Like an Animal: Critical Animal Studies Approaches to Borders, Displacement, and Othering 9004439080, 9789004439085

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Like an Animal

Critical Animal Studies General Editors Helena Pedersen, Stockholm University (Sweden) Vasile Stănescu, Mercer University (USA) Editorial Board Stephen R.L. Clark, University of Liverpool (UK) Amy J. Fitzgerald, University of Windsor (Canada) Anthony J. Nocella, ii, Hamline University (USA) John Sorenson, Brock University (Canada) Richard Twine, Edge Hill University (UK) Richard J. White, Sheffield Hallam University (UK)

volume 5

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/​cast

Like an Animal Critical Animal Studies Approaches to Borders, Displacement, and Othering

Edited by

Natalie Khazaal and Núria Almiron

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Khazaal, Natalie, editor. | Almiron, Núria, editor. Title: Like an animal : critical animal studies approaches to borders, displacement, and othering / edited by Natalie Khazaal and Núria Almiron. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2021. | Series: Critical animal studies, 2212-4950 ; volume 5 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “In this volume, we suggest new perspectives with which critical animal studies (cas) can contribute to the development of knowledge and praxis in two fields—dehumanization and critical border studies, both concerned with human migration, refuge, and territorial or other borders. cas is an interdisciplinary field that reflects on the ethics of humans’ relationships with other animals, how the oppression of nonhuman animals intersects with other forms of oppression, and how economic interests drive oppression. cas scholars reject disinterested analysis to champion liberation for human animals, nonhuman animals, and the Earth.”– Provided by publisher. Identifiers: lccn 2020036618 (print) | lccn 2020036619 (ebook) | isbn 9789004439085 (hardback) | isbn 9789004440654 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Animal rights. | Human rights. | Social justice. | Humananimal relationships. Classification: lcc hv4708.L533 2021 (print) | lcc hv4708 (ebook) | ddc 179/.3–dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020036618 lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020036619

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/​brill-​typeface. issn 2212-​4 950 isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​4 3908-​5 (hardback) isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​4 4065-​4 (e-​book) Copyright 2021 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-​use and/​or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-​free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

For my students, Florencia Cuadra and Connor Israel, who inspired this book by co-​founding the first Texas chapter of the refugee advocacy organization No Lost Generation (Natalie Khazaal) For all my students at the MA in International Studies in Media, Power, and Difference at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Núria Almiron)

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Contents  List of Figures and Tables ix  Notes on Contributors xi  Introduction 1 Natalie Khazaal

part 1 Deconstructing the Human/​Nonhuman Divide 1  Communicating Solidarity: The Ethics of Representing Human and Nonhuman Distant Suffering 51 Núria Almiron 2  Inferiority by Association: Animals, Migrants, and Chicana/​Ecofeminist Possibilities 76 Garrett Bunyak 3  “Like an Animal”: Tropes for Delegitimization 101 Atsuko Matsuoka and John Sorenson 4  Species Traitor?: Foundations and Tensions in Human/​Animal Scholarship and Advocacy 125 Debra Merskin

part 2 Insights into the Politics, Advocacy, and Laws Related to the Divide 5  Care Movements, Climate Crisis, and Multi-​Species Refugees 161 Erin M. Evans 6  Global Migration Crises, Nonhuman Animals, and the Role of Law 182 Charlotte E. Blattner

viii Contents 7  The Costs of a Wall: The Impact of Pseudo-​Security Policies on Communities, Wildlife, and Ecosystems on the US-​Mexico Border 255 Steven Best

part 3 Media Representations of the Divide and the Potential Points of Its Disruption 8  The Press outside the West: Displacement, Refugees, and Nonhuman Animals in Bulgaria and Lebanon 283 Natalie Khazaal 9  Parasitic Breeding Herds: The Representation of Syrian Refugees on Turkish Social Media 316 Sezen Ergin Zengin 10  Seeking a Place to Live: Visual Representations of Human and Anymal Migrants in Images from the International Daily Press 341 Laura Fernández 11  Bordering: Brexit and Human-​Nonhuman Entanglements in UK Press Coverage of Romania 386 Claire Parkinson  Index 409

Figures and Tables Figures 4.1 The Great Chain of Being. Source: 1579 drawing of the Great Chain of Being from Didacus Valades, Rhetorica Christiana. Public Domain. 129 4.2 Interspecies Model of Prejudice. Source: Adapted from Costello and Hodson (2012). 147 8.1 Dolno Yabalkovo, Strandja mountain, August 2019, by author. 284 8.2 Kosta in front of his house with weekend visitors—​his sister (left) and my aunt (right), August, 2019, by author. 285 8.3 Syrian refugee girls at Corniche al-​Mazra‘a, Beirut, July 2019, by author. 303 10.1 Migrant caravan, human case: depiction in group or as individual by newspaper (%). 356 10.2 Migrant caravan, human case: expressions of emotions by newspaper. 357 10.3 Frames in the migrant caravan, human case (%). 358 10.4 “There was little dispute that President Trump was exploiting the migrant caravan, above in Irapuato, Mexico, on Monday, for political purposes.” Source image: Go Nakamura/​Reuters. Credits: Gtres. 359 10.5 “Miembros de la caravana migrante en Sayula, Veracruz” (“Members of the migrant caravan in Sayula, Veracruz”). Source image: Á. H. (efe) Credits: efe Agency. 360 10.6 “Maria Meza and her twin daughters, Cheili and Sandra, ran from a tear gas canister at the United States-​Mexico border in November.” Source image: Kim Kyung-​Hoon/​Reuters. Credits: Gtres. 361 10.7 “A child touches the coffin of Nelson Espinal, who was shot dead outside his home on 18 December, 2018 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.” Source image: Jorge Cabrera/​Reuters. Credits: Gtres. 362 10.8 Anymal climate refugees subjects, anymal case (%). 363 10.9 Frames in the anymal climate refugees case (%). 365 10.10 “In the floods that followed Hurricane Florence, 3.4 million chickens have been confirmed killed.” Source image: Jo-​Anne McArthur, We Animals/​The Guardian. Credits: Jo-​Anne McArthur, We Animals Archive. 366 10.11 “In Miami zoo, Jennifer Nelson walks a cheetah to a shelter before the downfall of Hurricane Irma.” Source image: Adrees Latif/​Reuters. Credits: Gtres. 367 10.12 Cows take refuge from floodwaters on a porch in Wallace, North Carolina Source image: Jo-​Anne McArthur, We Animals. Credits: Jo-​Anne McArthur, We Animals Archive. 368

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10.13 “Seis cerdos en su corral inundado en Zaragoza, en una foto cedida por pacma” (“Six pigs in their flooded farmyard in Zaragoza, in a picture ceded by pacma”). Source image: Aitor Garmendia (pacma). Credits: Aitor Garmendia, Tras los muros. 369 10.14 “Varias personas y sus mascotas son rescatadas por un tractor al desbordarse el río Cape Fear en Burgaw, Carolina del Norte” (“Several people and their pets are rescued by a tractor after the flooding of the Cape Fear River in Burgaw, North Carolina”). Source image: Jonathan Drake/​Reuters. Credits: Gtres. 370 10.15 “A loggerhead turtle hatchling headed for the sea. Hurricane Irma wiped out large numbers of leatherback and loggerhead turtle nests in Florida last month, significantly denting this year’s projections for a healthy population.” Source image: Gustavo Stahelin/​University of Central Florida. Credits: Gustavo Stahelin, ucf Marine Turtle Research Group—​m tp-​186. 371

Tables 8.1 Number of articles by language and category 295 8.2 Breakdown of articles by newspaper 296 9.1 The grounds of the metaphor refugees are animals 325 9.2 Pejorative use of nonhuman metaphors 328 9.3 Nonhuman animal metaphors and racism 329 9.4 Breeding metaphors 331 9.5 Mating metaphors 331 9.6 Metaphors of stray animals 333 9.7 Parasitical exploitation metaphors 335 9.8 Metaphors of uncivilized nonhuman animals 336 10.1 Coding variables used for the sample of photographs 351 10.2 Examples of captions that promote deindividualization and depersonalization in the case of anymal climate refugees 364

Notes on Contributors Natalie Khazaal is an Assistant Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology and an American Council of Learned Societies (acls) fellow for her work on Arab atheists. She studies the links among disenfranchisement, media, and language, and has published several articles on speciesism in the US and Spanish media and EU policy on vivisection. Dr. Khazaal is the author of Pretty Liar: Television, Language, and Gender in Wartime Lebanon (Syracuse, 2018) and a contributor for Global Media and Strategic Narratives of Contested Democracy (Routledge, 2019). She is a board member of Ideas Without Borders, and was the founding faculty advisor for No Lost Generation-​Texas, a student advocacy organization on refugees. Núria Almiron is an Associate Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (upf) in Barcelona, Spain. Dr. Almiron’s main research areas are critical animal and media studies, the ethics and political economy of communication, interest groups, and advocacy regarding the climate emergency and nonhuman animals’ oppression. She has published more than 50 peer-​reviewed articles and is an author, co-​author, or editor of 30 volumes, including the co-​edited books Critical Animal and Media Studies (2016, Routledge) and Public Relations and Climate Change Denial (2020, Routledge). She is the co-​director of the upf-​Centre for Animal Ethics, the director of THINKClima Research Project and the director of the MA in International Studies in Media, Power, and Difference. Garrett Bunyak is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of History and Sociology at Georgia Tech. His research explores animals and animality in relation to social inequalities and configurations of power. His work is featured in journals such as Society and Animals, Sociology of Sport Journal, and Humanimalia. Atsuko Matsuoka is a Professor at the School of Social Work, York University, Canada. Her research addresses the importance of understanding intersectionality of oppression among immigrants, ethnic older adults, and other animals. In promoting consideration for human-​nonhuman relationships in social work, her current research examines trans-​species social justice (social justice beyond human animals) and social work, which is supported by the Social Sciences and

xii 

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Humanities Research Council of Canada. She co-​edited with John Sorenson, Dog’s Best Friend?: Rethinking Canid-​Human Relations (2019), Critical Animal Studies: Toward Trans-​Species Social Justice (2018), Defining Critical Animal Studies (2014), and Ghosts and Shadows: Constructions of identity and community in an African diaspora (2001). John Sorenson is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at Brock University, Canada where he teaches courses in Critical Animal Studies. He has written and edited numerous books and articles on animal rights and various aspects of human-​ nonhuman relationships. Recent books are Dog’s Best Friend?: Rethinking Canid-​Human Relations and Critical Animal Studies: Towards Trans-​Species Social Justice (both co-​edited with Atsuko Matsuoka). Debra Merskin is a Professor in the School of Journalism & Communication at the University of Oregon. Her expertise is in the re-​presentation of animals in media and popular culture and the psychological process of speciest attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Her latest book is Seeing Species: Re-​presentations of Animals in the Media and Popular Culture (2018). She is active in the animal rights community serving as an advisory board member for the Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy, Predator Defense, and The Humane Education Coalition. Along with Dr. Carrie Freeman, she co-​founded the website and media style guide site animalsandmedia.org. Erin M. Evans is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at San Diego Mesa College and Chair-​Elect of the Animals & Society section of the American Sociological Association. Her research specializations are social movements, animal advocacy, and institutionalization. Specifically, she interrogates incrementalism as an approach to policy change and identifies the effects of institutionalizing activists’ demands through laws and policies. This work can be found in publications like Social Movement Studies (2019, 2015), Sociological Perspectives (2020, 2016), Society & Animals (2020, 2010), and edited volumes like these. Charlotte E. Blattner is a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Law School’s Animal Law & Policy Program, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, to explore critical intersections of animal and environmental law. She earned her Ph.D. in Law from the University of Basel, Switzerland, as part of the doctoral program Law

Notes on Contributors

xiii

and Animals, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship for Animal Studies at Queen’s University, Canada, from 2017–​8. Her books include Protecting Animals Within and Across Borders (oup 2019) and Animal Labour: A New Frontier of Interspecies Justice? (oup 2020, coedited with Will Kymlicka and Kendra Coulter). Steven Best is an award-​winning writer, noted international speaker, public intellectual, co-​f ounder of critical animal studies, and seasoned activist with over 30 years of experience in diverse political movements. Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas, El Paso, Best has published 14 books and over 200 articles and reviews on a wide range of topics. For his uncompromising advocacy of “total liberation” (humans, nonhuman animals, and the Earth), he has been denounced before Congress and banned from the UK for life. Best aspires to show what philosophy means in a world in crisis. Sezen Ergin Zengin received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Hacettepe University, Turkey. Her dissertation investigates changing power relations between humans and other animals through an analysis of discourse. Her research and publications concern the manifestation and legitimization of power through discourse in a wide array of topics such as agribusiness, zoos, and literature. She is currently working on the symbolic construction of manhood through meat-​eating. Laura Fernández is a Critical Animal Studies researcher. She has a ba in social and cultural anthropology (Autonomous University of Madrid), ma in International Studies in media, power, and difference (Pompeu Fabra University) and she is currently doing doctoral research in communication about strategic visual communication and moral shocks in the international animal liberation movement (Universitat Pompeu Fabra). She is a member of the Critical Communication Research Group (CritiCC) and the research assistant of the Centre for Animal Ethics in Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. She is also the author of the book Hacia Mundos más Animales (Towards More Animal Worlds) published in 2018 by Editorial Ochodoscuatro. Claire Parkinson is Professor of Film, Television, and Digital Media at Edge Hill University. She founded the Centre for Human Animal Studies (CfHAS), which she co-​directs. Her research interests focus on multispecies storytelling; media, culture, and

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Critical Animal Studies; activism; cultural history; and film and politics. Her work on nonhuman animals, media, and culture spans over two decades and has been published widely in books and journals. She is the author or editor of six books including Popular Media and Animals, Beyond Human: From Animality to Transhumanism and Animals, Anthropomorphism and Mediated Encounters.

Introduction Natalie Khazaal 1

Bison-​Cow, Hero, and How Refugees Take a Tylenol To Keep Working

Aren’t the slaughterhouse and the meatpacking plant the poster children of what philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls a “zone of irreducible indistinction,” where inclusion and exclusion, life and death, law and violence co-​exist?1 Aren’t they a border zone where a sovereign power decides which forms of life are worthy to live and which to die? Such questions aren’t as controversial if we think of the confusing mixture of inclusion and exclusion, life and death, law and violence experienced by human workers in the type of animal killing industry euphemistically known as the meat industry. Refugees and immigrants are the backbone of the meat industry, which profits enormously from hiring undocumented workers and allegedly smuggling cheap labor from the global South to staff their plants.2 But making up the highest percentage of immigrant and refugee workers of any US industry offers them little bargaining power or recourse to political protection.3 Consider, for instance, the frequent immigration enforcement raids that target the industry because of its worker makeup. Or how the sovereign authorities abandoned these workers during the COVID-​19 pandemic. The COVID-​19 outbreak in the largest branch of the meatpacking giant Tyson, in Waterloo, Iowa, made up 90 percent of the cases in Black Hawk County, with 1,031 of the locale’s 2,800 employees testing positive for COVID-​19 and a number of them running up the county’s human death count, by May 2020.4 Ignoring the shocking numbers, forty-​fifth US President Donald Trump 1 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 9. 2 Robert L. Jackson, “Tyson Foods Is Indicted in Immigrant Smuggling,” Los Angeles Times, December 20, 2001, https://​www.latimes.com/​archives/​la-​xpm-​2001-​dec-​20-​mn-​16761-​story. html. 3 Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Blood, Sweat and Fear: Workers’ Rights in US Meat and Poultry Plants,” Human Rights Watch (2004) https://​www.hrw.org/​sites/​default/​files/​reports/​ usa0105.pdf. 4 Becky Sullivan, “Tyson’s Largest Pork Plant Reopens as Tests Show Surge in Coronavirus Cases,” Houston Public Media, May 8, 2020, https://​www.houstonpublicmedia.org/​npr/​2020/​05/​08/​ 852843796/​tysons-​largest-​pork-​plant-​reopens-​as-​tests-​show-​surge-​in-​coronavirus-​cases/​.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004440654_002

2 Khazaal banned meat industries from closing and ordered workers to keep killing “to feed America.”5 To his credit, work in the meat industry was mandatory but worker protection was voluntary. When the Black Hawk County sheriff visited the Waterloo plant in April, he saw no “barriers, masks, and other personal protective equipment in place … [it was] an absolute free-​for-​all.”6 If workers got sick and chose to stay home, they didn’t get paid. In the words of Maria, a 15-​year veteran at the turkey rearing and killing corporation Butterball: “I’ve had a fever and flu symptoms, but I take Tylenol and keep working.”7 At the border checkpoint, the showing of a passport gives one “a shield against sovereign abandonment,” at least in rhetoric.8 Yet, the US government’s biopolitics condemned those working at the border “zone of irreducible indistinction” to danger and potential death, choosing instead to protect a different America. The virus, however, wasn’t the only concern of the abandoned workers. Even before the outbreak, working on a kill floor was among the most dangerous and dead-​end jobs in the country. The industry shows little more concern for the humans who work there than for the nonhumans it kills. Safety records show that its workers sustain injuries three times more often than the average American employee; in March 2020, a worker from a Tyson branch in Alabama, for instance, was decapitated while cleaning post-​kill cooling equipment.9 Typically, sick leave is rare, unpaid, and punished (workers may be threatened with termination), while bathroom breaks are a perk, (so many workers wear diapers during their shift). Low wages, no childcare, poor housing, no employment insurance, and fear of being deported is the norm. The history of immigrant labor abuse in US meat production runs deep, well before muckraker journalist Upton Sinclair published his 1906 shocking best-​seller The Jungle, which writer Jack London aptly called “the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of wage slavery.”10 More than a century later, immigrant workers in the industry 5

Danica Jorden, “COVID-​19 Sweeping Through Ranks of US Immigrant Farmworkers and Meatpackers,” Common Dreams, April 26, 2020, https://​www.commondreams.org/​ views/​2020/​04/​26/​covid-​19-​sweeping-​through-​ranks-​us-​immigrant-​farmworkers-​and-​ meatpackers. 6 Sullivan, “Tyson’s Largest Pork Plant.” 7 Ibid. 8 The quote is from Mark Salter, “Theory of the /​: The Suture and Critical Border Studies,” Geopolitics 17, no. 4 (2012): 734–​755, 742. 9 “Coroner: Man Killed Cleaning Equipment at Chicken Plant,” US News and World Report, March 4, 2020, https://​www.usnews.com/​news/​best-​states/​alabama/​articles/​2020-​03-​04/​ coroner-​man-​killed-​cleaning-​equipment-​at-​chicken-​plant. 10 “Upton Sinclair,” The Historical Society of Southern California, accessed May 14, 2020, https://​web.archive.org/​web/​20120712211851/​http://​www.socalhistory.org/​bios/​upton_​ sinclair.html.

Introduction

3

continue to be abused as “animals” and “beasts” by that same America and its sovereign government they work for, in “a continuous transition between man and beast,” to use Agamben’s words.11 This situation is typical of other countries as well. And yet, why is it controversial to see the meat industry as a “zone of irreducible indistinction” between inclusion and exclusion, life and death, law and violence when it comes to the billions of chickens, pigs, cows, and others that are killed with impunity and the few who escape? It’s not surprising that the industry across the US became a covid-​19 hotspot infecting thousands of workers and other members of the community. Filthy factory farms, slaughterhouses, meatpacking plants, and meat markets are the best breeding grounds for pandemic pathogens like covid-​19, sars, bird flus, and swine flus.12 And when there’s an outbreak there, the chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows are either left to die by the disease or are exterminated to stop its spread. That’s exactly what happened to 50 million chickens and turkeys in 2014 during the deadliest avian flu epidemic in the US.13 The political majority in the US typically enjoys a choice of employment before minority refugees and immigrants, and the majority seldom chooses killing jobs at slaughterhouses. The resulting demand for labor at slaughterhouses drives the killing industry to target immigrants.14 They’re sent to work the kill floor as what Agamben would call “bare life,” facing a deadly danger to “feed America.” At the same time, though, refugees and immigrants assume the powers of the sovereign by deciding that members of the human species are worthy of life and those of the chicken, turkey, pig, cow, and sheep species are killable. They’re propping up, or performing, an ominous border that separates humans from nonhumans. We no longer think of the border as a line in the sand that separates two nation-​states, but more like a system of practices and performances that give the border meaning. If that’s so, then why are speciesist notions such as a “transition between man and beast” and “bare life,” which run deep in the veins of every critical scholarly writing on borders, rarely challenged? Notions of 11 Agamben, Homo Sacer, 109. 12 Cassandra Willyard, “Flu on the Farm,” Nature, September 18, 2019, https://​www.nature. com/​articles/​d41586-​019-​02757-​4. 13 Sean Ramos, Matthew Maclachlan, and Alex Melton, “Impacts of the 2014-​2015 Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Outbreak on the US Poultry Sector,” Economic Research Report, US Department of Agriculture, December, 2017, https://​www.ers.usda.gov/​publications/​pub-​details/​?pubid=86281 14 Kate Payne, “Meatpacking Workers Are Struggling to Protect Themselves During the Pandemic,” NPR, May 5, 2020, https://​www.npr.org/​transcripts/​850964016.

