Humanitarianism with a neo-liberal face: vulnerability intervention as vulnerability redistribution

The research article “Humanitarianism with a neo-liberal face: vulnerability intervention as vulnerability redistribution”, authored by METU member Asst. Prof. Hande Sözer, has been published in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

The notion of vulnerability has recently gained prominence in humanitarian discourses. This article examines the contemporary humanitarian deployment of the notion of vulnerability, with respect to Syrian forced migrants. It argues that current humanitarian deployment of vulnerability hints the emergence of a new humanitarian morality responding to and reproducing neo-liberal political-economic configurations. The article, first, identifies a recent shift in humanitarianism’s lexicon of concern from forced migrants’ vulnerability to ‘vulnerable’ forced migrants. Accordingly, it became thinkable, morally acceptable, reasonable, and even desirable to provide humanitarian assistance only to segments of forced migrants. ‘The vulnerable’ becomes an unevenly distributed label. Second, it examines neo-liberal vulnerability interventions via cash-transfer by means of specific redistributive schemas. It claims that such interventions indicate not only a discriminatory distribution of assistance but also a recalibration of the purpose of humanitarian assistance from relief to terminating migrants’ use of negative coping strategies. Finally, such deployment of vulnerability, at best, redistribute vulnerability, if not in financial terms, by jeopardizing ‘vulnerable’ migrants’ relations within and outside the migrant community. Overall, the article problematises the use of the notion of vulnerability in humanitarianism for its damaging effects made between all forced migrants deserving of humanitarian empathy and the newly ‘vulnerable’ forced migrant.

Sözer, H. (2020). Humanitarianism with a neo-liberal face: Vulnerability intervention as vulnerability redistribution. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46(11), 2163-2180. doi:10.1080/1369183X.2019.1573661

Article access: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2019.1573661

Keywords:

cash-transfer; distribution; humanitarianism; neo-liberalism; redistribution; Vulnerability

Acknowledgments:
This work was supported by Bilim Akademisi: [Grant Number BAGEP 2015 (Distinguished Young Scientist Award 2015]; Middle East Technical University Northern Cyprus Campus: [Grant Number Campus Research Fund: SOSY-14-D-1].