordinary’ people of Germany in the 1930s became complicit in the Holocaust. He argued that it does not take a tyrant to commit horrific acts of violence. Rather, the core of the matter lies in categorization of people. “The social world is not just a collection of individuals; it is a collection of groups”. The categorization of people is numerous, including race, nationality, ethnicity, etc. He adds that, once established, the differences of categories are magnified. Simultaneously, the similarities of the same category are exaggerated.
Discrimination and prejudice thrive on the exacerbation of differences. In the context of immigration, the categories are the citizen and immigrant. The former is characterized as orderly, lawful, working, ordinary, etc. While the latter is unruly, criminal, unemployed, illegal, etc. A CNN quote about Denmark’s new housing law states: “A new law aims to force changes in 15 housing estates across the country that the government calls ‘hard ghettos'”, makes use of the word ghetto, a term that carries with it associations of seclusion, crime and danger. Such language shapes the perception of the public, enforces harmful prejudices and normalizes poor living conditions of immigrants.
The categorization of peoples and colonialism
The categorization of people is tightly intertwined with the history of colonialism. The process wasn’t merely psychological but deeply political. Throughout history, beginning as early as classical Greece, notable figures like Aristotle held the belief that non-Greek speaking people were ‘barbarians’. In the Middle Ages, Christians in Europe categorized Muslims and Jews as spiritually inferior. Resulting in numerous expulsions of Jews across Europe. During the 14th century, the slave trade and colonization of Africa and Asia by the Spanish and Portuguese, the sense of superiority over people who were considered to be subordinate people became more and more systematic. This wasn’t an accident. The colonizer, enacting violence on a scale, larger than ever seen before, needed a justification. Views of racial inferiority wasn’t just an opinion, it became law in order to continue the exploitation of resources and slave labour, most notably through the transatlantic slave trade.
Renowned scholar, Edward Said who extensively wrote about the process and impacts of colonialism, particularly in West Asia and North Africa, published his book Orientalism in 1978. Orientalism is defined in several ways. Including, firstly, as a study compiled of a large body of colonial writings. Secondly, as an invented dichotomy between the ‘Orient’ and ‘Occident’. A worldview entirely Eurocentric, existing as a kind of academic weapon to dominate and uphold the established colonial structures. European colonizers sought not only to subject the land but also its people. As a result, they had no interest in interacting in a respectful manner or getting to know the local population accurately. Instead, they prescribed traits at best at random, at worst through a racist and prejudiced lens. Common ways of describing the ‘Oriental’ were savage, lazy, irrational, uncivilized, and mystic. Using circular logic, the colonizer justified why the people of the ‘Orient’ could not in any way self-govern; that the European is far more suited for this task.
Similar Orientalist tropes can be seen in the ‘post-colonial’ world today. Immigrants and refugees are subjected to a similar dynamic to the colonized in the past. Perhaps one of the most harmful perceptions about immigrants is the normalization of their suffering. This was grossly evident in the reports of the Ukraine-Russia war, with a reporter from CBS stating: “This is not a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European city.” This reflects not only hypocritical reporting but also the extent to which the suffering of the global majority has become a mundane and inevitable occurrence. The West both perpetuates the cause of suffering while at the same time normalizing and legitimizing it. Through constant destabilization and occupation of West Asia, Syria, Palestine, Iraq and others or meddling in political processes of various African countries.
When migrants and refugees attempt to seek refuge in Europe, they are often met with no better fate. Arriving at Europe’s borders, they are immediately met with dehumanizing tropes of ‘swarming’ or ‘invading’, a rhetoric often amplified by media and political figures. This discourse was starkly evident when European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stood at the Polish-Belarusian border, praising Poland’s “successful defence” with a 5.5-meter-high steel wall against ‘irregular migrants’.
This Eurocentric narrative consistently undermines the human need for safety, prioritizing perceived threats over humanitarian obligations. Such rhetoric results in countless human rights abuses, including illegal pushbacks, which have been systematically documented. For instance, on the Polish-Belarusian border, an aid group reported that in 2024 at least 3,183 pushbacks occurred, a practice the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights has called to stop. This is made worse by the criminalization of providing aid, as seen in the trial of the ‘Hajnowka Five’ in Poland where aid workers are facing prison for providing “emergency assistance to an Iraqi-Kurdish family with seven children” found “in catastrophic health” in a freezing border forest. One defendant, Ewa Moroz-Kaczynska stated, “If we are found guilty of this, it also means that human decency is a criminal offence”.
In othering another person or group, it may at first glance seem like the one inflicting ‘the othering’ has won. But the moment he inflicts dehumanization he arguably loses his own humanity. He has at that point lost the ability to connect and empathize. He also confirms that were he in the weaker position, others would be permitted to see him as no longer human. Victor Frankl, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, observing the Nazis brutalizing prisoners in the camps, dehumanized themselves too by losing their empathy not only to others but to themselves alike.
While migrants suffer physical and psychological injury, Europe suffers a moral one. Described most notably by Cesaire, in his famous essay “Discourse on Colonialism”, Cesaire interprets the fascism of the 1930s and 40s as an ‘imperial boomerang’. He points out that the mass deaths of the Holocaust were not at all exceptional as it had been happening across all the colonized territories. Fascism is colonialism coming home.
Today, each pushback, imprisonment, and erasure of migrants deepens the contradiction of the EU being a place of freedom of movement. Every media statement dehumanizing a migrant reinforces the concept of conditional humanity. Safety is not guaranteed because one is a human being, only if it serves the profit of corporations trading lives for dollars. And, although Europe now exists in relative safety, who will hold out their hand in a future catastrophe after years of complacent silence? Perhaps it is only a matter of time before the uniformed guard, too, has to say farewell to something familiar and beloved to him. Maybe then he can relate to leaving behind what he once held so dear.
Sources:
Césaire, Aimé. Discourse on Colonialism.
Tajfel, Henri. Social Identity Theory.
Said, Edward. Orientalism.
“Top EU court adviser finds Denmark’s ‘ghetto law’ is direct discrimination” The Guardian
“Reporter apologises after calling Ukraine ‘relatively civilised’.” The Guardian.
“Poland accused of brutality as Belarus border crackdown escalates” Politico.
“Poland: Aid workers on trial for helping migrants at Belarus border.” InfoMigrants.
Frankl, Viktor. Man’s Search for Meaning.