4 Khazaal borders, refugees, immigrants, and displacement are embedded in speciesism. Why aren’t they exposed as a system that forces the world’s second most vulnerable group—​the displaced—​to face the horrible task of killing the world’s most vulnerable group—​nonhuman animals used for food? And why is the obligatory speciesist distinction between human and animal at the core of immigrant resistance against dehumanization when a unique human nature has been proven to be a delusion? Nonhumans resist death, punishment, and captivity as vigorously as the system of oppression and selective breeding affords them. Consider the story of an unnamed cow whom I’ll refer to as Bison-​cow. In October 2017, Bison-​cow ran away from a certain death at a farm in Skupowo, Western Poland.15 Her copper hue and smaller stature didn’t stop the group of 50 free-​living chestnut-​ brown bisons from giving her refuge from humans, protecting her from wolves, and letting her forage with them.16 The rest of her friends, who had run away from the same hole in a fence, were captured, but she alone escaped and wandered the great unknown of the countryside until she joined the bisons in the Bialowieza Forest that cuts through the Polish-​Belarussian border. Over the next four months, biologists kept spotting Bison-​cow. But like them, the director of the Mammal Research Institute at the Polish Academy of Sciences, claimed that “her winter adventure must end soon.”17 Capturing her before she could mate with the bisons was deemed essential because hybrid offspring would “contaminate” the bisons’ “gene pool.”18 There’s no reason to believe Bison-​cow or her new companions shared any such concern. The urgency of her capture was more likely a matter of human supremacy and biopolitics. There are many stories of chickens, turkeys, pigs, cows, and sheeps who escape from factory and family farms, yet humans have made it impossible for them to successfully resist their oppression, and almost all of their stories have no happy ending. That’s what happened to another cow in Southern Poland just a few miles from the Czech border who escaped about the same time as Bison-​cow. Hero, as people called her for her brave fight for freedom, resisted being loaded in a slaughter-​bound truck, broke the arm of the handler who

15 16 17 18

Jenny Gathright, “Rebellious Cow Finds Winter Home Among Polish Bison,” NPR, January 25, 2018, https://​www.npr.org/​sections/​thetwo-​way/​2018/​01/​25/​580746379/​rebellious-​cow -​finds-​winter-​home-​among-​polish-​bison. We’re using non-​speciesist language for plurals referring to nonhuman animals. “A Cow Escaped a Farm to Live withWild Bison, but It Could Have Devastating Consequences,” Indy100, accessed May 14, 2020, https://​www.indy100.com/​article/​poland-​cow-​escaped -​forest-​wild-​bison-​bialowieza-​genetics-​risk-​endangered-​8181001. Gathright, “Rebellious Cow.”

Introduction

5

tried to recapture her, and made a run for nearby lake Nyskie where she swam to an island.19 After her pursuers arrived in boats, she swam to another island. Hero survived on the island for a month until people came back to take her to a sanctuary. Stressed by their hours-​long efforts to recapture her, she had a heart attack, according to the reports, and died in the truck during transport. The ways in which humans have manipulated the life of refugees like Bison-​ cow and Hero, as well as the lives of all animals reared for food and the free-​ living bisons whom humans had brought near extinction in the 1920s, are inherently entangled with the life of human refugees and the biopolitics—​or zoopolitics as philosopher Jacque Derrida calls it—​of the nation-​state. In the rest of this volume, we show why and how we can bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice at the border. 2

Bending the Arc of the Moral Universe toward Justice at the Border

In this volume, we suggest new perspectives with which critical animal studies (cas) can contribute to the development of knowledge and praxis in two fields—​the interdisciplinary study of dehumanization and critical border studies, both of which are commonly concerned with questions of human migration, refuge, and territorial or other borders. Critical animal studies is an interdisciplinary field that reflects on the ethics of humans’ relationships with other animals from an intersectional perspective and a particular political stance. cas scholars typically understand the commonalities among multiple forms of oppression, contextualize speciesism within a socio-​economic framework, are anti-​capitalist, and reject disinterested analysis to champion liberation for human animals, nonhuman animals, and the Earth.20 In a nutshell, the contributors to this volume suggest that the fields of dehumanization (and critical refugee studies), critical border studies, and critical animal studies collaborate to think about how speciesism plays a formative role in 19

20

Avi Selk, “The Briefly Inspirational and Ultimately Depressing Story of the Most Heroic Cow in Poland,” The Washington Post, February 26, 2018, https://​www.washingtonpost.com/​news/​animalia/​wp/​2018/​02/​25/​the-​briefly-​inspirational-​and-​ultimately-​ depressing-​story-​of-​the-​most-​heroic-​cow-​in-​poland/​. Steven Best, “The Rise (and Fall) of Critical Animal Studies: Putting Theory into Action and Animal Liberation into Higher Education” (revised), LIBERAZIONI Rivista di Critica Antispecista (Spring 2012), http://​www.liberazioni.eu/​wp-​content/​uploads/​2019/​10/​Best-​ TheRiseand-​FallofCriticalAnimalStudies.pdf; Steven Best, Anthony J. Nocella, Richard Kahn, Carol Gigliotti, and Lisa Kemmerer, “Introducing Critical Animal Studies,” Journal for Critical Animal Studies 5, no. 1 (2007).

6 Khazaal questions of refuge, borders, displacement, migration, and dehumanization, in other words, to open a new space to explore speciesism-​as-​framework. We also aim at contributing to the burgeoning field of critical animal geographies by exploring borders as sites where the spatial organization of mobility, immobility, confinement, and display create and perpetuate interspecies domination and oppression. More than half a century before Maria had to take a Tylenol and keep on working during the coronavirus pandemic, Martin Luther King had proclaimed that ideas of tolerance, humanism, and love would conquer people’s hearts and bend the arc of history toward justice.21 Yet, the same psychological characteristics and political channels that allow good ideas to spread also serve harmful ideas, i.e., ideas of species/​racial hierarchy, intolerance, and bigotry that lead to denial of moral consideration, oppression, and even genocide. A set of harmful ideas is our shorthand for harmful ideology. While there are numerous ways to define harmful ideology,22 the most relevant way here is to define it as a way of seeing the world that allows a dominant group to subjugate a vulnerable group and to justify its oppression.23 Behaviors that benefit from domination give rise to ideologies like speciesism that support domination. Speciesism is the ideology that belonging to a species is morally relevant; it’s a prejudice against members of other species. Speciesism is used to justify and perpetuate catastrophic forms of oppression against nonhuman animals. The contributors to this volume argue that speciesism is an underlying framework for the support of other forms of oppression, specifically anti-​immigrant and anti-​refugee racism. Speciesism-​as-​framework, although in plain view, remains largely hidden from the eyes of the public, politicians, media, and scholars

21 22 23

King’s words were inspired by the words of Theodore Parker. See for instance John Gerring, “Ideology: A Definitional Analysis,” Political Research Quarterly 50, no. 4 (1997): 957–​994; or Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London: Verso, 2007). Here we follow definitions like Sally Haslanger’s that “[p]‌roblematic networks of social meanings constitute an ideology” and that “ideology is best understood functionally: ideology functions to stabilize or perpetuate unjust power and domination, and does so through some form of masking or illusion” (Sally Haslanger, “Culture and Critique,” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 91, no. 1 [2017]: 149–​173, 149–​150); and Stuart Hall’s which links ideology to “the concepts and the languages of practical thought which stabilize a particular form of power and domination; or which reconcile and accommodate the mass of the people to their subordinate place in the social formation” (Stuart Hall, “The Problem of Ideology: Marxism without Guarantees,” in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, eds. David Morlay and Kuan-​Hsing Chen [New York: Routledge, 1996/​ 2006], 24–​59, 24–​5).

Introduction

7

when it comes to racism against forced migrants such as refugees and many immigrants. And we mean from the eyes of the perpetrators as well as from the eyes of the speciesist critics. Simply moving the speciesist line in the sand a little farther, as the critics suggest, won’t make the intended difference; instead, we should wipe out the line altogether, or emancipate space, as Richard White and Simon Springer have called for.24 Scholars of dehumanization and critical refugee studies challenge framing refugees and migrants either as powerless victims or as subhuman invaders, as “animals.” Instead, they attempt to rehumanize refugees and migrants by telling stories of human suffering and presenting them as political subjects constituted through their own agency. cas scholars build on these perspectives and adopt an anti-​racist and a decolonial perspective. Such perspectives acknowledge the social pathology of dehumanizing human refugees as “animals” inherent in ethnocentrism and its consequences—​denial of dignity and autonomy, unequal treatment, and increased control. However, our critical contribution in overcoming dehumanization at the border comes from a critical animal studies and animal ethics perspective. We expose the anthropocentric impulse to rehumanize human refugees by way of portraying nonhumans as the real other that lacks moral status. We argue that this is ultimately a failing endeavor because the system that makes dehumanization possible remains intact. That’s why the main target of critique in this volume is the various ways in which the human-​nonhuman divide is solidified and defended and how that affects humans and nonhumans. Therefore, in the first part of this introduction, I critique the notion of humanism as a violent political ideology, and in the rest of the volume we blur the hard divide of speciesism (the belief in human supremacy over nonhuman animals) with its soft divide (dehumanizing human out-​groups such as refugees). On the other hand, critical border studies explores how the nature of inclusiveness and exclusiveness is defined through the policies of borders and the populations who cross them.25 One of its urgent tasks, according to political scholars Noel Parker and Nick Vaughan-​Williams, is “to develop tools for identifying and interrogating what and where borders are and how they function in different settings, with what consequences, and for whose benefit” through conversations with scholars from other fields.26 Responding 24 25 26

Richard J. White and Simon Springer, “For Spatial Emancipation in Critical Animal Studies,” in Critical Animal Studies: Toward Trans-​Species Social Justice, eds. Atsuko Matsuoka and John Sorenson (London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), 160–​183. Salter, “Theory of the /​.” Noel Parker and Nick Vaughan-​Williams, “Critical Border Studies: Broadening and Deepening the ‘Lines in the Sand’ Agenda,” Geopolitics 17, no. 4 (2012): 727–​733, 729.

8 Khazaal to this call, the contributions in this volume offer new perspectives on borders as practices that in important ways remain invisible to those involved and those who study them. As the second part of this introduction argues, a critical animal studies perspective—​aided by a critical animal geography perspective—​challenges the solipsism of critical border studies (and border studies in general) about actual nonhuman animal bodies and the origin of violence in the body politic. We untie the border from territory and tie it to human and nonhuman bodies. This allows us to ask what everyday practices create, reinforce, and challenge the most notorious border—​the human-​ nonhuman divide. Even though this divide is foundational to the work of scholars such as Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, and Giorgio Agamben, its ideological nature remains invisible to them. We also acknowledge the importance of the refugee and the immigrant as a central figure in studying borders and the nature of modern sovereignty critically. Our contribution is to show why a true understanding of borders and sovereignty is impossible without considering the speciesist system in which they’re embedded and the communities of nonhumans this system affects and which affect it. Therefore, the contributors to this volume problematize the notion of human and invite border/​migration scholars to consider a broader social justice perspective that includes nonhuman animals. Our contribution is timely and vital. As the new, human-​ generated Anthropocene epoch is taking a catastrophic toll on the planet, we expose human practices and ideologies related to the abuse of nonhuman animals that lie at the heart of the planet’s destruction. The new theoretical frameworks and critical terminology we want to inspire through a collaborative reconceptualization of dehumanization, borders, and migrants will also advance the common resistance against systems of oppression. Challenging the Anthropocene ideology that invited the conditions for our planet’s destruction is a crucial goal that must be achieved as soon as possible if we stand any chance of avoiding the catastrophe we’re headed for. 3

Is There Animalization without Speciesism?

“Jackals,” “Jew-​pigs,” and “Japes”: How We Talk of Refugees, Immigrants, and Others One way to observe the dependence of racism on speciesism-​as-​framework is to explore how we talk about forced migrants. A case in point are the Rohingya Muslims—​the world’s largest group of stateless refugees and one of the most 3.1

Introduction

9

persecuted.27 Husson, a 30-​year-​old Rohingya Muslim refugee who escaped native Myanmar in 2017 after genocidal raids by the Myanmar army, tells her story: The raid on our village started at three am. I saw a child being thrown onto a fire, and my sister was raped. The violence continued for hours. We escaped by hiding in the mountains. On the way we found a ten-​year old boy crying that his parents had been killed. He walked with us all the way to the camps. Today, the boy has become a member of my family and we live together. The camps are filled with children living in similar circumstances. Many Rohingya have adopted children who lost their families.28 An indigenous population to northern areas of Myanmar, the Rohingya were about 1.1 to 1.3 million before the 2016–​17 genocide against them.29 During the attempt, the Rohingya were mass murdered in summary and extra-​judicial executions, mass raped, disappeared, tortured, injured in other ways, and their villages were burned by mobs and the military. Since then, about 900,000 have become refugees in neighboring Bangladesh, and more than 100,000 are imprisoned in Myanmar detention camps as internally displaced persons. Classified as illegal immigrants in Myanmar, they are denied citizenship, the right to own or occupy their land, freedom of movement, access to higher education, the right to serve in the government including the military, the right to have more than two children, and to use the term “Rohingya” to describe themselves. This severe level of discrimination didn’t happen without the help of speciesism. Susan Benesch calls spreading bad ideas “dangerous speech,” or speech that moves others to commit acts of violence against a typically vulnerable group of humans, such as refugees and immigrants. The nature of the dangerous speech against the Rohingya Muslims reveals the danger of perpetuating speciesism-​as-​framework. Rohingya Muslims were called “African carp,” 27

28 29

Lennart Hofman, “Meet the Most Persecuted People in the World,” The Correspondent, February 25, 2016, https://​thecorrespondent.com/​4087/​meet-​the-​most-​persecuted-​ people-​in-​the-​world/​293299468-​71e6cf33; “Myanmar, Bangladesh Leaders to Discuss Rohingya,” Bangkok Post, June 26, 2012, https://​www.bangkokpost.com/​world/​299735/​ myanmar-​bangladesh-​leaders-​to-​discuss-​rohingya. “The Rohingya Refugee Crisis: Stories of Survival,” Doctors of the World, accessed April 21, 2020, https://​doctorsoftheworld.org/​blog/​the-​rohingya-​refugee-​crisis-​stories-​of-​ survival/​. Azeem Ibrahim, “The Rohingya Are at the Brink of Mass Genocide,” HuffPost, October 11, 2016, https://​www.huffpost.com/​entry/​the-​rohingya-​are-​at-​the-​b_​b_​12445526.

10 Khazaal “snakes,” “mad dogs,” “beasts,” “wolves,” “jackals,” “human fleas,” and “maggots.” These slurs are examples of dehumanization, which stems from speciesism as I explain in more detail below. Dehumanization is when an individual or a group of humans are conceived of as less than human and close to or at the level of nonhumans.30 Dangerous speech against forced migrants rationalizes some of the world’s cruelest forms of oppression.31 It’s also part of a millennia-​old practice of racism and dehumanization across all human societies.32 The most common dehumanizing slurs ever recorded start with Ancient Greeks who called their slaves “beasts.” In the Middle Ages, white Europeans saw Jewish people as “mad dogs” and “Jew-​pigs” (creatures with the head of a Jewish person and the body of a pig), while Crusaders called Muslim Arabs “a fiendish race … deformed by nature … inhuman savages.” Arabs didn’t fare any better as Usama Ibn Munqidh—​courtier to Saladin and contemporary poet who dabbled as a historian—​wrote that Crusaders were “beasts who have merely the virtue of courage and combat, like the beasts [nonhuman animals] who have the virtue of strength and lifting.”33 Whereas for Turks in the Ottoman Empire Armenians were “cattle,” colonialists from European empires thought of indigenous populations as “hens,” “lamb,” “tame sheep,” “wolves,” “snakes,” “lizards,” “toads,” “swines,” “orangutans,” and “gorillas.” Similarly, most whites saw black people in Antebellum America and during the Jim Crow segregation as “livestock” and “voracious beasts.” Nazis, on the other hand, abhorred Jews and the Roma as “rats,” “parasites,” and “vermin,” building on earlier attitudes like those of German composer Richard Wagner and his wife who thought Jews were 30

31

32 33

Kimberly Costello and Gordon Hodson, “Exploring the Roots of Animal Dehumanization: The Role of Animal-​Human Similarity in Promoting Immigrant Humanization,” Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 13, no. 1 (2010); Kimberly Costello and Gordon Hodson, “Explaining Dehumanization Among Children: The Interspecies Model of Prejudice,” British Journal of Social Psychology 52, no. 1 (2012); Nick Haslam, “Dehumanization: An Integrative Review,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 10, no. 3 (2006): 252–​264; David Smith, Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011). Gerald V. O’Brien, “Indigestible Food, Conquering Hordes, and Waste Materials: Metaphors of Immigrants and the Early Immigration Restriction Debate in the United States,” Metaphor and Symbol 18 (2003): 33–​47; Charles Patterson, Eternal Treblinka. Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust (New York: Lantern Books, 2002); Gustav Jahoda, Images of Savages: Ancient Roots of Modern Prejudice in Western Culture (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1999). See Patterson, Eternal Treblinka, 66–​113. Suhayl Zakkar, Al-​Mawsu‘a al-​Shamila fi-​Tarikh al-​Hurub al-​Salibiyya 12 (Beirut: Dar al-​ Fikr, 1995).

Introduction

11

disgusting “lice, insects, and bacilli.” As a matter of fact, the Roma are called “animals” in European countries to this day. Wars provide some of the most prolific repertoire for dehumanization. During World War ii, American soldiers called the Japanese “bugs,” “yellow monkeys,” “jaundiced baboons,” “Japes” (a mix of “Japs” and “apes”), “monkeynips,” and “buck-​toothed, near-​sighted, pint-​ sized monkeys,” while the Vietnamese for US troops were “termites” during the Vietnam war, and the Iraqis were “cockroaches” and “turkeys” during the 1991 Gulf War. Hollywood made a flagrant contribution to this repertoire too, when early cartoons portrayed Arabs as barking dogs who lack the ability to make articulate sounds.34 Ancient Athenians, Enlightenment-​era Europeans, Nazis, and the Eipo of New Guinea, who call their enemy tribes “dung flies” and “worms,” all practiced similar forms of dehumanization. As philosopher David Livingstone Smith argues, “[d]‌ehumanization is neither uniquely European, nor uniquely modern [… but] a joint creation of biology, culture, and the architecture of the human mind.”35 Slurs and dehumanizing rhetoric cause victims and bystanders an enormous amount of emotional abuse. Yet, such abuse isn’t the only effect of racist dehumanization. Dehumanization often leads to a variety of cruel, abusive practices that are enjoyed by the perpetrating group. For instance, for a whole century between the end of the American Civil War (1865) and the end of Jim Crow segregation (1968), lynchings of black people in the US were often festive public events in which thousands of men, women, and children participated. The audience arrived on the lynching site in special excursion trains where professional photographers memorialized them in trophy photos. Lynchings typically involved hours of torture and other mutilation. Sometimes, victims were forced to eat their severed genitals, buried alive, or slowly baked over open fire, which gave lynchings the name of barbecues. During World War ii and the Vietnam War, American soldiers, for instance, often cut off ears, scalps, penises, noses, breasts, and fingers, or pulled out teeth from the Japanese soldiers and Vietnamese civilians they had killed to display as hunting trophies, wear as necklaces, or gift as souvenirs to their commanders. When political and religious leaders dehumanize refugees and immigrants and the media escalates the dehumanization, the public embraces anti-​refugee and anti-​ immigrant sentiments like clockwork. The intensification of dehumanization leads to oppression as we can see from the increase in persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany in areas where radio reception—​which aired Nazi’s dangerous 34

Jack Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2014). 35 Smith, Less Than Humans, 3.

12 Khazaal speech—​was more reliable. Similar was the case when the dehumanization of the Japanese spiked, which preceded the murder of 100,000 Japanese during the firebombing of Tokyo by US troops. Of course, genocide places at the top of the catastrophic effects of dehumanizing racism. That’s how ultra-​nationalist Buddhist monks and an egregiously biased local media perpetrated dangerous speech that eventually led to the Rohingya genocide with 25,000 murdered, 18,000 raped, and 115,000 beaten.36 In the end, dehumanization protects predatory economic interests. For instance, the enslavement and exploitation of Africans in the US produced: the world’s first system of multinational production for what emerged as a mass market—​a market for slave-​produced sugar, tobacco, coffee, chocolate, dye-​stuffs, rice, hemp, and cotton […] By the early 1700s most English merchants and political leaders agreed with the eminent economist Malachy Postelthwayt: “The Negroe Trade and natural Consequences resulting from it, may be justly esteemed an inexhaustible fund Wealth and Naval Power to this Nation.”37 This egregious form of dehumanization and exploitation made 1861 Mississippi the US state with the highest number of millionaires per square mile. What’s Human Nature, Bottomline? Humanist Theories of Dehumanization “To call a man a savage is to warrant his death and to leave him unknown and unmourned,” wrote historian Francis Jennings in The Invasion of America.38 The consequences of dehumanizing refugees and immigrants, as well as other groups in general, are often deadly. Once a human being is animalized, they have no rights or moral consideration, because in speciesist societies, nonhuman animals themselves have no rights or moral consideration. Animalized humans are dispatched to the moral dungeon, where morality has vanished. As scholars have realized, dehumanization is a severe problem because its roots 3.2

36 37 38

“Former UN Chief Says Bangladesh Cannot Continue Hosting Rohingya,” Al Jazeera, July 11, 2019, https://​www.aljazeera.com/​news/​2019/​07/​chief-​bangladesh-​continue-​hosting-​ rohingya-​190710191318011.html. David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 2, 80. Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America; Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975).

