Climate of Anxiety in the Sahel: Emigration in Xenophobic Times
Climate of Anxiety in the Sahel: Emigration in Xenophobic Times
复制标题
萨赫勒地区的焦虑气氛：排外时代的移民
DOI：
10.1215/08992363-7816293
复制
发表时间：
2020
期刊：
影响因子：
1.5
通讯作者：
M. Turner
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
J. Ribot;Papa Faye;M. Turner
年轻的萨赫勒农民正穿越撒哈拉沙漠前往欧洲。他们被卖为奴工，从家人那里勒索赎金，遭到殴打和唾弃。许多人死在沙漠中或淹死在海里。然而，明知危险，他们还是去了。媒体将他们描述为“气候难民”——逃离气候压力。然而，这些移民和他们的家人很少提到天气是他们在国内陷入困境或决定离开的原因。他们正在逃离滥用政策、市场风险、债务苦役、社会保障制度失灵，以及在一个他们从未期望在家庭或社区中扮演有尊严角色的世界中感到绝望。将他们描述为气候难民，掩盖了导致他们移民的多重力量，并转移了人们对潜在应对措施的注意力。这种选择动员了欧洲人的仇外心理，从而证实了这一点，从而激励欧洲人对抗气候变化。虽然气候投资看起来是负责任的和进步的，但对气候的关注否认了移民困境的殖民和后殖民历史，从而有可能加深危机。
Young Sahelian farmers are crossing the Sahara toward Europe. They are sold as slave labor, held ransom for money from their families, beaten and spit on. Many die in the desert or drown at sea. Yet, knowing the dangers, they go. The media depicts them as “climate refugees”—running from climate stress. These emigrants and their families, however, rarely mention the weather as a cause of their plight at home or their decisions to leave. They are fleeing abusive policies, exposure to markets, debt peonage, failures of social security systems and a sense of hopelessness in a world where they never expect to have a dignified role in their families or communities. Casting them as climate refugees occludes the multiple forces that lead them to emigrate and diverts attention from potential responses. This casting mobilizes, thus validating, European xenophobia to motivate Europeans to fight climate change. While climate investments appear responsible and progressive, the climate focus denies the colonial and postcolonial histories of emigrants’ plights, thereby threatening to deepen the crisis.