Objectification

Abstract

Abstract What does it mean to deny people’s humanity by regarding, portraying, or treating them as (mere) things? This chapter examines this question by zooming in on the so-called ‘objectification’ of refugees, asylum seekers, and unwanted migrants. While objectification is often presented as a paradigm case of dehumanization, it is not frequently used by journalists, scholars, commentators, and refugees, asylum seekers, and (other) migrants as a conceptual lens to make sense of the experiences of the internationally displaced. This chapter considers cases where migrants are portrayed like waste, natural disasters, or diseases, treated as bargaining chips or exploited, or viewed as objects without intrinsic moral value to clarify the relation between objectification and dehumanization. The chapter’s main argument is that objectification turns into a form of dehumanization when treating, portraying, or viewing people as objects entails a failure to ascribe them human subjectivity.