Introduction

13

are deep and its causes systemic. The dominant approach to grasping its roots and causes is grounded in the literature on racism. Scholars of racism see the dehumanization of refugees and immigrants as an egregious problem because the victims are denied a common humanity they possess no less than the perpetrators; in other words, dehumanization “belittles immigrants as it separates non-​citizens and citizens, since it assigns them a less-​than-​human standing.”39 According to psychologist Nick Haslam, scholars who have studied dehumanization have been working in isolation, which has prevented them from developing an integrated theory of what dehumanization is and what it does.40 Only a clear definition of humanness will solve the problem, he thinks, since humanness is precisely what dehumanized individuals and groups are denied. Resolved to find exactly what distinguishes humans from other animals, Haslam proposes two senses of humanness, based on a series of experiments set up to identify lay persons’ views.41 According to these experiments, humanness in the first sense is a collection of acquired, unique human qualities that no other animal species possesses. In particular, those turn out to be five qualities that reflect the sensibilities of the Enlightenment Era. Since humanness at the time revolved around rationality and cultivation, the Haslam experiments define humanness in the first sense as civility, refinement, moral sensibility, rationality, and maturity. As for the second sense of humanness, it reflects the sensibilities of the Romantics, who saw human nature as passion, imagination, and emotion. Haslam, therefore, postulated that in the second sense, humanness should be understood as all the inherent, shared, biological qualities that make up human nature, in particular emotional responsiveness, interpersonal warmth, cognitive openness, agency, individuality, and depth. After proposing a two-​tier definition of humanness, Haslam defines two senses of dehumanization. According to him, they’re the binary opposites of the two senses of humanness because the subject matter with which dehumanizers smear their targets is an outcome of the denial of humanness. The first sense of dehumanization pictures an animal-​like creature that’s uncultured, unrestrained, coarse, amoral, irrational, and childlike. Since humanness is inconceivable without its binary opposite—​animality—​dehumanizers conceive of themselves as human, but label their victims animal. “Stated boldly, if 39 40 41

Otto Santa Ana, “ ‘Like an Animal I Was Treated’: Anti-​immigrant Metaphor in US Public Discourse,” Discourse & Society 10, no. 2 (1999): 191–​224. Halsam, “Dehumanization.” Ibid; Nick Haslam, Paul Bain, Lauren Douge, Max Lee, and Bastian Brock, “More Human Than You: Attributing Humanness to Self and Others,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 89 (2005): 973–​950.

14 Khazaal people are perceived as lacking what distinguishes humans from animals, they should be seen implicitly or explicitly as animal-​like.”42 The second sense of dehumanization depicts an inert, cold, rigid, passive, fungible, and superficial robot. Haslam is correct that animalistic dehumanization typically appears in interethnic conflict, while mechanistic dehumanization appears when individuals and groups are objectified and treated as standardized datum or impersonal tools in domains such as technology, medicine, economics, and educational testing, or even in the context of sexism. Animalized dehumanization has been incomparably more dangerous than mechanistic dehumanization. The former is an extremely negative form of evaluation of others that removes normal constraints on aggression or puts the victims outside of moral consideration so that the perpetrator can self-​exonerate, justify violence, and enforce dominance. That’s why scholars have typically studied it as a motivated phenomenon. Another recent attempt at cracking dehumanization relevant to our approach is Smith’s, who develops into a coherent theory some of the cognitive aspects that earlier work on dehumanization has identified.43 For Smith, dehumanization is a psycho-​political phenomenon driven by essentialist and hierarchical thinking, on the one hand, and by a “punitive and predatory form of moral engagement” incited by propaganda and specific political ideology on the other.44 According to him, our cognitive development has led us to believe that everything in nature has an essence that determines the thing’s outer characteristics and behavior. That’s why we erroneously believe that each human group has a unique essence that separates one kind from another, he continues. The second cognitive process entangled in dehumanization that Smith describes is hierarchical thinking, which stems from a belief in a hierarchy of intrinsic value attributed to each essence. This kind of psychological bias produces a divide between human and nonhuman animals and a hierarchy of human races, or the essentialized forms of our kind versus their kind. Incited by propaganda and specific political ideology, this racialized, hierarchical essentialism adopts an aggressive moral agenda that forces the ingroup to discriminate and in extreme cases murder the outgroup who they believe causes severe moral decay to society. Dehumanization, according to Smith, isn’t a blind spot of human evolution but a solution to the problems of guilt from killing and shame from violating 42 Haslam, “Dehumanization,” 258. 43 Smith, Less Than Human; David Smith, On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). 44 His definition of ideology is similar to ours; Smith, On Inhumanity, 92.

Introduction

15

one’s own moral principles, i.e., hypocrisy. It is the most powerful mechanism that disables self-​condemnation. Dehumanization resembles claims that animals want to be killed and benefit as much as the hunting human society, he points out. Because the dominant group simultaneously holds dehumanizing beliefs of the oppressed group and perceives the latter as humans with desires and intentions, only those who can stomach committing violence against the vulnerable group acquire the desired economic and other benefits, Smith argues. To resolve the “conflict between fellow feeling and the love of money,”45 political leaders inspire a moralistic form of aggression to affirm that the oppressed group is undeserving of moral consideration by rendering its members “mere animals […] to be skinned, castrated, and burned on the barbeque.”46 Since dehumanization for Smith is the process of devaluing a human group on the basis of membership by conceiving of the group as “subhuman animal” lower on the hierarchy of intrinsic value,47 he urges us to “call this entire framework into question.”48 This is an outstanding attempt to understand dehumanization, much more sophisticated than Haslam’s. Nonetheless, it remains within the boundaries of humanism. Humanistic theories fall into the trap of hierarchical anthropocentric thinking. And so, Smith arbitrarily urges us to abolish the hierarchy when it comes to human groups, but not when it separates human from nonhuman animals. In particular, his claim that even vegans have to kill (he probably means by eating vegetables or unintentionally stepping on insects) is a cop out irrelevant to dehumanization. So is the claim that dehumanization takes place only if “there’s something about the animal” that elicits violence.49 It’s no surprise that he refers to the Great Chain of Being (the notion of a hierarchy of all life) that is at the root of dehumanization as a “great invention.”50 Attempts to attribute to humans unique intrinsic value or traits are widespread in all academic disciplines. After all, Haslam is no straw man. The mindset he summarizes is typical outside of academia too, where to most humans a hyper-​focus on themselves and a disregard for other species seems natural. Similarly, widespread are the attempts to redraw the line of empathy and justice arbitrarily. Such attempts reflect the entrenched belief that humans will 45 46 47 48 49 50

Ibid, 107. Ibid, 174. Ibid, 80. Ibid, 82. Ibid, 90, italics in original. Ibid, 86.

16 Khazaal always remain a special case, as in Smith’s otherwise compelling theory. In sum, speciesism is the blind spot of current socio-​cognitive theories of dehumanization. These theories fail to explain how keeping the notion of humanism or in the alternative of a sense of animality by continuing to afford empathy and moral consideration arbitrarily to the human species and of no, or no equal, measure to any other animal species would help dislodge prejudice, racism in particular, and hence the dehumanization of refugees and immigrants. “What Distinguishes the Worst Architect from the Best of Bees”? Speciesist Roots of Dehumanization By contrast, the approach to grasping the roots and causes of dehumanization that we advance in this volume acknowledges the intersection of racism and speciesism, without discrediting many of the achievements of the humanist approach. This section presents how we look at dehumanization and its core notion of humanness from the standpoint of speciesism-​as-​framework, meaning to unveil and critique the speciesist roots of dehumanization. 3.3

3.3.1

“On the Whim of ‘Normal’ Humans”: Animal Ethics Critique of Humanist Theories of Dehumanization Haslam’s attempt to isolate humanness is no match for evolutionary biology, which has rejected the fiction of unique human traits or a hierarchy of traits among species. This shouldn’t be a surprise because centuries ago Charles Darwin pressed that “it is absurd to talk of one animal being higher than another”; instead, he saw differences in degree, not kind.51 Nonetheless, an alarming number of evolutionary biologists unthinkingly continue to use hierarchical, pre-​evolutionary language in publications in reputable journals. As a matter of fact, the most reputable journals commit the highest number of offenses.52 Animal ethicists approach the issue from a different angle but reach the similar conclusion that humanness is a hoax. If we borrow their arguments of evolutionary continuity—​often called “species overlap”—​and begging the question, we can appreciate why it’s so hard for evolutionary biologists to clean up their language and the hierarchical mindset it betrays. The defense of humanness starts with observing qualities that humans possess, alleging that they are the only morally relevant qualities to be considered a person, 51 52

Charles Darwin, The Annotated Origin: A Facsimile of the First Edition of On the Origin of Species, annot. James Costa (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 441. Emmanuele Rigato and Alessandro Minelli, “The Great Chain of Being Is Still Here,” Evolution: Education and Outreach 6, no. 18 (2013).

Introduction

17

and then concluding that nonhuman animals don’t possess said qualities and are therefore neither persons, nor worthy of moral consideration. The intractable problem is that there are many humans who don’t possess these qualities, such as some young humans, some old humans, and some humans with brain disorders. At the same time, there are many nonhumans who possess these qualities and even have them in greater degrees than some humans. That’s why it’s a bad bet to hope that no humans would be subjected to abuse in lab experiments, for instance, and their moral status wouldn’t “be contingent on the whim of ‘normal’ humans” based on having or lacking these qualities.53 On the other hand, some fear that allowing nonhumans into the ingroup would diminish empathy for particular human groups; but humans’ empathy for each other is already arbitrary in cases like genocide, slavery, or other crimes. Simon Cushing is right to point out that humanness isn’t based on a conscious decision: “Instead, the ‘decision’ is already made by customary practice or by human emotional responses.”54 Not only does the argument from species overlap challenge anthropocentric defenses of unique human qualities, but also of unique human relations.55 Special relations among humans is one of the measurements of humanness that Haslam traces, yet many human orphans don’t enjoy such relations. In some cases, it’s impossible to verify the qualities that allegedly define humanness. As a result, this notion becomes indefensible since to assert it anyway would mean to assume as true what we’re trying to prove, i.e., we’d beg the question. Haslam attempts to do this with the second sense of humanness he proposes, that of human nature, or essence, even though relativists proved that human essence is a fiction years before him.56 To summarize, animal ethicists demonstrate that attempts to define humanness are flawed since we can’t apply the concept to all humans homogeneously, and therefore would open the door for arbitrary discriminations. Also, we can’t test the intrinsic value of the human species that we assume exists; we can only assert it blindly. It’s best to abandon the concept of moral status altogether, no matter how common it is.57 We’re trying to invent humanness to convince ourselves that human interest in life and well-​being has higher value and should therefore be given

53 54 55 56 57

Simon Cushing, “Against ‘Humanism’: Speciesism, Personhood, and Preference,” Journal of Social Philosophy 34, no. 4 (Winter 2003): 556–​571, 565. Cushing, “Against ‘Humanism,’ ” 566. Oscar Horta, “The Scope of Argument from Species Overlap,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 31 (2014): 142–​154. James Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin Books, 1999). Horta, “The Scope of Argument.”

18 Khazaal higher moral consideration, but that assertion makes the category of humanness an irrelevant and arbitrary criterion. And when we defend humanness as a set of cognitive capacities like intelligence insisting that it’s the grounds for higher moral consideration, we mislead people to believe that exercising a capacity is more important than well-​being. No matter how one modifies the speciesist concept of humanism, it remains an indefensible moral position.58 Current humanist theories of dehumanization, then, stand to lose the ground that humans deserve moral consideration, while other animals don’t. In other words, this strategy backfires on humanism in the long run, because it undermines human status generally and has real implications. 3.3.2

Critical Animal Studies Approaches to Understanding Dehumanization The moral disregard of other animals we call speciesism is a form of prejudice in the first place. It’s also inconsistent with human rights theories, as animal ethicists have demonstrated—​from Peter Singer and Tom Regan to Gary Francione and Joan Dunayer.59 Articulating the above range of animal ethics perspectives has enabled scholars in critical animal studies (cas) to delve deeper and challenge remaining humanist aspects within anti-​speciesist scholarship. More relevant here, cas scholars also contribute to the discourse on humanness and dehumanization by demonstrating why humans so consistently search for unique human traits and an intrinsic human nature. The reasons go back broadly to politics and political economy. 3.3.2.1 Benign Myth or Violent Ideology? Political Perspectives It’s quite common today, especially in non-​religious circles in the US, to proclaim being a humanist. Self-​proclaimed humanists are proud because they believe humanism is synonymous with support for minorities like gays, women, or people of color, for instance. Humanists are typically progressive and accepting unlike racist and sexist bigots. Yet, as we show below, humanism is a violent political ideology that promotes the types of exclusion and abuse that result in racism and sexism, among other types of prejudice. Harmful ideologies are systems of meaning deployed by a dominant group to subordinate and oppress a vulnerable group, as I mentioned earlier. Humanism and its quest to identify a unique human nature are not a benign focal distortion where humans understand the world within human 58 59

Cushing, “Against ‘Humanism.’ ” Cary Wolfe, “Humanist and Posthumanist Antispeciesism,” in The Death of the Animal: A Dialogue, ed. Paola Cavaliere (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 45–​58.

Introduction

19

capacities.60 Humanism is an ideology of human supremacy that assigns privileged value to human animals and measures nonhuman animals by human standards to devalue them so that they could be subjugated and exploited. As far as ideologies come, though, humanism is a paradox. It perpetually searches for a definition of human and humanness so it could draw a deep divide between all-​things-​human and all else, yet, this very definition always already excludes any number of biological humans, as animal ethicists have shown. Haslam’s vision of a bright future where scholars would once and for all find the right definition of humanness and tackle dehumanization properly is nothing but a pipe dream. Since the unintended function of humanism is to create a steady stream of “a bloody margin of subhumans,” that’s exactly what it will always produce.61 In other words, self-​proclaimed humanists in the US and Haslam fall victim of humanism’s paradox: to tout the ideal of universal freedom and dignity on the front end and produce dehumanization on the back end. How and why does this happen? Humanness cannot exist without defining itself against animality; in other words, humanness is an outcome of the human-​nonhuman divide. The divide, then, creates the conditions under which dehumanization exists. The function of the divide and humanism as a violent political ideology is to provide justification for humans’ desire to exploit nonhumans and its most egregious iteration—​carnism, or the ideology of eating nonhuman animal flesh. If the divide makes it incumbent upon us to measure the value of humanness and animality, “ranking, ordering, and molding” the value of different humans, dehumanization becomes a byproduct of the divide. This makes Smith’s suggestion that we can combat the dehumanization of humans while continuing to exploit and murder nonhumans implausible. What he signals, of course, is rehumanizing those humans who find themselves on the wrong side of the divide. Rehumanization is the idea that to combat dehumanization we should denounce dehumanizing rhetoric and insist that dehumanized groups are fully human, in other words, bring them to the human side of the divide. Although the idea is dominant among self-​ proclaimed humanists and shared by Smith, it might be as problematic as

60 61

Richie Nimmo, “The Making of the Human: Anthropocentrism in Modern Social Thought,” in Anthropocentrism, ed. Rob Boddice (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 59–​80. Adam Weitzenfeld and Melanie Joy, “An Overview of Anthropocentrism, Humanism, and Speciesism,” in Defining Critical Animal Studies, eds. Anthony J. Nocella ii, John Sorenson, Kim Socha and Atsuko Matsuoka (New York: Peter Lang, 2014), 3–​27, 6.

20 Khazaal dehumanization itself, according to activists Alph and Syl Ko.62 If dehumanization has been used to align animality with people of color, rehumanization no less depends on a racialized understanding of humanness. White Europeans invented the concept of race for their own benefit and described themselves as the essence of what it means to be human. Human, therefore, is “a conceptual way to mark the province of European whiteness as the ideal way of being Homo sapiens.”63 In other words, it furthers racism. Ko’s & Ko’s fresh contribution to a cas critique of dehumanization reminds humanists that humanness is far from a benign myth. It’s a praxis now embedded in colonial ontology that has created a power structure of institutions and discourses. At present, this makes the claim that we are all animals, or the attempt to naturalize the human as a mere biological being, another colonial project. To really trouble the system, we need to decolonize our mental maps by dismantling the human-​nonhuman divide. So, can we dismantle a racist system with its own biased language of humanism? Similarly, can we use the tool of rationalism to forge an unbiased egalitarian framework that includes nonhuman animals?64 Although some advocacy campaigns promote the legal protection of nonhuman animals based on how high they measure on a human scale of personhood and reason, such rationalist strategy has been widely used to devalue nonhuman animals in the past. After all, tools provided by systems of oppression are inherently deceptive. Let’s say that a particular system of oppression was like a ready-​to-​assemble bed. To assemble the bed, we’d use the free Allen wrench delivered with the package. When we need to disassemble the bed, we’d use the same wrench. If systems of oppression were actually a ready-​to-​assemble bed, we’d be able to dismantle them using the tool that came with it. So why can’t we dismantle a particular system of oppression the same way we can disassemble the bed? The problem is that the ideology of the system of oppression deludes us to believe that it has provided us with an Allen wrench that can create and dismantle that system. But the actual tool that comes with systems of oppression is more like a power drill that screws in the bolts that hold the system together and strips the head at the same time. The power drill that created the system

62 63 64

Alph Ko and Syl Ko, Aphro-​ism. Essays on Pop Culture Feminism and Black Veganism from Two Sisters (New York: Lantern Books, 2017). Ibid, 23. Maneesha Deckha, “Humanizing the Nonhuman: A Legitimate Way for Animals to Escape Juridical Property Status?,” in Critical Animal Studies. Towards Trans-​species Social Justice, eds. Atsuko Matsuoka and John Sorenson (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), 209–​233.

Introduction

21

and stripped the bolts cannot be used to remove the bolts. Instead, we need to wake up from the delusion and find a different tool. 3.3.2.2 Have We Really Abolished Slavery? Political-​Economic Perspectives In addition to demonstrating how dehumanization is unthinkable without the violent political fiction of humanism and its core—​the human-​nonhuman divide, cas scholars also offer political-​economic reasons for the persistence of dehumanization. We see capitalism as the current political-​economic structure that supports and reproduces the human-​nonhuman divide for profit. cas, therefore, offers an anti-​speciesist critique of capitalism as a theoretical framework for understanding dehumanization. Gathering has been the principle method for humans and our ancestors to procure food probably from the earliest primates until the Agricultural Revolution.65 Our distant ancestors, most likely H. erectus, started to hunt as an auxiliary food source (there’s no evidence nor suggestion that hunting before 50,000 years ago produced significant calories).66 After 50,000 years ago, calories obtained by hunting remained drastically small relative to gathering. Around that 50,000-​year mark, humans who hunted big mammals most likely caused them to perish in the Holocene extinction. During this period, humans may have also driven smaller animals to extinction by cutting off their migration routes and therefore preventing their adaptation to climate change. Like Steven Best’s chapter in this volume demonstrates, a similar wave of extinction is likely happening today due to the erection of the US-​Mexico border. When humans began confining and exploiting nonhuman animals around 11,000 years ago, around the start of the Agricultural Revolution, they mostly abandoned gathering. Despite the human-​caused extinction of big mammals, the consumption of nonhuman flesh and other uses of nonhumans in all periods of human history had been radically less intensive compared to what happened after the arrival of capitalism, because the latter perpetuates itself on the basis of profit accumulation and constant growth. This demands increasingly more intense and efficient methods to exploit others including by

65 66

Craig Stanford, “A Comparison of Social Meat-​Foraging by Chimpanzees and Human Foragers,” in Meat-​Eating and Human Evolution, eds. Craig Stanford and Henry Bunn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 122–​140. For a thorough overview of speciesism in paleoanthropology, particularly interpretations of the pre-​human/​early human diet, watch Jerold D. Friedman’s lecture on YouTube (Jerold Friedman, “Why Eating Animals Did Not Cause the Human Brain to Grow” [Meat-​Brain Hypothesis Debunked], YouTube, July 28, 2019, https://youtu.be/ n4sVRtxIeqU).

