The Global Precariat: Refugees and COVID-19

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Srinita Bhattacharjee

University of Hyderabad. ORCID: 0000-0003-4773-7045. Email: srinitabhattacharjee@gmail.com

Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s30n7

 Abstract

Are refugees welcomed by nation-states? Receiving a hospitable environment to resow the seeds of survival is a fundamental right of any human individual especially for refugees who have been rendered stateless and rightless. They require magnanimous hospitality in the form of social solidarity but what they acquire are disdainful attacks from neoliberal nation-states.  Often their traumatic voyages towards a secured mode of living meet with dejection and despair when nation-states violate their obligations by refusing to grant them asylum.  The few, who are accepted, are also compelled to hover around nation-state peripheries with ruthless indifference awaiting them. I shall critically consider Derridean ‘hostipitality’ as the premise to problematize refugee identity as the locus of precarity ensued by radical alterities.

 Keywords: refugee, COVID, precarity, hostipitality, neoliberalism