Humanitarianism, victimisation, and bordering processes: debating the refugee experience in the classroom

Abstract

Abstract Set in the peak of the so-called “European Migrant Crisis” and situated in the conflict-affected Cypriot context, this article examines Greek-Cypriot High School students’ representations of Syrian refugees as they were debated in classroom discussion. Drawing on ethnographic research that took place in 2016 in a Lower Secondary School in Cyprus, we analyse the interactional dynamics through which ‘bordering’ processes took place, showing how different types of borders were (re)-negotiated and re-instated in the classroom. Considering the sociohistorical context of Cyprus, we also investigate how teachers’ and students’ understandings of borders and ethnic identity-making were reshaped by local discourses. Our analysis shows that teachers, despite prompting students to take an active stance towards Syrian refugees as part of a peacebuilding stance, mobilised ethnocentric discourses that victimised refugees, portraying them as someone whose agency is taken away from, and for whom we can speak and act. Approaching borders as social constructs, we show how the national border separating “us” and “them” was construed and reaffirmed in such discussions, and how the representation of refugees as ‘the victim’ functioned as a way of narrating the ‘cultural fantasies’ of the national self.