22 Khazaal devaluing their labor.67 In this new era of profit incentives, the oppression of humans and other animals became deeply entangled as it was motivated by powerful economic interests.68 In particular, today’s capitalism originated in and would have never been plausible without colonization and the slave and quasi-​slave trade.69 The enormous profits of institutionally devalued human labor drove capitalism to increasingly horrendous exploitation of slaves and quasi-​slaves. Now there is recognition, although not necessarily restitution, of slavery’s essential role in what is deceptively touted as a miraculous development of human civilization—​the Industrial Revolution. The same cannot be said for the labor of nonhumans, which is rarely recognized. Karl Marx, for example, defined labor as the characteristic that distinguishes human from nonhuman animals: What distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his mind before he constructs it in wax […] Conscious vital activity differentiates man immediately from animal vital activity. It is this and this alone that makes man a species being.70 Men begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence […] We are not dealing here with those first instinctive forms of labor which remain on the animal level. We presuppose labor in a form in which it is an exclusively human characteristic.71 The divide between nonhumans as reactive objects and humans as active subjects who exercise control upon nonhumans—​i.e., the praxis of labor—​lies at the center of Marxist thought. That comes in contrast to Adam Smith, who found the origin of inequality in exploiting nonhumans in agriculture.72 Status and power, in his view, depended on the increase of the number of nonhumans 67 68

69 70 71 72

David Nibert, Animal Oppression and Capitalism (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2017). David Nibert, Animal Rights Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002); David Nibert, Animal Oppression & Human Violence: Domesecration, Capitalism, and Global Conflict (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013). Steven Best, The Politics of Total Liberation: Revolution for the 21st Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Karl Marx, “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts” in Karl Marx: Selected Writings, ed. David McLellan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 284. Ibid, 283–​4. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (Blacksburg: Thrifty Books, 2009).

Introduction

23

one owned, and disparities in that number created haves and have-​nots.73 Recently, some scholars have started to look more closely into the role which nonhumans were forced to play. Jeremy Rifkin has acknowledged that Western civilization was built on the back of cow and bull labor, and Jared Diamond has admitted that horse labor helped establish European global dominance. More radically, Jason Hribal argues that nonhumans are part of the working class and have been made to play a crucial role in the development of capitalism.74 Based on surveys of profitable economic resources that catalog land, plants, inanimate material, humans, and nonhumans from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries, Hribal discovers that all agricultural, industrial, and urban revolutions couldn’t have occurred without nonhumans’ crucial role as laborers. We should add, forced laborers considered chattel, which is the prevailing definition of slaves. The distinction between human and nonhuman labor had been more blurred in the past. Yet, with the beginning of capitalism, he argues, attempts to create separation in status and duties led to a sharp distinction where nonhuman labor was no longer considered to belong to the same framework as human labor. In the capitalist imaginary, humans are workers but cows are biological machines. This imaginary provides for human workers to be agents (although often exploiting them like objects), while cow workers were only objects (specifically, the lowest type). With capitalism, nonhuman animals became forced laborers like never before, while at the same time serving as a measure of alterity unmatched in any previous period. The new, deeper human-​nonhuman divide reflected new methods of intense exploitation and genetic manipulation of nonhumans to ensure ever increasing demands for growth. Travelogue writer Fynes Moryson thought sixteenth-​century Irish cottiers were backward because in his words they were so attached to their gaunt cows that they wouldn’t kill them until the cows got old and stopped producing milk, instead of using new methods of intensive farming that produced larger cows for flesh and milk.75 The new human-​nonhuman divide became the prototype of new ways of social stratification among humans such as colonialism, slavery, and the subjugation and exploitation of women under capitalist patriarchy. If certain humans didn’t fit the new ideal of human, they could easily be excluded, marginalized, and 73 74 75

Ibid, 512–​4. Jason Hribal, “Animals Are Part of the Working Class: A Challenge to Labor History,” Labor History 44, no. 4 (2003): 435–​54. Fynes Moryson, “The Itinerary of Fynes Moryson,” in Illustrations of Irish History and Topography, Mainly of the 17th Century, ed. Litton C. Falkiner (Longmans, Green, and Co., London, 1904).

24 Khazaal dehumanized to justify their subjugation. The ramped-​up speciesism also affected inequality among humans as it supplied a whole new toolkit of technologies of control that could be copied to humans and used more intensely than ever before. As Best has noted, “The international slave trade borrowed heavily from the technologies of animal domination that emerged with domesticating wild species, including cages, shackles, branding, and auctions.”76 Nazis borrowed from the animal slaughter house practice of the assembly line, which they adapted to exterminating Jews, following Henry Ford who had adopted the practice in his car factories after visiting a slaughterhouse.77 Killing and exploitation, especially in intensive capitalist environments, are predatory means for acquiring and protecting resources for those who can stomach such methods. But how do they get the rest of the group to participate or forego resistance, even when it’s against one’s own interests? Jurgen Habermas argues that the human species can create a more just, egalitarian society through its unique ability for rational deliberation in the public sphere.78 Capitalism afforded the creation of a space separate from government control, which he calls the public sphere. Represented by newspapers and other venues like coffeehouses and literary salons, the public sphere provided a space where citizens could discuss critically and rationally matters of public importance. With the advancement of capitalism, commercial mass media corrupted the public sphere and the state infiltrated and hijacked it, according to Habermas. Other scholars like philosopher of political and social sciences Nancy Fraser and media sociologist Michael Schudson, however, have challenged Habermas’s ideas.79 They argue that ideological interests are powerful components in the process of public discourse and that’s why different individuals and groups have different access to and therefore influence on the public sphere. In addition, they have shown that forms of persuasion other

76 Best, The Politics of Total Liberation, 11. 77 Patterson, Eternal Treblinka. 78 Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge: Polity 1962/​1989). 79 Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” Social Text, no. 25/​ 26 (1990): 56–​ 80; Nancy Fraser, “Special Section: Transnational Public Sphere: Transnationalizing the Public Sphere: On the Legitimacy and Efficacy of Public Opinion in a Post-​Westphalian World,” Theory, Culture & Society 24, no. 4 (July 2007): 7–​30; Michael Schudson, “Was There Ever a Public Sphere? If So, When? Reflections on the American Case,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: mit Press, 1992), 243–​163; Michael Schudson, “The Public Sphere and Its Problems: Bringing the State (Back),” Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy 8, no. 2 (2012): 529–​546.

Introduction

25

than rational presentation are more effective in the competition for resources battled out in great part through the public sphere. For instance, California newspapers played a major role in advancing and passing a 1994 anti-​ immigrant referendum, Proposition 187. Instead of participating in the rational deliberation of the benefits these immigrants provided to the US economy and other spheres, newspapers used rhetorical means like metaphors, similes, and hyperboles to dehumanize immigrants as animals. This strategy reflected and further drove anti-​immigrant sentiments, which voters eventually took to the polls.80 Much of corporate media resorts to deception and techniques other than rational deliberation to advance neoliberal interests, sell killing and exploitation, and to marginalize independent media.81 Similarly, science has peddled much self-​deception to justify the human-​nonhuman divide and the blood-​ stained advantages this has provided some humans. Sciences generally are a party in perpetuating a difference in essence between humans and nonhumans, but let’s focus for a minute on social sciences. The fact that when not judged through anthropocentric, human standards, the labor of human and nonhuman animals is “radically equivalent” presented a problem for Marx, whose influence on sociology can’t be overstated.82 Marx’s assertion that humans are both part of nature and apart from it as the only social beings deepened the contradiction in his conceptual framework, rather than resolving it. He jumped to Cartesian metaphysics, incompatible with his own materialist premises, claiming that nonhumans don’t have what he labeled a thinking mind and are therefore not conscious. In contrast, he asserted that the self-​ consciousness humans exhibit affords them higher status and a praxis called labor. Despite these glaring contradictions, like Marx, two foundational figures in sociology—​Emile Durkheim and Max Weber—​replicate the same essentialist distinction between humans and nonhumans, trying to suppress the contradictions in their own ways.83 Durkheim asserts that there is a category of so-​called exclusively social phenomena, which are separate from natural phenomena, and can be studied as facts, like natural facts are studied by natural 80 81

Santa Ana, “ ‘Like an Animal I Was Treated.’ ” Robert McChensey, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (New York: The New Press, 2015); Dwayne Winseck and Yal Dong Jin (eds.), The Political Economies of Media: The Transformation of the Global Media Industries (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011); Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988). 82 Nimmo, “The Making of the Human,” 70. 83 Ibid.

26 Khazaal sciences. To be able to reify society as an autonomous domain, he claims that human desires differ from those of nonhumans. The former, he postulates, are unlimited because they’re created and regulated by society, not by the biological organism. Weber, on the other hand, proposes to study the so-​called social phenomena by interpreting their spiritual character, rather than by causality, like Durkheim suggests. Such an interpretative approach isn’t scientific for nonhumans, Weber asserts, because they merely behave. The very foundations of current sociology are unthinkable without the human-​nonhuman divide that endows humans with minds, consciousness, subjectivity, and agency, or the unique ability for meaningful action, while denying nonhumans a collective that is simultaneously natural and social. Yet, this isn’t because social scientists haven’t grasped the contradiction; quite the opposite—​they typically avoid or suppress it, according to Richie Nimmo: Indeed it is striking how predictably non-​anthropocentric reflections have arisen in sociological thought only to be ultimately swept aside, whether on the grounds of “culture,” “language,” “reflexivity,” “agency,” or some other means for asserting the exceptional nature of human beings in the interests of properly “social” science.84 The social sciences haven’t just been fundamentally shaped by the anthropocentric humanist dualism; they have also contributed for its reproduction: “By systematically purifying ‘the social’ of its nonhuman others, they have been key apparatuses of humanist discourse.”85 To put it simply, animalistic dehumanization would be impossible if nonhuman animals weren’t the oppressed outgroup par excellence.86 The same could be the case with demonic dehumanization, which is likely an extension of the first. The human imaginary in all probability transformed certain animals into unnaturally scary creatures like demons with hooves, tails, and horns. Anti-​immigrant and anti-​refugee racism may be born in conditions of material struggles among humans over resources and the protection of privilege, but it would be unfeasible without speciesism-​as-​framework. Speciesism-​as-​ framework is a process where speciesism provides the foundational vocabulary,

84 85 86

Ibid, 78. Ibid, 79. Kristof Dhont, Gordon Hodson, and Ana Leite, “Common Ideological Roots of Speciesism and Generalized Ethnic Prejudice: The Social Dominance Human-​Animal Relations Model (SD_​HARM),” European Journal of Personality 30 (2016): 507–​522.

Introduction

27

mechanisms, and attitudes to create and sustain practices of anti-​immigrant and anti-​refugee racism as well as to critique these practices. 4

Rabit (Rapid Border Intervention Team): Displacement, Borders, and Speciesism

4.1

“Almost Hysterical Condemnation and Disavowal of Embodied Life” Gun-​toting militiamen man the steel gate that leads into the Tripoli zoo. A sign promises a garden of animals. Inside, there are paths that meander through a maze of cages and animal habitats. Monkeys climb trees, hippos submerge themselves in water, and lions lounge in the heat. Just a few hundred yards away, there’s a different kind of cage: Inside, there are people—​migrants waiting to be deported or to prove they are in Libya legally. Sayed Ghazallah has his men unlock the padlock on the steel bars. He is the head of a militia, paid to deal with the overflow of illegal immigrants. This is not a cage, he insists, it’s just a temporary detention center.87

The above passage illustrates how the sovereign state’s neoliberal border politics dehumanize forced migrants. Due to Algeria’s 22 overflowing refugee centers, the Tripoli zoo has been turned into a processing center that detains forced African migrants picked up from the streets. The situation is similar in Morocco, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Cyprus.88 The use of animalized terminology in the representations of forced migrants has been documented across multiple contexts.89 Consider the names of some operations that address refugees’ needs, e.g., rabit (Rapid Border Intervention 87 88

89

Leila Fadel, “Tripoli Zoo Sees Different Kind of Cage—​One with Migrants,” NPR, November 12, 2013, https://​www.npr.org/​sections/​parallels/​2013/​11/​12/​244550320/​tripoli -​zoo-​sees-​different-​kind-​of-​cage-​one-​with-​migrants. Borderline Europe, “At the Limen: The Implementation of the Return Directive in Italy, Cyprus, and Spain,” December, 2013, accessed May 14, 2020, https://​www.borderline-​ europe.de/​sites/​default/​files/​readingtips/​at%20the%20limen_​12_​2013.pdf; Medicin Sans Frontieres, “Violence, Vulnerability and Migration: Trapped at the Gates of Europe: A report on the situation of sub-​Saharan migrants in an irregular situation in Morocco,” March, 2013, accessed May 14, 2020, https://​www.msf.org.uk/​sites/​uk/​files/​Migration_​ Morocco_​2013_​201303132441.pdf. Ruben Andersson, “Hunter and Prey: Patrolling Clandestine Migration in the Euro-​African Borderlands,” Anthropological Quarterly 87, no. 1 (2014): 119–​149; Shahram Khosravi, Illegal Traveler: An Auto-​Ethnography of Borders (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

28 Khazaal Team), which is supported by the EU Commission. It’s also common for forced migrants to understand their experiences with migration regimes at state borders in animalized terms: “We are in a zoo. Every cage has two rooms. The cages have barriers almost 5–​6 m high. We are left there like savage beasts.”90 Critics of the state’s treatment of forced migrants, too, use the language of animalization to challenge dehumanization and rehumanize forced migrants, in other words, to elevate them to the level of citizens. For instance, the above passage (aired on the US public radio service, npr) falsely depicts nonhumans as happy: “Monkeys climb trees, hippos submerge themselves in water, and lions lounge in the heat.” Whether the creators of the story are consciously aware of it or not, this deception establishes the baseline of alterity, which suggests it’s acceptable for nonhuman animals to be imprisoned in horrifying places so humans can gawk at them and teach their children—​if only unconsciously—​ to be cruel to other animals. Measured against the baseline of alterity, the forced migrants’ denied humanity provokes an outrage captured in the language of the passage. Such criticisms, among other factors, have forced the neo-​liberal state to adopt a new, humanitarian language in its discourse on border politics and migration management. For instance, the 2011 EU Commission’s Global Approach to Migration and Mobility, which defines the framework of European border policy, calls for a migrant-​centered approach that focuses on the individual migrant’s human rights and well-​being: “In essence, migration governance is not about ‘flows,’ ‘stocks,’ and ‘routes,’ it is about people.”91 The state apparatus may have co-​opted the humanitarian rhetoric of its critics.92 However, it continues to be complicit in the violence against forced migrants. Off-​shoring and subcontracting border control to for-​profit businesses, for instance, has turned border management into military operations wrought with systemic abuse.93 Prompted by insights from her personal experience with dehumanization and a two-​decade long statelessness, political philosopher Hanna Arendt observed that the notion of human rights is a strictly political category, a human 90 91 92 93

Borderline Europe, “At the Limen,” 24. EU Commission, “The Global Approach to Migration and Mobility. Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, The Council, The European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions,” com (November 18, 2011), 6. Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson, Border as Method: Or, the Multiplication of Labor (London: Duke University Press, 2013). Thomas Gammeltoft-​Hansen, “Outsourcing Asylum: The Advent of Protection Lite,” in Europe and the World: EU Geopolitics and the Transformation of European Space, ed. Luiza Bialasiewicz (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011).

Introduction

29

invention and convention. Humans have human rights only when they’re members of a modern political community. As a sovereign state tries to homogenize the subjects in its territory in the pursuit of legitimacy, it turns them into two categories: citizens who have certain rights and should be protected and non-​ citizens who don’t enjoy the same rights or state protection. Non-​citizens are often forced out of the state and become stateless. Westphalian sovereignty, or the modern nation-​state system, she argued, has created the phenomenon of statelessness and displacement by definition. Think about the creation of Pakistan and India, which turned 12 million people into refugees and another 2–​3 million were killed in the midst of the ensued horrific sectarian violence. According to Arendt, the stateless belong “to the human race in much the same way animals belong to a specific animal species.”94 They’re biologically human, but for her, biological human life isn’t the basis of rights: “a man who is nothing but a man has lost the very qualities which make it possible for other people to treat him as a fellow man.”95 How does one then articulate the right of this category of humans to have rights, she asks, without giving the same right to what she calls “beasts” and “savages.”96 According to her, those who strive to protect human rights on the basis of membership in the biological species of Homo sapiens, are misguided; they show “an uncanny similarity in language and composition to that of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals.”97 Arendt’s tough dilemma leads her back to Aristotle’s anthropocentrism, suggesting that the right to have rights is based in human’s reciprocal obligation, which she traces back to human’s capacity for language and speech.98 In a Marxian fashion, Arendt also draws a deep line between human and nonhuman animals through the categories of labor, work, and action, that correspond to Animal Laborans, Homo Faber, and Zoon Politikon. That is, animals can labor, yet only humans can work and have meaningful, dignified action. The field of critical border studies is grounded in Arendt’s vision that to combat statelessness we need a new understanding of humanity and a new humanitarian practice that would guarantee human dignity.99 Yet, her ideas remain deeply speciesist because, as Roberto Esposito has suggested, “the

94 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New Edition (New York: Harcourt, 1976), 302. 95 Ibid, 300. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid, 292. 98 Cary Wolfe, Before the Law: Humans and Other Animals in a Biopolitical Frame (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 7. 99 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism.

30 Khazaal category of those who enjoy a certain right is defined only by contrast with those who, not falling within it, are excluded from it,” who in her own words are beasts. Arendt’s concept of statelessness has, nonetheless, served as a critique of the notion of international human rights. The plight of stateless people, like the Rohingya Muslims for instance, exposes the ineffective nature of international human rights when it comes to protecting non-​citizens from abuse and addressing their basic needs. Such critique lies at the center of movements that document stateless people’s numbers and deplorable situation and strive to broaden the category of refugee. Refugee is a legal status that allows one to receive international humanitarian aid. In its original definition under the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention, the status was granted only to those who crossed international borders in order to escape persecution as members of a particular class, because the US was worried primarily about protecting white dissidents trying to escape from the Soviet Bloc.100 By contrast, those who escaped conditions that had made the protection of the state impossible, like poverty and the collapse of social order, weren’t eligible. Neither were those who didn’t cross international borders.101 If they stayed in their home country, they were considered internally displaced persons (idp s). Today, the numbers of idp s are much larger than those of refugees. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (idmc) calculated that in 2019 a record of 50.8 million people around the world were recorded as displaced by conflict and disaster.102 idp s are often persecuted rather than assisted by their own governments, yet rarely eligible for international assistance. More recent attempts have tried to create conditions where refugees and idp s could be self-​reliant and gainfully employed, rather than spend three decades on average living in camps off of international or domestic aid. Nonetheless, broadening the category has remained strictly dependent on a notion of human and humanism, and for this reason, the solutions international human rights provide can only be partial as they support the very system of abuse they want to destroy. Like Arendt, philosopher Michel Foucault also places nonhumans outside the political in an attempt to show how humanitarian border security is a form of what he calls “state racism” (remember that sociology places them 100 Paul Collier and Alexander Betts, Refuge: Rethinking Refugee Policy in a Changing World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). 101 Andrew Shacknove, “Who is a Refugee?,” Ethics, 95 (1985): 274–​284. 102 “Global Report on Internal Displacement 2020,” Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, accessed May 2, 2020, https://​www.internal-​displacement.org/​global-​report/​ grid2020/​.

Introduction

31

outside the social). According to him, the sovereign state exercises two types of power: disciplinary power and biopower. The former is the power to surveil and discipline the life of the individual human body, whereas the latter is the power to manage and regulate the life of humans as species.103 He claims that biopower controls life that counts and lets die those it considers abnormal and threatening. He calls the latter state racism. Because state racism stays exclusively within the human, Foucault’s notion of biopower can’t explain how the state produces the animalization of forced migrants.104 Foucault, therefore, works within a humanist worldview that reproduces the very conditions leading to dehumanization in the first place, as speciesism remains invisible and unchallenged. Some scholars have attempted recently to liberate Foucault’s idea of biopower from the trap of the human-​nonhuman divide. By applying it to nonhuman species, they show how boundary enforcement is performed by entanglements between humans and nonhumans and try to include nonhumans into the political.105 Nonetheless, some of their work has raised criticism. For instance, Esposito’s attempt at affirmative biopolitics is challenged on the grounds that it would equate the value of deadly bacteria with that of an elephant or a human.106 Others like cultural theorist Cory Wolfe seem to embrace the notion of “animal” not in its fiction as a biological designation, but as a rhetorical shorthand for those who lack legal rights and protection, regardless of species: The biopolitical point is no longer “human” vs. “animal”; the biopolitical point is a newly expanded community of the living and the concern we should all have with where violence and immunitary protection fall within it, because we are all, after all, potentially animals before the law.107

103 Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College de France 1975–​6 (London, UK: Penguin, 2004). 104 Nick Vaughan-​Williams, “ ‘We Are Not Animals!’ Humanitarian Border Security and Zoopolitical Spaces in EUROPE,” Political Geography 45 (2015): 1–​10. 105 Wolfe, Before the Law; Esposito, Immunitas: The Protection and Negation of Life (London: Polity Press, 2011); Juanita Sunberg, “Diabolic Caminos in the Desert and Cat Fights on the Río: A Posthumanist Political Ecology of Boundary Enforcement in the United States–​Mexico Borderlands,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 101, no. 2 (2011): 318–​336. 106 Wolfe, Before the Law. 107 Ibid, 105.

32 Khazaal Foucault’s discussion is about power over life, or how biopower and biopolitics highlight the central role of race in the state’s manipulation of the life of populations and groups of humans. By contrast, philosopher Giorgio Agamben advances critical approaches to border security and migration with his ideas about the state’s power over death, or thanatopolitics. Agamben argued that when a human is stripped of bios (political personhood), they become zoe (bare life, animal body). Further, when someone loses everything except bare life, they become killable without legal consequences, or homo sacer. Homo sacer lives in the camp, which is the site of thanatopolitics and a state of exception (outside of humanity). All the Rohingya Muslims, the stateless from Arendt’s writings, as well as idp s and asylum seekers globally would fall in Agamben’s category of homo sacer. Instead of incarnating human rights, they would constitute these rights’ radical crisis. More broadly, Agamben argues that biopolitical borders are not confined to the camp but are in fact generalized throughout daily life, as state violence can potentially affect anyone anywhere, not just the stateless, refugees, and forced migrants. As a sovereign power exercises violence broadly, anyone could be grabbed from the streets to become homo sacer and lose their citizenship, their voice, and their agency over their own life in the eyes of the state. Agamben is right that human-​imposed conventions allow states to separate political beings (citizens) from what they see as bare life (bodies). Yet, his critics from among feminist and race theorists point out that he lacks a concept of how power functions differentially to dehumanize certain groups of people on the basis of ethnicity, race, and gender. For other critics, his failure comes also from his complete silence on how nonhumans in factory farming or biomedical research “may be seen in terms of the concept of bare or naked, unprotected life.”108 For Wolfe, Agamben’s work is an “almost hysterical condemnation and disavowal of embodied life as something constitutively deficient, something that always already has to be redeemed by its radical subordination to a ‘genuinely political’ project for which it is merely the vehicle”; for Wolfe, such ideas are the result of “the ‘acting out’ of a generation of older (white) (male) (Western) intellectuals who, embittered by the failure during their lifetimes of a ‘genuinely’ ‘revolutionary’ politics, cling ever more desperately to […] a stark Manichaean opposition of ‘strong’ vs. ‘weak.’ ”109

108 Dominick LaCapra, History and Its Limits: Human, Animal, Violence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 166. 109 Wolfe, Before the Law, 30.

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33

As I mentioned, critical border studies has shifted from the notion of the border as a line at the border to explore the system, which gives it meaning.110 This system involves how “state authorities, private actors, and individuals each create the meaning for the border in its transgression: making particular claims for decision or status.”111 In other words, the field explores the nature of that which divides non-​killable political life from the killable bare life. In The Beast and the Sovereign, Derrida argues that there is no distinction between zoe (animal) and bios (human), because zoe is always already part of bios. For him, this is obvious since the state uses violence—​which he calls brutal and animalistic—​to repress those it defines as animalistic. Instead of biopolitical, the border, he postulates, is zoopolitical. Based on this notion of zoopolitics, Vaughan-​Williams has suggested that animalization is a special technology of power that shapes contemporary spaces of incarceration and produces animalized subjects. It’s “a powerful and recurring discourse—​understood as an assemblage of linguistic and material phenomena—​that structures many ‘irregular’ migrants’ testimonies of their embodied encounter with diverse aspects of European border security at various sites.”112 Since he sees animalization not as a metaphor but rather as “a necessary condition of possibility for humanitarianism,” he offers that “animalization of ‘irregular’ migrants assist[s]‌ in the task of policing and (re)producing the borders of Europe as a sovereign political community.”113 In the end, for Vaughan-​Williams, traditional academic and nonacademic methods for critiquing border violence that depend on human rights, humanitarianism, and the human have been co-​opted by the state, and make the need for alternative critical methods most pressing. 4.2 One Inseparable Struggle In response to Vaughan-​Williams’s thoughtful remarks, cas scholars suggest that the categorization of bodies in transit and the decision about who should die and who should be protected and live doesn’t exclusively concern human beings. Not only do humans control the life and death of nonhumans, but the notions of community, protection, belonging, citizenship, or empathy, are not exclusive to humans. Therefore, the contributors to this volume show how critical animal studies enrich our understanding of borders, migration, displacement, and refugees for humans and nonhumans alike. We explore how 110 Etienne Balibar, “What Is a Border?,” in Politics and the Other Scene, trans. Christine Jones, James Swenson, and Chris Turner (London: Verso, 2002): 78–​84. 111 Salter, “Theory of the /​,” 736. 112 Vaughan-​Williams, “ ‘We Are Not Animals,’ ” 2. 113 Ibid, 4–​5.

34 Khazaal key terms like refugee could be reimagined in relation to nonhumans and the racialized politics related to that. We offer theoretical and experimental approaches to how concepts like refugees, displacement, borders, etc. inform our thinking about nonhuman animals. Displacement doesn’t affect humans exclusively; billions of nonhuman animals from numerous species worldwide get displaced as a result of human practices such as border walls, violent conflict, habitat seizure, and a variety of industries that depend on using nonhumans. Academic research and public involvement in human refugee issues has been independent of those tackling displaced nonhumans. As these two large groups face similar challenges, academic and public attempts to address them need an integrated, multidisciplinary approach to raise public awareness for much needed solutions and to explore unstudied forms of discrimination. In addition to the central figure of the refugee, which problematizes the notions of sovereignty and the nation-​state system, we propose that the figure of the nonhuman should also be key in studying borders and migration. Given that the fields of critical border and migration studies are in essence discussions about humanness and animality, there’s an unproblematized solipsism and human supremacism in the exclusion of nonhumans as agents and beings in need of care and dignity. Exploring this future direction will lead to answers to the most crucial questions like: What different forms of displacement that transcend the limits of the human species characterize the world? What are the assumptions behind the human-​based concepts of displacement and border? What are their implications for nonhumans? How should we look at these notions from the standpoint of one inseparable struggle against systems of oppression? What new vocabulary and theoretical frameworks are needed to capture and understand these complex interconnections? How do displaced humans and nonhumans respond to their condition? How do they negotiate, contest, and evade the borders they cross or which confine them? How do we question the notion of the political as unforgivably human-​centric and speciesist? How do we, therefore, conceptualize citizenship, not just as legal status for humans, but also as a form of embodied subjectivity and community belonging that might be unexpected and unfamiliar beyond the currently available frameworks? How do we theorize empathy and care beyond the speciesist horizon? Borders may not be exclusively spatial concepts, but their relation to geography is well documented. Critical animal geographers have challenged the speciesist frameworks in the study of geographical space. Exploring sites like auctions, zoos, slaughterhouses, prisons, and research labs, they argue that the control of mobility and containment in them are central modes that normalize

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the oppression of nonhumans and humans. Their work helps a critical animal scholar to address the spatial components of border and refuge. In particular, it could be applied to zoos, camps, asylums, borders, migration routes, etc. to help understand how the organization and operation of such spaces creates and supports the logic of abuse of human and nonhuman refugees. For instance, Karen Morin shows how zoos and prisons produce animalized subjects and are therefore closely linked.114 These sites are organized and operated to create the fantasy of animalized, wild, dangerous savages. Catering to the demands of a presumed superior human public/​observer, these sites display and surveil animalized bodies, while at the same time making the psychological and physical abuse of the confined nonhumans and humans secret, invisible, and thus unobjectionable to the public. Morin’s analysis helps us connect zoos, cages, and prisons with borders, migration routes, asylums, and camps and write a similar story of nonhuman and human refugees, afflicted by violence, controlled in their movement, subjected to display, and turned into spectacle. These refugee stories tell of embodied experience located and shaped by the very site where they occur. According to White and Springer, geographic space is not just a detached container where abuse happens but a constitutive part of a set of relationships of violence and oppression that involve humans and nonhumans. Telling the refugee stories from this perspective, we strive for spatial emancipation by challenging the invisibility of abuse and making it visible rather than keeping it private. The end goal is to share spaces among species more fairly.115 Humans haven’t evolved as a separate community but in trans-​species communities.116 They’re always-​already entangled with other species in their material and semiotic evolution and in trans-​species co-​constitutive relationships between “friends, neighbors, co-​citizens, and members of communities.”117 Since human and nonhuman animals have co-​evolved, the failure to understand this co-​evolution and to deconstruct speciesism-​as-​framework will render us unable to articulate viable critiques of hierarchy and power, and find 114 Karen Morin, “Wildspace: The Cage, the Supermax, and the Zoo,” in Critical Animal Geographies: Politics, Intersections, and Hierarchies in a Multispecies World, eds. Kathryn Gillespie and Rosemary-​Claire Collard (New York: Routledge, 2015), 73–​91. 115 Rosemary-​Clare Collard and Kathryn Gillespie, “Doing Critical Animal Geographies,” in Critical Animal Geographies: Politics, Intersections, and Hierarchies in a Multispecies, eds. Kathryn Gillespie and Rosemary-​Clare Collard (New York: Routledge, 2015), 203–​12. 116 Val Plumwood, Environmental Culture: The Sociolegal Crisis of Reason (New York: Routledge, 2002), 19–​21. 117 Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Right (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

36 Khazaal ways to change. Therefore, in this volume we demonstrate why challenging speciesism and anthropocentric humanism should be part of any theoretical framework that attempts to analyze dehumanization across sciences. We also encourage more scholarly work that explores such direction—​from writing that elevates nonhuman animals and situates their standpoint in the foreground,118 to research that uncovers what prevents humans from seeing the human-​nonhuman divide as a fundamental cause of racism and dehumanization,119 to studies that create new directions in science, based on trans-​species models of displacement. In other words, we invite other colleagues to problematize these notions because they’re embedded in a system that suppresses its own abusive, violent nature. Only acknowledging how speciesism-​as-​framework co-​produces this system will allow us to fully explore and understand it. Therefore, the contribution of this volume is to show how speciesism gives the condition of possibility of dehumanization and borders with the decisions embedded in them. Although this is only a volume that experiments with new categories, it has the potential to push forward a change in our thinking about the relationship between human and nonhuman animals. The important thing is that alternative critical methods will appear when these fields begin working together. As Best wrote: Human, animal, and Earth liberation movements are different components of one inseparable struggle—​against hierarchy, domination, and unsustainable social forms—​none of which is possible without the others. […] Although few realize it, the human, animal, and Earth liberation movements desperately need one another, and the weaknesses and limitations of each can only be overcome through the strengths and contributions of the others.120 5

About This Book

We divide this volume into three sections: (i) deconstructing the human/​ animal divide, (ii) insights into the politics, advocacy, and laws related to the divide, and (iii) media representations of the divide and the potential points 1 18 Best, The Politics of Total Liberation. 119 Costello and Hodson, “Exploring the Roots of Animal Dehumanization,” “Explaining Dehumanization.” 120 Best, The Politics of Liberation, xii–​xiii.

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of its disruption. The sections cover topics such as: the relation of the ethics of irony to the suffering of nonhuman others; theoretical reflections on the intersectionality of racism and speciesism; the tensions in human/​nonhuman animal scholarship and advocacy; the study of how the new care movement helps the advocacy of multi-​species climate refugees; the concept of animal migrants under the law; examinations of the manifold problems of building border walls and the underlying faulty model of security; and media representations of the divide in the Arab world, Turkey, Eastern Europe, and the West. The first chapter by Núria Almiron reflects on the solidarity towards displaced humans and nonhumans from an ethics of communication perspective. The author examines Lillie Chouliaraky’s theory of an ethics of irony to reflect on how the ethical discussion of the representation of distant human suffering—​as in the case of migrants and refugees—​is strongly shaped by the human-​nonhuman binary. Because of the intertwining of racism and speciesism, not critically addressing this divide limits the analysis and reinforces the structural violence of the world system. The chapter argues that the discussion of the ethics of representing human distant suffering is incomplete without a critical trans-​species gaze that replaces the humanitarian rhetoric with a sentient and compassionate solidarity. In chapter two, Garrett Bunyak discusses the extent to which nonhuman animal representations and animality prop up the legitimacy of racist, sexist, and nationalist institutions and culture. He argues that the association of migrants with nonhuman animals simultaneously marks migrants, women, people of color, nonhuman animals, and all of nature as inferior to an imagined and idealized rational white male citizen subject. In this context, nationalistic and capitalistic desires such as security and profit are realized through the exploitation and control of all these maligned others. Drawing on insights from the work of Chicana feminists such as Gloria Anzaldúa and ecofeminists including Greta Gaard, he advocates a world in which nature, animals, plants, and lands are conceptualized as having their own intrinsic purpose and embodied value. Subsequently, Atsuko Matsuoka and John Sorenson examine in the third chapter two types of tropes, “like animals” and “treated like animals,” which commonly appear as accusation and complaint or form of resistance respectively, to gain understanding of how taken-​for-​granted human-​nonhuman relationships influence the border politics of the nation state and are used to oppress displaced humans. By using critical discourse analysis within a critical animal studies framework, they show how ingrained speciesism allows for dehumanizing discourses that perpetuate power relations. The authors contend that an analysis of speciesism is a must to address injustice against

38 Khazaal human migrants/​refugees and the examination of border politics. Therefore, addressing a trans-​species social justice approach is essential. In the final chapter of part i, Debra Merskin explores how animals are the ultimate Others. Being referred to as an animal or animal-​like is the lowest regard one can be assigned and is often the phrase media turn to when describing groups of refugees and immigrants and what individuals themselves reference when describing dehumanizing experiences. Yet where does that leave nonhuman animals? This essay is a theoretical reflection on this intersectionality including how this perspective can help unpack concepts of nationalism, anthropocentrism, and species exceptionalism. Also addressed are tensions inherent within and between social justice groups for considering nonhuman animal suffering as on par with that of human suffering, in particular immigrant and refugee humans. The second section, focuses on the politics, advocacy, and laws related to the entanglement between borders, displacement, and nonhumans. The first essay is by Erin M. Evans who explains the neoliberal underpinnings of structural violence against human and nonhuman climate refugees, and how care movements challenge those structures. Neoliberal policy approaches incentivize destructive practices like environmental destruction, nonhuman animal abuse, and human worker abuse, and seek to dismantle public funding and social programs, thereby structurally depriving care. This relationship between neoliberalism and climate refugees is described in this chapter as a political opportunity structure that steers care movements. The chapter unveils how activists are using the structural deprivation of care to galvanize care workers, many of whom are climate refugees, and to bolster social programs providing care such as universal health care and increased education funding. Charlotte E. Blattner’s cutting edge chapter shows how human and nonhuman animal migration are treated entirely differently under the law, as belonging to two separate worlds. She makes a strong argument for the case that climate change will seriously question this separation when it comes to migration as human and nonhuman animals alike are vulnerable to its impacts. The chapter proves that the law—​in the case of human and nonhuman migration—​is ill-​equipped to absorb the shocks of climate change because its focus is on short-​term adaptations. Similarly, Blattner argues that while broad reforms like an expanded refugee definition would be desirable, they are politically impossible to achieve. The author shows alternative strategies that can dismantle oppressive vectors and build solidarity across species. Finally, the chapter puts forward policy goals and measures to avert a global migration crisis and build up trans-​species resilience.

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Chapter seven concludes the politics, advocacy, and law part with Steven Best, who examines how a flawed security model and immigration policies in the US, from Clinton to Trump, exacerbated the so-​called migrant crisis in the US and brought about catastrophic effects on numerous human communities, nonhuman animals and biodiversity, and the environment. Contextualizing Trump’s racist and xenophobic policies within this history and the rise of far-​right ideologies and movements in the US, Best analyzes the aggressive building of barriers along the US-​Mexico boundary in terms of its real effects and symbolic status. The essay analyzes the emergence of a new migrant-​ detention-​industrial complex and interprets the building of the border wall as a new front in the war on wildlife. The third and final group of chapters is devoted to media representations. It starts with a chapter by Natalie Khazaal that compares press coverage in Bulgaria and Lebanon—​two host countries close to Syria and directly affected by the refugee crisis. Informed by the interspecies model of prejudice, the chapter explores the extent to which press coverage on refugees outside the West uses speciesism-​as-​framework. Khazaal concludes that the analyzed sources use hunting rituals, disgust, and grandstanding to perpetuate the animalization of refugees/​(im)migrants, while their attempts to ridicule and oppose animalization protect and reiterate the human-​nonhuman divide. These insights matter because they display the global scale of animalization of refugees/​(im)migrants, and help theorize how concepts like species and speciesism are essential to the practices of exclusion and differential inclusion that characterize the border politics of the nation-​state. In chapter nine, Sezen Ergin Zengin discusses animal metaphors on Turkish social media. Drawing on the theory of conceptual metaphor, she analyzes the role of five grounds of the refugees-​are-​animals metaphor—​being inferior, breeding rapidly, being out of control, exploiting resources, and being uncivilized—​in the denigration of Syrian refugees on social media. Ergin Zengin’s metaphorical account provides insights into how ideas of inferiority based on race, gender, and species are connected in the human mind. This complex conceptualization also reflects culture-​specific patterns of thought, like abundant stray dog metaphors. The study concludes by stressing the need of questioning dominant worldviews that devalue nonhuman animals to bring about more positive outcomes for humans and nonhumans alike. Laura Fernández’s chapter examines the visual representation of human and nonhuman animal refugees in the media coverage of migration or climate-​ related crises in North America and Spain. Her analysis shows how photojournalism tends to present human and nonhuman migrants as the other and distance the viewer from them, typically reinforcing classism, racism, and

40 Khazaal speciesism, rather than challenging them. The author discusses how this process reinforces the inherited speciesist-​colonial binarist tradition of understanding difference as inferiority and makes dominion and exploitation possible, while avoiding a deeper understanding of systems of oppression and global inequalities. The chapter proposes six new frames that can be useful for future empirical research in this field. To conclude the volume, Claire Parkinson unveils the important intersections between speciesism and processes of bordering during the Brexit debate. By examining how nonhuman animals and Romanian humans have been depicted by the UK press since 2007, the author shows how these representations interlock with issues of capital, labor, and consumption. The chapter explores through media analysis how nonhuman animal bodies are transformed by means of bordering processes. This reveals major entanglements between nationalistic rhetoric and human-​nonhuman relationships in UK media discourse. In doing so, the chapter draws together the political economy concerns of critical animal studies with media discourse analysis and the concept of bordering. 5.1 To Whom This Book Is Addressed ‘Like an animal’ is the first volume that proposes an integrated approach to the study of displacement and the inclusion of critical animal studies and animal ethics to border/​migration studies. For this reason, the editors expect that this volume is of utility and interest to scholars, researchers, journalists, rights advocates, and students, as well as a range of governmental and nongovernmental organizations devoted to social justice in the fields of animal ethics and animal rights, communication for peace, ecology and environmental activism, ethics and philosophy, feminism and gender studies, human rights, international relations, border studies, migration & refugees studies, political science, sociology, and non-​violence studies. The displacement of billions of nonhuman animals from numerous species worldwide is entangled with the politics, treatment, and representation of forced displaced humans and with the devaluation of nonhuman animals. Racism and speciesism intersect to the point that the divide is blurred. Academic research and public involvement in border and human refugee issues has been independent of this intertwining. We acknowledge that this volume experiments with new categories and for this reason we want to thank all the authors for their effort in building critical contributions for such a complex interlocking. It is our hope that this book helps to advance progressive changes in our thinking about the relationships between human and nonhuman animals, for the benefit of all.

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41

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Núria Almiron, Steven Best, and Jerold D. Friedman for their helpful feedback on several drafts of this chapter.

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World, edited by Kathryn Gillespie and Rosemary-​ Claire Collard, 73–​ 91. New York: Routledge, 2015. Moryson, Fynes. “The Itinerary of Fynes Moryson.” In Illustrations of Irish History and Topography, Mainly of the 17th Century, edited by Litton C. Falkiner. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1904. “Myanmar, Bangladesh Leaders to Discuss Rohingya.” Bangkok Post, June 26, 2012. https://​ www.bangkokpost.com/​world/​299735/​myanmar-​bangladesh-​leaders-​to-​discuss -​rohingya. Nibert, David. Animal Oppression and Capitalism. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2017. Nibert, David. Animal Oppression & Human Violence. Domesecration, Capitalism, and Global Conflict. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Nibert, David. Animal Rights Human Rights. Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002. Nimmo, Richie. “The Making of the Human: Anthropocentrism in Modern Social Thought.” In Anthropocentrism, edited by Rob Boddice. Leiden: Brill, 2011. O’Brien, Gerald V. “Indigestible Food, Conquering Hordes, and Waste Materials: Metaphors of Immigrants and the Early Immigration Restriction Debate in the United States.” Metaphor and Symbol, 18 (2003): 33–​47. Parker, Noel, and Nick Vaughan-​Williams. “Critical Border Studies: Broadening and Deepening the ‘Lines in the Sand’ Agenda.” Geopolitics 17, no. 4 (2012): 727–​733. Patterson, Charles. Eternal Treblinka. Our treatment of animals and the holocaust (New York: Lantern Books, 2002). Payne, Kate. “Meatpacking Workers Are Struggling to Protect Themselves During the Pandemic.” NPR, May 5, 2020. https://​www.npr.org/​transcripts/​850964016. Porcher, Jocelyne, and Tiphaine Schmitt. “Dairy Cows: Workers in the Shadows?” Society & Animals 20 (2012): 39–​60. Plumwood, Val. Environmental Culture: The Sociolegal Crisis of Reason (New York: Routledge, 2002). Ramos, Sean, Matthew Maclachlan, and Alex Melton. “Impacts of the 2014-​2015 Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Outbreak on the US Poultry Sector.” Economic Research Report, US Department of Agriculture, December, 2017. https://​www.ers.usda.gov/​ publications/​pub-​details/​?pubid=86281. Rigato, Emanuele and Alessandro Minelli. “The Great Chain of Being Is Still Here.” Evolution: Education and Outreach 6, no. 18 (2013). Rorty, James. Philosophy and Social Hope. London: Penguin Books, 1999. Salter, Mark. “Theory of the /​: The Suture and Critical Border Studies.” Geopolitics 17, no. 4 (2012): 734–​755. Santa Ana, Otto. “ ‘Like an Animal I Was Treated’: Anti-​Immigrant Metaphor in US Public Discourse.” Discourse & Society 10, no. 2 (1999): 191–​224.

46 Khazaal Schudson, Michael. “The Public Sphere and Its Problems: Bringing the State (Back).” Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy 8, no. 2 (2012): 529–​546. Schudson, Michael. “Was There Ever a Public Sphere? If So, When? Reflections on the American Case.” In Habermas and the Public Sphere, edited by Craig Calhoun, 243–​ 163. Cambridge, MA: mit press, 1992. Selk, Avi. “The Briefly Inspirational and Ultimately Depressing Story of the Most Heroic Cow in Poland.” The Washington Post, February 26, 2018. https://​www.washingtonpost.com/​news/​animalia/​wp/​2018/​02/​25/​the-​briefly-​inspirational-​and-​ultimately-​ depressing-​story-​of-​the-​most-​heroic-​cow-​in-​poland/​. Shacknove, Andrew. “Who is a Refugee?” Ethics 95 (1985): 274–​284. Shaheen, Jack. Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2014. Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations. Blacksburg: Thrifty Books, 2009. Smith, David Livingstone. Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011. Smith, David Livingstone. On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist it. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Stanford, Craig. “A Comparison of Social Meat-​Foraging by Chimpanzees and Human Foragers.” In Meat-​Eating and Human Evolution, edited by Craig Stanford and Henry Bunn, 122–​140. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Sullivan, Becky. “Tyson’s Largest Pork Plant Reopens as Tests Show Surge in Coronavirus Cases.” Houston Public Media, May 8, 2020. https://​www.houstonpublicmedia.org/​ npr/​2020/​05/​08/​852843796/​tysons-​largest-​pork-​plant-​reopens-​as-​tests- ​show-​ surge-​in-​coronavirus-​cases/​. Sundberg, Juanita. “Diabolic Caminos in the Desert and Cat Fights on the Río: a Posthumanist Political Ecology of Boundary Enforcement in the United States-​Mexico borderlands.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 101, no. 2 (2011): 318–​336. “The Rohingya Refugee Crisis: Stories of Survival.” Doctors of the World. Accessed April 21, 2020. https://​doctorsoftheworld.org/​blog/​the-​rohingya-​refugee-​crisis-​stories-​of-​ survival/​. “Upton Sinclair.” The Historical Society of Southern California. Accessed May 14, 2020. https://​web.archive.org/​web/​20120712211851/​http://​www.socalhistory.org/​bios/​ upton_​sinclair.html. Vaughan-​Williams, Nick. “ ‘We Are Not Animals!’ Humanitarian Border Security and Zoopolitical Spaces in Europe.” Political Geography, 45 (2015): 1–​10. Weitzenfeld, Adam and Melanie Joy. “An Overview of Anthropocentrism, Humanism, and Speciesism.” In Defining Critical Animal Studies, edited by Anthony J. Nocella ii, John Sorenson, Kim Socha and Atsuko Matsuoka, 3–​27, New York: Peter Lang, 2014.

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White, Richard J., and Simon Springer. “For Spatial Emancipation in Critical Animal Studies.” In Critical Animal Studies: Toward Trans-​Species Social Justice, edited by Atsuko Matsuoka and John Sorenson, 160–​183. London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018. Willyard, Cassandra. “Flu on the Farm.” Nature, September 18, 2019. https://​www. nature.com/​articles/​d41586-​019-​02757-​4. Winseck, Dwayne, and Yal Dong Jin. Eds. The Political Economies of Media: The Transformation of the Global Media Industries. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011. Wolfe, Cary. Before the Law: Humans and Other Animals in a Biopolitical Frame. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Wolfe, Cary. “Humanist and Posthumanist Antispeciesism.” In The Death of the Animal: A Dialogue, edited by Paola Cavaliere, 45–​58. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Zakkar, Suhayl. Al-​Mawsu‘a al-​Shamila fi-​Tarikh al-​Hurub al-​Salibiyya. Vol. 12. Beirut: Dar al-​Fikr, 1995.

pa rt 1 Deconstructing the Human/​Nonhuman Divide

∵

­c hapter 1

Communicating Solidarity

The Ethics of Representing Human and Nonhuman Distant Suffering Núria Almiron Abstract Núria Almiron reflects on the solidarity toward displaced humans and nonhumans from the perspective of communication ethics. The author examines Lillie Chouliaraky’s theory of an ethics of irony, which refers to the insincere stance that media and communication promote toward distant suffering. This examination is used to reflect on how the ethical discussion of the representation of distant human suffering—​as in the case of migrants and refugees—​is strongly shaped by the human-​nonhuman binary. The discussion includes much of the criticisms raised against the political economy producing this binary, yet it fails to problematize it. Since racism and speciesism are intertwined, failing to critically address the binary limits the analysis and reinforces the root problem: the structural violence of the world system. The chapter argues that the discussion of the ethics of representing human distant suffering is incomplete, and even counterproductive, without a critical interspecies gaze.

Keywords communication ethics –​interspecies solidarity –​distant suffering –​dehumanizing –​ Lilie Chouliaraki –​animalizing

1

Introduction: Other Animals as (Unrecognized) Refugees

At the beginning of 2020, researchers from the University of Sydney estimated that more than one billion animals had been killed in Australia’s recent bushfires. They admitted they feared that entire species may have been wiped out.1 1 Ginger Zee and Ella Torres, “More than 1 Billion Animals Estimated Dead in Australia Wildfires: Expert,” ABCNews, January 8, 2020, https://​abcnews.go.com/​International/​billion-​ animals-​estimated-​dead-​australia-​wildfires/​story?id=68143966.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004440654_003

52 Almiron This figure accounted for only mammals, birds, and reptiles burned or suffocated to death—​the number of dead invertebrates had not been included because it was impossible to count them. Another uncertain but large number of individuals of nonhuman species was forced to migrate to non-​burned spots in the island. They turned into climate migrants since the heatwave fueling the wildfires was almost certainly caused by the anthropogenic climate crisis.2 The massive death toll and the scale of the tragedy attracted significant media attention to the plight of nonhuman animals in the 2019–​2020 Australian wildfires. Reports included dozens of pictures and videos capturing kangaroos desperately attempting to flee from great walls of flames, charred remains of thousands of koalas, dead cockatoos falling out of trees, and farmers finding their burned land littered with the bodies of the cows they had been exploiting. Even though the status of all these deaths and of the survivors who needed refuge did not trigger a compassionate mobilization, as would have been the case had the victims been humans, the tremendous scale of animal suffering and lost lives prompted an unusual degree of solidarity coverage across the globe. For a few days, nonhuman animal survivors received the attention and empathy of the media and their audiences to an unprecedented degree. However, besides heart-​breaking pictures like those of burned, disoriented koalas pleading with human passers-​by for water, a deeper analysis of what this catastrophe and the consequent losses meant to the survivors was entirely missing. Of course, the worldwide media coverage included discussions of biodiversity, species extinction, and the threats posed to ecosystems due to habitat loss, but they all lacked an in-​depth discussion of the interests of the surviving nonhuman animals in being considered potential refugees in need of a new home. The concept of refugees has typically been linked to the concepts of state sovereignty and national borders. Legally speaking, only migrants who have been granted asylum are considered refugees. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ mandate, however, has gradually expanded the concept by also providing so-​called humanitarian assistance to internally displaced humans, i.e. civilians who have been forced to flee their homes but have not entered a neighboring country. Since other animals, whether domesticated or free-​living, are not considered citizens of modern nation states, but rather property, mainstream narratives, including media discourses, avoid referring to them as refugees. Nonhumans are considered migrants when they freely move

2 For the sake of comparison, note that little more than a couple dozen humans died in the Australian blazes during the same period, from mid-​November 2019 to mid-​January 2020.

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across the planet due to food or climate-​related pressures, and more recently, they have also been called environmental migrants when environmental events affect their lives adversely and force them to move. However, they are not conferred any potential refugee identity, clearly because in so doing, we humans would implicitly acknowledge that nonhumans not only deserve solidarity, but also help. The concept of solidarity involves a similar moral commitment to that of refugee. However, while the latter concept implies a political, and therefore legal and institutional, responsibility, the former simply acknowledges an attitude, a feeling of unity among individuals with a common interest; in the Australian wildfires example, the interest in not being killed, harmed, or displaced by fire. As has so often been the case in the representation of nonhuman animals forced to migrate due to natural or human pressures in numerous other cases, our evasion of the political implications of this solidarity in the Australian crisis was apparent in the media representation of the nonhumans left without habitat (whether displaced or in need of relocation). Scholars of critical animal studies, animal rights, and animal ethics have long warned against such flawed solidarity with nonhumans. Yet, how media and communication contribute to it and how it is entangled with the plight of human migrants and refugees is worthy of reflection, if only because media is such an influential tool in modern societies and, for this reason, urgently needs to align itself with moral progress. While the mediation of human suffering has been addressed by numerous researchers in a range of different fields, the question of how communication creates insincere moral stances toward distant suffering has been raised by a much smaller number of scholars.3 With the term distant suffering they refer to the suffering created by distant causes, such as, for example, poverty, natural accidents, armed conflicts, and so on, including, of course, forced migration. The concept is rooted in Hanna Arendt’s idea of a politics of pity and further developed by French sociologist Luc Boltanski.4 As the latter explains, the politics of pity assumes the existence of two classes inasmuch as “it involves a distinction between those who suffer and those who do not.”5 For a politics of pity, those who do not suffer must be able to witness the suffering of the others: 3 For instance, Luc Boltanski, Distant Suffering. Politics, Morality and the Media (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Susan D. Moeller, Compassion Fatigue. How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death (New York: Routledge, 1999); Lillie Chouliaraki, The Spectatorship of Suffering (London: Sage, 2006); Lillie Chouliaraki, The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of Post-​Humanitarianism (Cambridge: Polity, 2013). 4 Hanna Arendt, On Revolution (London: Penguin Books, 1963). 5 Boltanski, Distant Suffering, 3.

54 Almiron … there must be sufficient contact between these two classes for those who are fortunate to be able to observe, either directly or indirectly, the misery of the unfortunate, while at the same time the classes must be sufficiently distant or separate for their experiences and actions to remain clearly distinct.6 Drawing inspiration from Boltanski and Arendt, the work of Lilie Chouliaraki stands out within the field of communication with her discussion of this insincere moral stance, not only when taken by news media, but also by so-​called humanitarian organizations and celebrities. I use Chouliaraki’s theory in this chapter to examine how the ethical discussion of the representation of distant human suffering—​as in the case of migrants and refugees—​is strongly shaped by the so-​called human/​animal binary (henceforth, human/​nonhuman binary). Her work also shows how this discussion already includes much of the criticism usually leveled against the political economy that produces this binary, though this is done paradoxically without problematizing the binary. As the chapters in section 2 of this volume disclose, the representation of both human and nonhuman refugees is the intertwined outcome of the same system of oppression. Here, I attempt to provide the theoretical background to address this intertwinement from media and communication ethics standpoint. To this end, I first address the human/​nonhuman divide and the political economy behind it. In the first section, I review the classical dualist mindset on which Western communication acts are modelled—​the mindset that creates the boundaries put forth by the Greco-​Latin world and intensified with modern colonialism and its invention of the concept of race, which intersects with speciesism. Then, I examine the discussion of the othering of migrant and refugee communities conducted by current communication ethics, as represented by Chouliaraki’s work. My aim is to show how current critiques of the representation of distant human suffering already acknowledge the problematic consequences of the speciesist divide, but fail to problematize it. The analysis that follows is an invitation to the field of ethics of communication to explicitly incorporate the critique of the human/​nonhuman divide with an interspecies-​inclusive gaze, which, as I argue in the final section, not only resonates with but invigorates the cosmopolitan proposal delivered by Chouliaraki. This chapter aims to contribute to media and communication ethics from a non-​speciesist perspective grounded in political economy. This means that 6 Boltanski, Distant Suffering, 5.

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I assume that any ethical discussion needs to take into consideration the context, that is power relationships in society and vested interests that shape ideologies. In this case, the ideologies of speciesism and racism are interconnected not because they are comparable but rather because they are the outcome of the same mindset, a mindset anchored in the human/​nonhuman binary. This is relevant because as Adam Weitzenfeld and Melanie Joy observe: each attempt to identify human being through its ontological difference from animal being results in an excision within human being itself as well as the production of an ethico-​politically privileged inside and sacrificial outside. In other words, human being is not so much a value-​neutral biological fact as a violent political fiction.7 2

The Intertwining between Racism and Speciesism

Dualisms have dominated the history of Western thought since at least Plato. In philosophy, dualisms commonly refer to the sets of metaphysical distinctions between appearance and reality, matter and mind, soul and body, and so on. These ancient Greek distinctions provided the framework for the thinking of Descartes, the French theorist widely regarded as one of the founders of modern philosophy. Of course, there are numerous thinkers who have attempted to dismantle dualisms in both the analytic and continental philosophical traditions, from the post-​Nietzscheans in Europe to the pragmatists in American philosophy. However, the influence of Greek ideas has been pervasive and all-​ encompassing to the point that the authors who eschew the Greek pairs of distinctions have been typically labelled with pejorative epithets, such as relativist or irrationalist. This is not surprising, given that the ancient Greeks’ heritage strongly influenced Christian theology and through it the entire Western philosophical tradition. We are so used to this framework that we tend to disregard the tremendous impact of the Western dualistic gaze on the history of humanity and of the planet as a whole. Yet, as Richard Rorty reminds us, the Greek opposites are not a discovery but a creation of Western thought in our quest for permanent truths which can not only be discovered but also understood; in other words, in our 7 Adam Weitzenfeld and Melanie Joy, “An Overview of Anthropocentrism, Humanism, and Speciesism in Critical Animal Theory,” in Defining Critical Animal Studies: An Intersectional Social Justice Approach for Liberation, eds. Anthony J. Nocella ii, Johan Sorenson, Kim Socha, and Atsuko Matsuoka (New York: Peter Lang, 2014), 8.

56 Almiron quest for “finding something stable.”8 Dualistic thinking steps in every time we believe that science can reveal a fixed, objective, graspable truth where object and subject are independent of each other. This thinking has brought about practical results such as the creation of antibiotic drugs or habeas corpus. Nonetheless, it has also had negative implications. The best example of the problematic implications of dualistic thinking is the claim “that humanity itself has an intrinsic nature: that there is something unchangeable called ‘the human’ which can be contrasted with the rest of the universe.”9 The belief in a human essence is at the core of modern applications of Greek dualisms. It reflects a belief in a separation between nature and civilization and between humans and all other animals. The invented category of animals (excluding humans) is a bag in which the other seven million animal species on the planet are conveniently shoved. This category may be an understandable outcome of incorporating dualisms in our cognition, but it lacks any rational basis of classification. In spite of this, the dualistic concept of a human essence allows for the category of animal to be conceptualized as subhuman, that is inferior or lower to human. Once the dualism of inferior/​superior value is established as the principle of categorization, it is also used to justify that individuals within the human species itself are also classified into superior and inferior groups. Looking back at history, it is clear that the human/​nonhuman divide is mostly an a posteriori invention used to endorse abusive behavior and protect the interests of the abusers. Let us review some examples from Ancient Greece and the Enlightenment. In ancient Greece, considered by many to be the cradle of democracy, the practice of labeling other humans as inferior was essential for the maintenance of human slavery. While the justification of slavery varied across time, all periods of ancient Greece share the practice of animalizing human slaves. In classical Greece, nonhuman animals were conceptualized as inferior, and while human slaves were not legally equated to them, they were de facto treated as nonhuman animals. In The Economist, the ancient Greek philosopher and historian Xenophon (c. 431–​354 bc) advised applying to human slaves the same training used for “domestic animals.”10 Aristotle (384–​322 bc) went even further. In Politics, he developed the concept of “natural slavery,” separating human slaves from other animals only because the former had a capacity for reason. At the same time, he conflated the categories of humans and other 8 Richard Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin Books, 1999), 18, epub. 9 Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope, 144. Note that pragmatists like Rorty reject belief in a “human essence.” 10 Xenophon, The Economist (Project Gutenberg), 154, epub.

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animals in the distinction he drew between human slaves and rulers on the basis of what each of them used: in the case of rulers, it was the mind, and in the case of slaves, it was the body. Aristotle acknowledged this equation by stating that human slaves and “tame animals” were almost the same: “Indeed they vary very little in their use from each other; for the advantage which we receive, both from slaves and tame animals, arises from their bodily strength administering to our necessities.”11 The ancient Greek conceptualization of slavery is neither incidental nor a discovery, but, as Rorty puts it, created. The link between the discourse about slavery (human and nonhuman) and vested interests is clear when we look at the primary justification for this practice at the time. The reasoning was purely instrumental and identical for human and nonhuman slaves: slavery was considered an inevitable consequence of war, where defeated humans became a kind of war booty, along with their goods and other animals. Of course, this was the convenient self-​justification of the victors, since slaves were used as a labor force and were thus a precious economic resource, be it in agriculture or households. However, the ancient Greeks did not entirely forget that humans were also animals. Aristotle typically used the term animal to refer to humans, as in political animal, social animal, or simply animal. On the other hand, a search in the English translation of Politics shows that human is only used as an adjective, as in human nature, soul, society, form, virtue, action, or flesh. Paradoxically, Aristotle’s use of language is less speciesist than current mainstream language, including his use of the term other animals to refer to nonhumans. It was during the Enlightenment that we humans fully erased our animal nature from our self-​conception and language, especially under the heavy stamp of Cartesian thought. Weitzenfeld and Joy characterize this thought as anthropocentric humanism because of its “privileging [of] human consciousness and freedom as the center, agent, and pinnacle of history and existence.”12 Since then, humanness has been defined according to the civilized European standards of the white, bourgeois male—​including the celebration of a self-​ convenient understanding of reason by this same white bourgeois male. Humans who do not conform to this standard are typically characterized as animalistic by most Enlightenment thinkers, including Kant, who viewed native peoples, women, and nonhuman animals as inherently unreasonable and therefore not worthy of equal moral consideration.

11 Aristotle, Politics (Project Gutenberg), 62, epub. 12 Weitzenfeld and Joy, An overview of Anthropocentrism, 5.

58 Almiron As was the case with the ancient Greeks, Enlightenment’s anthropocentric humanism was not a priori but a posteriori, a by-​product of the first wave of modern colonialism. It was during this period that the modern social construct of race was created for strictly political and economic reasons. Although groups of humans have always identified themselves as distinct from neighboring or distant groups, the concept of race is a modern one, directly tied to the slave system created by European imperialism and colonialism from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries and supported by the scientific revolution that occurred in this period. As Dorothy Roberts observes in her book The Fatal Invention: “The expansion of the slave trade in the 1700s, which necessitated a racial system of governance, coincided with the shift among European intellectuals from theological to biological thinking, giving the institution of science ultimate authority over truth and knowledge.”13 The first step in producing such governance was the construction of this racial system, which had hitherto not existed. In this respect Roberts explains how Spanish and Portuguese traders—​ representatives of the first modern colonial empires—​did not automatically classify people from the west coast of Africa as an innately inferior group. That is, the largest human trafficking in history, that of people kidnapped in Africa and enslaved in America by Europeans, did not start because Europeans were racists in the first place. Rather, the category of black slaves was later legally and socially constructed as inferior for political and economic gain. Consider how white slaves were subjected to differentiated treatment purely out of utility, since European landowners wanted to avoid joint interracial slave revolts and protect their most vital economic resource in America—​i.e. black slaves.14 To this end, as Roberts reminds us, “a monumental legislative effort was made to differentiate the status of blacks and whites.”15 A second important consideration is that this effort was clearly grounded in the construction of a set of stereotypes in which animality, or being close in one’s essence to other animals, was a preeminent trait. With the help of science—​particularly the ideology of classification and typologies from the natural sciences—​the invention of race was rooted in the human/​nonhuman divide. In the eighteenth century, the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus divided

13

Dorothy Roberts, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-​create Race in the Twenty-​First Century (New York: The New Press, 2011), 72, epub. 14 Theodore W. Allen’s The Invention of the White Race, Volume I: Racial Oppression and Social Control and Volume 2: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-​America (London: Verso, 2012) focus particularly on how racial oppression, through the invention of whiteness, was promoted to prevent the multiracial working class from uniting. 15 Roberts, Fatal Invention, 31.

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the homo sapiens genus into four racial types according to how he thought four planetary regions differed in beauty and intelligence. He situated the European type at the top, claiming that it exhibited the most civilized traits, and the African at the bottom because he saw it as deeply animalized. Kant subscribed to the existence of biological differences by locating the origin of all humanity in a common ancestor, but, like Linnaeus, defined Negroes and Whites as different races. Finally, Darwin’s mentions to lower and higher animals, so frequently misunderstood or distorted, was used to secure “the long-​held racial hierarchy that put whites at the pinnacle of human advancement and blacks at the bottom, one step away from animals.”16 In the twentieth century, reified notions of race were used in a number of national projects, from the Holocaust to the Rwandan genocide, to mention only two of the best known cases where racist genocide was carried out based on ideas of animality and humanity. In short, modern racism cannot be understood without reference to the notion of a human/​nonhuman binary. Racism is not only a social construct, but one built upon a speciesist dualism which inherently conceives of other animals as inferior. Both racism and speciesism are much more than simple prejudices; they are ideologies, i.e. sets of ideas and attitudes, developed to justify exploitation. Any discussion of the ethics of the representation of migrants and refugees, whether human or nonhuman, must therefore address the complex reality behind racism. For this, a robust intersectional analysis is needed, which must first attend to the political economy (social context, economic interests, political control) that is at the root of oppression—​in other words, the privileges that oppression protects. Second, the intersectional complexity of the phenomenon must be fully addressed. At the very least, racism intersects with imperialism, colonialism, classism, speciesism and androcentrism. Media and communication ethics have usually attended to this complexity only partially, typically disregarding the human/​ nonhuman divide. Without speciesism, however, no analysis of distant suffering is complete. 3

The Ethics of Representing Distant Suffering

Although it has been extensively debated, the ethics of representing distant suffering through communication has so far only rarely been systematically addressed and has always been strictly devoted to human suffering.17 In this 16 Roberts, Fatal Invention, 85. 17 Some exceptions are the already mentioned Boltanski, Distant Suffering and Moeller, Compassion fatigue. Also Jonathan C. Ong, The Poverty of Television: The Mediation of

60 Almiron respect, Chouliaraki’s work stands out for having developed an empirically-​ grounded theory from a profound understanding of how discourses are created. Furthermore, she does so with a focus on the ethical consequences of the coverage of distant human sufferers, including, of course, forced migrants and refugees. In 2006, she published The Spectatorship of Suffering,18 a volume focused on the political, cultural, and moral effects of television coverage, where she reflected on how spectators in the West relate with distant sufferers on the television screen. This volume was followed by a broader and much more theoretically ambitious book in 2013, The Ironic Spectator,19 which addressed the representation of distant human suffering attending to the high degree of complexity present in social processes of mediation. Given the sophisticated arguments of Chouliaraki’s 2013 volume and its communicatively broad approach to distant human suffering, I build on this work to develop the main arguments of this chapter: the impossibility of ethically discussing the representation of displaced humans without attending to the human/​nonhuman binary, and the necessity of doing so from a critical, interspecies stance. Chouliaraki’s work itself is solely focused on humans and no discussion of this binary is provided. Yet, as we shall see, her main arguments are implicitly, when not explicitly, grounded and entangled with the animal divide. To show how this happens, I first introduce Chouliaraki’s volume and later turn to the arguments grounded in the binary and its consequences. In Ironic Spectator, Chouliaraki—​ professor at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences—​explores the ways in which the communication of solidarity has changed since the 1970s. In so doing, she unveils how media and communication have turned distant human suffering into a spectacle and the Western audience into ironic spectators of vulnerable others—​ ironic mostly because of the adopted cynical, apolitical stance. As Chouliaraki sees it, over time, communication practices have mutated from an ethics of pity to an ethics of irony, both of which are examples of self-​centered articulations of morality, but which have some distinctive traits. Whereas the old ethics of pity was grounded in the idea of paternalistic benevolence, the ethics of irony is grounded in the idea of the pleasure of the self. In this latter ethics, spectators no longer aspire to reflexively engage in changing the political Suffering in Class-​Divided Philippines (London: Anthem, 2015); Tristane A. Borer, Media, Mobilization, and Human Rights: Mediating Suffering (London & New York: Zed Books, 2012); Mick Broderick and Antonio Traverso, Interrogating Trauma: Collective Suffering in Global Arts and Media (London & New York: Routledge, 2011). 18 Chouliaraki, The Spectatorship of Suffering. 19 Chouliaraki, The Ironic Spectator.

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conditions that make distant sufferers vulnerable. Therefore, the new ethics is not only apolitical, but, as we shall see, also anti-​political. In this work Chouliaraki identifies three unconnected but intersecting transformations responsible for the move from benevolence to self-​contentment: the instrumentalization or neoliberalization of the field of international aid and development, the retreat of the “grand narratives” of solidarity (mostly of “solidarity as salvation”), and the increasing technologization of communication. Of these three, in my view, the pivotal turn is the first one. The contemporary secular form of solidarity as pity can be traced back to the eighteenth century and the rise of modern capitalism in works such as the Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith (1759),20 where the importance of benevolence toward vulnerable others is first raised. The ironic turn, on the other hand, reflects how neoliberalism shapes the contemporary articulation of humanitarianism. For neoliberalism, humanitarianism becomes a tool that leads to what the author defines as the marketization of humanitarian practices, exemplified by a shift toward the market in governmental and non-​governmental humanitarian advocacy. Solidarity in its neoliberal form includes a kind of morality that Chouliaraki calls “feel good,” “cool,” or “point-​ and-​click” activism. Publics gain access to it through technologized media and their engagement becomes anti-​political because of its highly consumerist and demobilizing character. Ironic Spectator is not, however, limited to discussing activism. It is a volume that brilliantly dissects the shift toward the current narcissistic and corporate discourses of solidarity that are also present characteristic of news media and public relations. The author defines these discourses as narcissism, asserting a “post-​humanitarian morality that combines action on others with benefits for the self.”21 While she adopts a critical stance, she nonetheless refrains from endorsing critiques of capitalism, which she refers to as the pessimistic argument of the critical school due to its lack of any constructive contribution. At the same time, she fully rejects the capitalist, utilitarian approach that justifies the means for a good end and the marketization of social justice causes. Chouliaraki attempts to adopt a middle ground between the dystopian arguments of the former and the utopian arguments of the latter; in other words, between the denial of any chance for mediation to avoid commodification of distant suffering, on the one hand, and solidarity as salvation, a solidarity that focuses on the benefactor who alleviates the suffering, on the other. Though

20 Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 21 Chouliaraki, Ironic Spectator, 126.

62 Almiron her positioning is an appealing attempt, most relevant here are the two major paradoxes she identifies regarding the mediation of distant human suffering. The first of these is the paradox of authenticity, the fact that the spectacle of suffering invites such a weak moral response that it may undermine rather than strengthen moral commitment. Second is the paradox of agency, that the spectacle of suffering simultaneously evokes the language of power, and thus tends to reproduce existing global divides rather than establish bonds of solidarity. These paradoxes are relevant because the ultimate consequence of the ethics of irony in communication is the dehumanization of vulnerable humans. Let us analyze how each paradox relates to the human/​nonhuman binary by promoting it while simultaneously rejecting its consequences. Humanization vs Desensitization in the Representation of Distant Suffering Ironic Spectator argues that any communicative act is ambivalent, since it can be defined as both a source of moral education and a source of moral corruption. This ambivalence is the result of the simultaneous humanizing and desensitizing capacities of representation. By humanizing capacity, Chouliaraki means the capacity to develop empathy and compassion toward vulnerable human others and cultivate an ethics of care for them. The desensitizing capacity, on the other hand, is the numbing of the humanizing capacity. Although the explanation of how mobilization and numbing take place is clever, her approach is nonetheless problematic since it is based on anthropocentric humanism. It conceives of morality as a unique, innate quality of the human species, when in fact morality is merely a behavioral issue. For the sake of objectivity, we could state that the act of communication can either make us more compassionate or numb our compassion, rather than talking about humanizing or its absence. To limit compassion solely to the human species, replacing it with humanizing, reveals a common ideological commitment—​ even if unconscious—​to conceptualizing human beings as special compared to others, for example, nonhumans or humans who cannot develop a particular cognitive or moral trait. Although we humans do not have direct evidence of other animals’ capacity for compassion, there are numerous examples of nonhuman animal behavior that are difficult to comprehend without referring to compassion as a motivation.22 But even in the odd case that we humans were the sole species to 3.1

22

Marc Bekoff, The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy —​and Why They Matter (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008);

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develop empathy and compassion, this would not make us special, but rather simply empathic and compassionate. Adhering to the premise of human exceptionalism is furthermore counterproductive because of the hierarchy created by the separation between humans and other animals, which has historically allowed for the exertion of violence toward all who have been marginalized and excluded from the allegedly superior category, be they other animals or other humans. Privileging humanizing traits presupposes a hierarchy that creates the space of dehumanization. Dehumanization can only exist if we previously accept that the human category is special and that the category of animal is inferior on account of not being human. As Weitzenfeld and Joy put it: “What is called dehumanization is made possible by defining the essence of humanity over and against all other animals.”23 If we accept that the category of human is a desirable, positive category, we have enough grounds to oppress other animals, not to mention many other humans, and in so doing we perpetuate the power relations that give rise to oppression. Perpetuating Domination vs Promoting Change in the Representation of Distant Suffering While the humanizing rhetoric of the first paradox (of authenticity) feeds and perpetuates the separation of humans from other animals and situates the former at the top of an imagined hierarchy, the second paradox (of agency) not only proposes the same hierarchy, but simultaneously rejects what is in fact an unavoidable consequence of the humanizing rhetoric: the possibility of dehumanization of some humans through their relegation to the lower, animalized, positions within such a hierarchy. The second paradox includes the notion of dehumanization as central to the critique of solidarity as a mechanism of power. The roots of this notion, the human/​nonhuman divide, however, is not discussed in Ironic Spectator. In the paradox of agency, the treatment of solidarity in the act of communication is considered both “as a … site of domination and as a force of social change.”24 Communicating solidarity as a site of domination refers to the critique of humanitarian communication when acting as an imperialist force. Chouliaraki refers here to the example of the “depoliticized morality of human 3.2

Marc Bekoff, Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2010); Marc Bekoff, Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed: The Fascinating Science of Animal Intelligence, Emotions, Friendship, and Conservation (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2013). 23 Weitzenfeld and Joy, An Overview of Anthropocentrism, 6. 24 Chouliaraki, Ironic Spectator, 82.

64 Almiron rights” after World War ii to illustrate this,25 and again the human/​nonhuman binary emerges in implicit and even explicit forms. In her analysis, Chouliaraki traces the concept of politics as pity back to its roots. The genealogy of pity takes her back to Aristotle and the Enlightenment, which turned philanthropy into a dominant practice for the management of poverty during the 18th and 19th centuries. At the end of World War ii, this morality gave birth to the modern idea of universal human rights, which has framed the secular sense of moral obligation in Western societies ever since. In the description of the new ideology of rights, the author of Ironic Spectator returns to classical anthropocentric humanism. She explains that the legitimacy of human rights is an outcome of the equal moral consideration that each human individual deserves due to membership in the “hyper-​category of the human species,”26 a category that can only be “hyper” if humans are considered over or against others. Hence, the idea of human rights entails not only the protection of humans but the inherent benevolence of the human species. As Chouliaraki acknowledges, however, human rights can also be seen as a tool for social regulation, defining the limits of the human subject and perpetuating hierarchies of human life on a global scale. Indeed, as critical thinkers stress, human rights are an invention of liberal society deployed by the white European bourgeois male.27 Thus, human rights can be seen as a legitimation of the systemic asymmetry between the West and the global South and may not address the central problem: dehumanization. Following Tomohisa Hattori, Chouliaraki observes: The problematic of dehumanization, in this sense, draws attention to the ways in which the communicative structure of solidarity selectively mobilizes the concept of ‘humanity’ so as to forge bonds of solidarity with certain populations rather than others and, ultimately, to legitimize a new imperialism of the West as a self-​congratulatory community of benefactors.28

25 Ibid, 420. 26 Ibid, 85. 27 For instance: Makau Mutua, Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002); Joseph R. Slaughter, Human Rights, Inc.: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007); Colin Samson, The Colonialism of Human Rights: Ongoing Hypocrisies of Western Liberalism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020). 28 Chouliaraki, Ironic Spectator, 102.

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3.3 The Paradox of Not Problematizing the Human/​Nonhuman Divide After my examination of Ironic Spectator, a paradox common to current communication ethics emerges: the fact that a highly developed and intricate critical analysis may be perpetuating the same power relations that it attempts to dismantle. I call this the paradox of anthropocentric humanism in communication ethics: i.e. not problematizing the essential issue of the speciesist divide that lies at the core of the discussion on dehumanization and its representation. To be fair, the problematic logic of the human/​nonhuman divide behind dehumanization is made explicit at one point in the volume. In paraphrasing Agamben, Chouliaraki refers to the stark contrast between the life of the sufferers represented by media and the reality of the spectator’s comfortable life, a contrast between what Agamben calls “zoe, physically deformed bodies in a state of animality, and bios, the civility of healthy bodies in Western societies.”29 Here, we can identify the problem. It follows, then, that at the heart of Chouliaraki’s complex critique lies a distinction between the human and the nonhuman, and this distinction produces the dehumanization of those who suffer, which follows only if we have previously established a human/​ nonhuman divide (“deformed bodies in a state of animality”). However, this so important distinction is never problematized by communication ethicists—​ just as it is not problematized in mainstream race and border studies as discussed in the introduction of this volume. Critical animal studies have convincingly argued that human exceptionalism is not merely a kind of discrimination of nonhuman animals and of humans who do not comply with the white European bourgeois male model. It is, as Weitzenfeld and Joy put it, a violent political fiction. Human exceptionalism is a fiction created to justify individual immoral behavior that later turned into an immoral world system. Therefore, if we want to dismantle dehumanization, we must paradoxically get rid of the rhetoric of humanization and embrace an ethics of global interspecies compassion. The ethics of representing human distant suffering would much benefit from avoiding the perpetuation of the human/​nonhuman binary, since it is precisely this binary that underpins the ultimate problem of the ethics of irony, which according to Chouliaraki is rendering others inferior through dehumanization. This has implications that are beyond the scope of this chapter, because it implies a need to redefine the whole humanitarian field according to moral behaviors or attitudes, not arbitrary categories such as species. 29

Ibid, 141.

66 Almiron We should look at solidarity as care, as empathic and compassionate activity regardless of species. 4

The Representation of Distant Nonhuman Suffering

As is evident in this volume, the interconnection between speciesism and the representation of distant humans has serious negative consequences for humans such as immigrants and refugees. Yet we must not forget that nonhuman distant sufferers are in a far worse situation. On the one hand, the media relies on the human/​nonhuman divide to perpetuate and justify the unethical treatment of nonhumans, while on the other, the media excludes nonhumans when it reflects on the ethics of representing distant suffering. While ethicists study the problematic representation of human refugees and migrants, animal refugees remain a totally invisible subject for mainstream communication ethics. And yet, even studies such as Chouliaraki’s that do not address the human/​nonhuman divide are implicitly grounded in the intertwining of nonhuman animal oppression with the dehumanization of human refugees. Critical animal scholars insist that this intertwining is not the same as comparing the value of both types of suffering. Instead, acknowledging the intertwining recognizes that both types of suffering are the outcome of the same worldview. They are incomprehensible if considered independently of each other because they are rooted in the same hegemonic centrisms.30 Their similarities reinforce their subordination as Others “through a self-​ referencing conceptual system of oppositional dualisms … [and] implicit, taken-​for-​granted associations between subordinated identities.”31 The two types of suffering are different yet connected problems because they are subject to the same rules. If we read Chouliaraki’s work with the eyes of a critical animal studies scholar, it is easy to realize that many aspects of her diagnosis for human refugees fit with the representation of nonhuman animal refugees as well. Some examples of this from Ironic Spectator follow. For instance, to explain what she means by the “spectacle of suffering,” Chouliaraki relies on Susan Sontag’s notion of humans’ voyeuristic or even pornographic disposition toward suffering.32 She considers only human suffering, 30 31 32

Alph Ko and Syl Ko, Aphro-​ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters (New York: Lantern Books, 2017), 47; Val Plumwood, Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason (New York, Routledge, 2002). Weitzenfeld and Joy, An Overview of Anthropocentrism, 9. Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (London: Picador, 2003).

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but critical animal studies scholars have shown that her arguments apply equally well to the representation of nonhuman suffering both for voyeurism and pornography.33 Consider the case of the severely burned koalas or kangaroos in the 2019–​2020 Australian wildfires. Humans across the world intensely circulated images of these animal refugees on social networks and repeatedly watched them from the comfort of their living rooms. Yet they showed no intention of taking further climate relevant action beyond clicking on a Change.org page that at best claimed to help Australian fauna. Compassion fatigue renders the reality of Australian nonhuman animal suffering irrelevant, just as it does for human refugees. The media then move on in their pursuit of attractive, fresh headlines—​in this case, the COVID-​19 pandemic first in China and later in the rest of the world. Chouliaraki’s claim that solidarity has been marginalized in favor of a feel-​good online activism that keeps us in our comfort zone is equally valid for the representation of human and nonhuman animal refugees. Critical animal studies scholars can also easily identify parallels between Chouliaraki’s discussion of advocacy campaigns for human refugees and recurring discussions of strategies held among animal advocates. Consider the polar differences between negative and positive appeals. Western publics view negative appeals as moralistic because they expose the public’s complicity, which often results in compassion fatigue and apathy. When confronted with positive appeals, the same publics still experience compassion fatigue despite seeing the sufferer as a dignified agent rather than a victim. However, erasing the victim conceals the complexity of suffering, limits the capacity to promote sustainable social change, and turns solidarity into a marketing tool. Animal advocacy campaigns to help displaced nonhuman animals during the Australian wildfires must also have confronted this typical dilemma, which has been increasingly discussed in attempts to ease other animals’ suffering in general.34 Parallels also exist between the human solidarity promoted by celebrities and solidarity toward other animals. This includes Chouliaraki’s argument that the shift we see in the ways celebrities perform solidarity reflects a move 33

34

Randy Malamud, “Looking at Humans Looking at Animals,” in Critical Animal and Media Studies. Communication for Nonhuman Animal Advocacy, eds. Núria Almiron, Matthew Cole, and Carrie P. Freeman (New York: Routledge, 2016), 154–​168; Carol Adams, The Pornography of Meat (New York: Lantern Books, 2015). For instance, Carrie P. Freeman, Framing Farming. Communication Strategies for Animal Rights, (New York: Rodopi, 2014); Corey L. Wrenn, “Resonance of Moral Shocks in Abolitionist Animal Rights Advocacy: Overcoming Contextual Constraints,” Society and Animals 21 (2013): 379–​394; Harold A. Herzog and Lauren L. Golden, “Moral Emotions and Social Activism: The Case of Animal Rights,” Journal of Social Issues 65, no. 3 (2009): 485–​498.

68 Almiron from an unconditional to a utilitarian form of solidarity. She supports such shift, concluding that there are multiple appeals to solidarity and criticizes the simplistic notion that celebrity humanitarianism lacks authenticity. Instead of rejecting celebrities’ role in neoliberal philanthro-​capitalism, she claims that we should rethink the specific ways in which massive capital, financial, and symbolic resources can be best put to use for solidarity. Indeed, some animal ngo’s utilitarian campaigns to rescue other animals (displaced or not), and their use of celebrities (such as some peta campaigns) fully resonate with the controversy Chouliaraki points out.35 Chouliaraki also argues that the delivery of news has shifted from the expert to the ordinary witness. Such a broad shift toward a narcissistic discourse of solidarity is triggered by the intense influx of technology into all things cultural. The use of technology in witnessing, for instance, has disrupted the storytelling monopoly held by the media until the end of the 20th century, as ordinary testimonies supplement or even replace professional work. This shift from factual to participatory news narratives means a shift from objectivity to testimony that introduces a “therapeutic model of journalism.”36 This model gives “voice and recognition to ordinary contributions on distant suffering, replaces objectivity with a proliferation of truth-​claims, none of which take epistemological priority over others.”37 Chouliaraki describes this as a “collapse of objectivity into a ‘stream of voices.’ ” The post-​television news era does not necessarily refer to a restructuring of journalistic production, nor does it challenge existing hierarchies; in fact, it may just reproduce them. The move from objectivity to testimony in current news has no direct parallel in critical animal studies. Nonetheless, we can see this issue as central for nonhuman animal coverage. So far, critical animal studies have supported testimony either through mediators of nonhuman animal experiences,38 or by using documentaries and films to inform audiences about what is missing from the news.39 But the move from alleged objectivity to direct testimony can also mean increasingly giving 35 Maneesha Deckha, “Disturbing Images: PETA and the Feminist Ethics of Animal Advocacy,” Ethics and the Environment 13, no. 2 (2008): 35–​76. 36 Chouliaraki, Ironic Spectator, 378. 37 Ibid. 38 Carrie P. Freeman, Marc Bekoff, and Sarah M. Bexell, “Giving Voice to the “Voiceless:” Incorporating Nonhuman Animal Perspectives as Journalistic Sources,” Journalism Studies 12, no. 5 (2011): 590–​607. 39 Loredana Loy, “Media Activism and Animal Advocacy: What’s Film Got to Do with It?,” in Critical Animal and Media Studies: Communication for Nonhuman Animal Advocacy, eds. Núria Almiron, Matthew Cole, and Carrie P. Freeman (New York: Routledge, 2016), 222–​233.

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voice to farmers, therefore reinforcing power structures that support animal exploitation; remember that farmers’ voices already appear regularly in the news, either directly or through their institutional representatives or lobbies.40 Finally, the global claim of Ironic Spectator regarding solidarity also resonates with discussions in critical animal studies. The author argues for a solidarity that overcomes the “sentimentalism of pity” and the “self-​absorption of irony.” The latter is the most common strategy at present. With the idea of the “self-​absorption of irony,” Chouliaraki criticizes the neoliberal utilitarian rationality of the post-​humanitarian strategies of representing distant suffering, which brings the logic of the market to humanitarianism and solidarity through “pragmatism and privatism.” The sentimentalism of pity restricts the capacity for criticism that lies in humanitarianism, thereby promoting historical amnesia and apolitical activism. The self-​absorption of irony situates solidarity within the private realm, as a tool to empower consumers (that is, the self), rather than as a tool to cultivate dispositions of care (that is, for others). Solidarity as a private act not only cultivates narcissism and becomes a matter of consumerist choice, but also constructs the vulnerable other as a “quasi-​ fictional figure.”41 Pragmatism and privatism are at the root of current representations of distant human suffering that influence publics to be apolitical, narcissistic, consumer-​oriented, and individualistic. Both concepts are also central to the discussion of strategic communication and the media coverage of other animals. The controversy between pragmatist and purist approaches in the animal liberation movement, if we define them in reductionist terms, reflects many of the concerns raised by the “sentimentalism of pity” and the “self-​absorption of irony.”42 Aside from conclusions about media and communication, a number of other parallels can be drawn between Chouliaraki’s analysis of the representation of distant human sufferers and the representation of distant nonhumans. One relevant example is the case of human rights and the liberal mindset that shapes the current humanitarian concept of solidarity. Chouliaraki argues that both are tools that may potentially legitimate systemic asymmetries in the world given that they reflect the worldview of white European bourgeois

40

Natalie Khazaal and Núria Almiron, “ ‘An Angry Cow is Not a Good Eating Experience’: How US and Spanish Media Are Shifting from Crude to Camouflaged Speciesism in Concealing Nonhuman Perspectives,” Journalism Studies 17, no. 3 (2016): 374–​391. 41 Chouliaraki, Ironic Spectator, 412. 42 Gary Francione and Robert Garner, The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation? (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010); Tobias Leenaert, How to Create a Vegan World: A Pragmatic Approach (New York: Lantern Books, 2017).

70 Almiron males. Similarly, feminist scholars of critical animal studies and animal ethics warn of the dangers of sticking to liberal animal ethics theories both in their utilitarian and deontological forms advanced by theorists such as Peter Singer and Tom Regan. This consequentialist tradition helped create the modern animal liberation movement and has had an immense role in fostering the critique of speciesism. Nonetheless, it relies on the same liberal male mindset that has promoted financial and liberal capitalism, and has perpetuated the lack of social, political and economic equality, cultural neocolonialism, and environmental destruction. As Lori Gruen puts it, traditional ethical theories represent a way of thinking that “allows us to ignore larger questions.”43 These questions tackle the complex political economic context in which animal exploitation takes place, in other words, the capitalistic structure and its consequences. If liberal theorists refuse to see this, they would likely also miss seeing that capitalism may be part of the problem and thus we might be ignoring possible solutions. Gruen also criticizes the liberal mindset behind the concept of rights because of its focus on sameness. That is, the idea that the lack of morally relevant distinctions between human and nonhuman animals is what justifies the defense of rights, i.e., we must defend other animals because we appreciate that they are like us. While this sameness is true, focusing solely on this also “obscures the unique capacities that other animals possess and might be valued in themselves,”44 i.e., we must defend other animals because we appreciate that they are different. Gruen’s approach, based on an ethics of virtue and care, is an important alternative to liberal approaches based on principles and rights such as the “ethics of justice.” Unlike such liberal approaches, Gruen acknowledges complexity, since differences are as crucial as similarities. In the end, if we only use liberal animal rights to solve the problem, we may fall into the trap of the same binary mindset that created speciesism.45 I end with this case because of the strong connotations it has for the representation of distant human and nonhuman sufferers, who are not only like us but also different from us. This argument, advanced by Gruen and other feminist animal liberation scholars, has multiple interesting consequences for the ethics of communication in terms of our dual capacity as scholars: we are both humans with a gaze mired in an inevitable epistemological anthropocentrism, and, for the most part, scholars from rich Western (and impoverishing) 43 44 45

Lori Gruen, Entangled Empathy: An Alternative Ethics for Our Relationships with Animals (New York: Lantern Books, 2015), 12. Ibid, 25. An argument most strongly and vigorously advanced in Ko and Ko, Aphro-​ism.

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countries. Gruen’s claim for more context and less abstraction, more ways to relate and less individualism, more connection and less impartiality, and more responsiveness and less conflict can illuminate how the ethics of communication could address solidarity and distant nonhuman suffering, and, not surprisingly, distant human suffering as well. 5

For a Sentient and Compassionate Cosmopolitan Solidarity (Rather Than Humanitarian)

Last, this section briefly addresses the limitations of Chouliaraki’s notion of cosmopolitan solidarity for turning communication into a tool for moral education. Cosmopolitanism is a shared claim among some English-​speaking communication ethicists,46 and thus it is also useful for us here as an example of relevant trends in the field. Aligned with them, Chouliaraki makes a strong argument against neoliberalism not only in media and communication organizations, but also in practices and content—​all of which have a perverse impact on the representation of distant suffering, such as that of migrants and refugees. Chouliaraki’s goal is to construct a new “humanitarian imaginary” based on cultivating a long-​term disposition to respond benevolently to distant others, and to do so “not because they are like ‘us’ but precisely because they defy our own conception of humanity.”47 She suggests a “solidarity of agonism”: a solidarity that no longer focuses exclusively on our own feelings about the sufferer’s pain but on creating what Arendt calls “a common, shared world” wherein collective action to change the conditions of suffering may become both thinkable and possible in the West.48 This resonates for instance with Stephen Ward’s words on cosmopolitanism and crisis reporting: a space remains for the cultivation of cosmopolitan sensibilities based on the forging of emotional connection. Along those lines, a just ethical 46

Clifford G. Christians, Media Ethics and Global Justice in the Digital Age (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2019); Stephen J.A. Ward, Global Media Ethics: Problems and Perspectives, (Malden, MA: Wiley-​Blackwell, 2013), epub. 47 Chouliaraki, Ironic Spectator, 307. 48 Ibid, 385.

72 Almiron approach would be one that takes for granted the moral duty of considering all human experiences of loss, suffering, and death as equally worthy of compassion, and makes this explicit in the training of journalists.49 Chouliaraki’s cosmopolitan imaginary, as Ward’s cosmopolitan sensibilities, is not new. In spite of its noble intentions, it is based on the same old dualistic perception separating humans from other animals, which lies at the root of our capacity for dehumanizing. It is grounded in an undefined “quality of humanity,”50 which resonates with the dualistic concept of a human essence. Its answer to the problem of dehumanization is centered on ways that allow the human/​nonhuman binary to represent some individuals or groups as inferior. By appealing to human essentialism, this ancient rhetorical fallacy allows communication ethics to reinforce dualistic views created to protect the privileges and interests of some humans. For this reason, the humanizing rhetoric is of no help, since humanization always implies a celebratory view of humans as opposed to animals, and therefore a negative account of animality and animalization. It follows, then, that current communication ethics is limiting itself by ignoring an intersectional approach that should include speciesism along with racism, colonialism, classism, and androcentrism within its purview. To neglect this intertwining not only limits our analysis but can unconsciously reinforce the roots of all centrisms: the structural, systemic violence that rules human societies. Critical animal and communication studies scholars, including myself, have argued that the communication field needs to acknowledge that sentience—​ and most particularly the capacity for suffering—​is what matters when assessing moral considerations.51 Likewise, cosmopolitan views can be informed by this idea. Political philosopher Alasdair Cochrane, for instance, defends the need for a “sentient cosmopolitan democracy,”52 where not only humans but all sentient animals are recognized as bearers of rights in this shared world. The extension of cosmopolitan theory to all animals is just the logical corollary

49 Ward, Global Media Ethics, 563. 50 Chouliaraki, Ironic Spectator, 146, 414, 427, 441. 51 Núria Almiron, “Behond Anthropocentrism: Critical Animal Studies and the Political Economy of Communication,” The Political Economy of Communication 4, no. 2 (2016): 54–​ 72; Núria Almiron, Matthew Cole, and Carrie P. Freeman, “Critical Animal and Media Studies: Expanding the Understanding of Oppression in Communication Research,” European Journal of Communication 33, no. 4 (2018): 367–​380. 52 Alasdair Cochrane, Sentientist Politics: A Theory of Global Inter-​Species Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

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of admitting that the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively is what matters. Communication ethics should endorse this claim too. The analysis of Chouliaraki’s arguments in this chapter is not intended to disqualify her work, nor the school of thought in communication ethics she represents. I greatly respect their concerns and their sophisticated articulation of the situation, and I find very convincing many of their cosmopolitan fundamentals. Instead, I aim to show how not problematizing the human/​nonhuman binary limits the discussion on how to improve the representation of distant suffering regardless of species. Ironic Spectator concludes with the suggestion that empathy is not enough, that progress requires judgment and the capacity to add impartial reflection (impartial reasoning is one of the tenets of cosmopolitanism). If judgment and impartiality are truly brought into play, a robust cosmopolitan framework that ethically improves the representation of distant human and nonhuman sufferers needs in the first place, paradoxically, to remove the emphasis on the human and the humanitarian rhetoric and replace it with an emphasis on what really counts as the ultimate unit of moral worth and moral behavior: sentience and compassion.

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Adams, Carol. The Pornography of Meat. New York: Lantern Books, 2015. Allen, Theodore W. The Invention of the White Race, Volume I: Racial Oppression and Social Control; Volume 2: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-​America. London: Verso, 2012. Almiron, Núria, Matthew Cole, and Carrie P. Freeman. “Critical Animal and Media Studies: Expanding the Understanding of Oppression in Communication Research.” European Journal of Communication 33, no. 4 (2018): 367–​380. Almiron, Núria. “Behond Anthropocentrism: Critical Animal Studies and the Political Economy of Communication.” The Political Economy of Communication 4, no. 2 (2016): 54–​72. Arendt, Hanna. On Revolution. London: Penguin Books, 1963. Aristotle. Politics. Project Gutenberg, epub. Bekoff, Marc. The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy —​and Why They Matter. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008. Bekoff, Marc. Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed: The Fascinating Science of Animal Intelligence, Emotions, Friendship, and Conservation. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2013. Bekoff, Marc. Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2010.

74 Almiron Boltanski, Luc. Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Borer, Tristane A. Media, Mobilization, and Human Rights: Mediating Suffering. London & New York: Zed Books, 2012. Broderick, Mick, and Antonio Traverso. Interrogating Trauma: Collective Suffering in Global Arts and Media. London & New York: Routledge, 2011. Chouliaraki, Lilie. The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of Post-​Humanitarianism. Cambridge: Polity, 2013, epub. Chouliaraki, Lilie. The Spectatorship of Suffering. London: Sage, 2006, epub. Christians, Clifford G. Media Ethics and Global Justice in the Digital Age. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Cochrane, Alasdair. Sentientist Politics: A Theory of Global Inter-​ Species Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Deckha, Maneesha. “Disturbing Images: PETA and the Feminist Ethics of Animal Advocacy.” Ethics and the Environment 13, no. 2 (2008): 35–​76. Francione, Gary, and Robert Garner. The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation? New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Freeman, Carrie P. Framing Farming: Communication Strategies for Animal Rights. New York: Rodopi, 2014. Freeman, Carrie P., Marc Bekoff, and Sarah M. Bexell. “Giving Voice to the “Voiceless:” Incorporating Nonhuman Animal Perspectives as Journalistic Sources.” Journalism Studies, 12 no. 5 (2011): 590–​607. Gruen, Lori. Entangled Empathy: An Alternative Ethics for Our Relationships with Animals. New York: Lantern Books, 2015. Herzog, Harold A., and Lauren L. Golden. “Moral Emotions and Social Activism: The Case of Animal Rights.” Journal of Social Issues 65, no. 3 (2009): 485–​498. Khazaal, Natalie, and Núria Almiron. “ ‘An Angry Cow is Not a Good Eating Experience’: How US and Spanish Media Are Shifting from Crude to Camouflaged Speciesism in Concealing Nonhuman Perspectives.” Journalism Studies 17, no. 3 (2016): 374–​391. Ko, Alph, and Syl Ko. Aphro-​ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters. New York: Lantern Books, 2017. Leenaert, Tobias. How to Create a Vegan World: A Pragmatic Approach. New York: Lantern Books, 2017. Loy, Loredana. “Media Activism and Animal Advocacy: What’s Film Got to Do with It?” In Critical Animal and Media Studies: Communication for Nonhuman Animal Advocacy. Edited by Núria Almiron, Matthew Cole and Carrie P. Freeman, 222–​233. New York: Routledge, 2016. Malamud, Randy. “Looking at Humans Looking at Animals.” In Critical Animal and Media Studies. Communication for Nonhuman Animal Advocacy. Edited by Núria Almiron, Matthew Cole and Carrie P. Freeman, 154–​168. New York: Routledge, 2016.

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Moeller, Susan D. Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death. London & New York: Routledge, 1999. Mutua, Makau. Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique. Philadelphia, Pen: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. Ong, Jonathan C. The Poverty of Television: The Mediation of Suffering in Class-​Divided Philippines. London: Anthem, 2015. Plumwood, Val. Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason. New York, Routledge, 2002. Roberts, Dorothy. Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-​create Race in the Twenty-​First Century. New York: The New Press, 2011, epub. Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and Social Hope. London: Penguin Books, 1999, epub. Samson, Colin. The Colonialism of Human Rights: Ongoing Hypocrisies of Western Liberalism. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020. Slaughter, Joseph R. Human Rights, Inc.: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007. Smith, Adam. Theory of Moral Sentiments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. London: Picador, 2003. Ward, Stephen J.A. Global Media Ethics: Problems and Perspectives. Malden, MA: Wiley-​ Blackwell, 2013, epub. Weitzenfeld, Adam, and Melanie Joy. “An Overview of Anthropocentrism, Humanism, and Speciesism in Critical Animal Theory.” In Defining Critical Animal Studies: An Intersectional Social Justice Approach for Liberation. Edited by Anthony J. Nocella ii, Johan Sorenson, Kim Socha and Atsuko Matsuoka, 3–​27. New York: Peter Lang, 2014. Wrenn, Corey L. “Resonance of Moral Shocks in Abolitionist Animal Rights Advocacy: Overcoming Contextual Constraints.” Society and Animals, 21 (2013): 379–​394. Xenophon. The Economist. Project Gutenberg, epub. Zee, Ginger, and Ella Torres. “More than 1 Billion Animals Estimated Dead in Australia Wildfires: Expert.” ABCNews, January 8, 2020. https://​abcnews.go.com/​International/​ billion-​animals-​estimated-​dead-​australia-​wildfires/​story?id=68143966.

­c hapter 2

Inferiority by Association

Animals, Migrants, and Chicana/​Ecofeminist Possibilities Garrett Bunyak Abstract Garrett Bunyak demonstrates the extent to which animal representations and animality prop up the legitimacy of racist, sexist, and nationalist institutions and culture. He argues that the association of migrants with non-​human animals simultaneously marks migrants, women, people of color, animals, and all of nature as inferior to an imagined and idealized rational white male citizen subject. In this context, nationalistic and capitalistic desires such as security and profit are realized through the exploitation and control of all of these maligned “others.” He points to the work of Gloria Anzaldúa to outline a Chicana/​ecofeminist framework and imagine other possible ways of living based on care, respect, and reciprocity in a world full of diversity.

Keywords ecofeminism –​animality –​nationalism –​migration –​Gloria Anzaldúa

On July 1, 2019, New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-​Cortez, also popularly known as aoc, visited a migrant detention center in El Paso, Texas as part of a delegation organized by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. In 2018, Ocasio-​Cortez surprisingly ousted ten term incumbent Joe Crowley in the Democratic Party’s primary election and eventually became, at 29 years old, the youngest woman to ever serve in Congress. aoc is widely known for her social media presence and progressive agenda exemplified by her identification as a Democratic Socialist. Following her visit to the El Paso facility, aoc turned to social media to condemn the conditions facing the migrant woman she interacted with as “horrifying.” During the visit by members of the delegation, migrant women inside the facility described being called “whores” and told to drink out of toilets. Joaquin Castro, the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, tweeted that some women had been separated from their

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004440654_004

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children and detained for over 50 days. According to Castro, women were limited to showering once every fifteen days. In her subsequent comments, Ocasio-​Cortez argued that over a period of years, a pattern of “chronic dehumanization” fueled the mistreatment of migrants by US officials and government contractors as she compared detention facilities to concentration camps.1 According to aoc, as well as an abundance of evidence, the dehumanization of migrants has a long history. As has been widely reported, child abuse, sexual assault, neglect, and preventable deaths were reportedly a reality in migrant housing facilities during Barack Obama’s presidency.2 Indeed, the United States government’s history of hostility directed at Mexican and Latin American migrants dates back at least to the 1930’s.3 The recent caging of migrant children, family separations, and surging anti-​ immigrant white supremacy are legitimized by a long history of nationalist zeal that animalizes migrants as invaders, infesters, aliens, and vermin.4 Karen Morin is among those to point out that practices including the “caging” of both humans and nonhuman animals rely upon the construction of caged groups as violent, wild, and dangerous.5 In fact, the comparison of caged human groups to nonhuman animals often plays a critical role in legitimizing their enclosure. In a 2018 speech in California, for instance, 45th US President Donald Trump described so-​called “illegal immigrants” not as “people” but as “animals.” In response to backlash, The White House defended his comments by suggesting he was referring to members of the “ms-​13 gang,” but, as discussed in other chapters in this volume, Trump routinely directs attention at all migrants coming to the United States from Mexico and Latin America as evidenced in the following infamous comments in his 2015 speech announcing his candidacy for President: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best … 1 Jonathan Katz, “’The Whole Facility’s Culture is Rotted from the Core’: What Alexandria Ocasio-​Cortez Saw Inside the El Paso Camps,” Mother Jones, July 2, 2019. 2 Justine Calma, “America Is Closing Its Doors to Refugees Right When the World is Driving More and More to Flee,” Mother Jones, February 8, 2018; Michael Grabell and Topher Sanders, “ ‘If You’re a Predator, It’s a Gold Mine,” Mother Jones, July 27, 2018. 3 Michael J. Shapiro, “Narrating the Nation, Unwelcoming the Stranger: Anti-​Immigration Policy in Contemporary America,” Alternatives 22, no. 1 (1997): 1–​34. 4 Shapiro, “Narrating the Nation”; Douglas Epps and Rich Furman, “The ‘Alien Other’: A Culture of Dehumanizing Immigrants in the United States,” Social Work & Society 14, no. 2 (2016): 1–​ 14; Ashley R. Shapiro, “The Criminalization of the Immigration System: The Dehumanizing Impact of Calling a Person Illegal,” Richmond Public Interest Law Review 21 (2018): 117–​145. 5 Karen Morin, “Wildspace: the cage, the supermax, and the zoo,” in Critical Animal Geographies: Politics, intersections, and hierarchies in a multispecies world, eds. Kathryn Gillespie and Rosemary-​Claire Collard (New York: Routledge 2015), 73-​92.

78 Bunyak They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”6 In August 2019, USA today reported that Trump had used words like “alien,” “criminal,” “animal,” “predator,” “killer,” and “invasion” over 500 times at political rallies since 2017 to describe migrants.7 According to the report, he used the word “animal” at least 34 times. Atsuko Matsuoka and John Sorenson draw on the insights of critical animal studies (cas) to point out that the comparison of migrants to nonhuman animals is an othering practice that works primarily because of a widely accepted species hierarchy that suggests nonhuman animals are inferior and unworthy of ethical or political consideration (­chapter 3, this volume). In this chapter, I introduce a framework called Chicana/​ecofeminism to build on these insights from cas. I draw on insights from the work of Chicana feminists such as Gloria Anzaldúa and ecofeminists including Greta Gaard. I begin the chapter by discussing the assumptions and possibilities of Chicana/​ ecofeminisms, a term i introduce to describe the productive partial synthesis of these feminist ways of thinking. In addition to revealing the linked ways women, migrants, people of color, nonhuman animals, and “nature” are devalued, Chicana/​ecofeminisms escape hierarchical categories and logics such as citizenship, race, gender, and species that pervade dominant US narratives, particularly those of white nationalists. I suggest Chicana/​ecofeminist stories conceptualize the interconnectedness and intrinsic value of humans, nonhuman animals, and earth. I briefly describe my research sample before I use the Chicana/​ecofeminist framework to examine the circumstances surrounding aoc’s visit to El Paso and explore the nationalist stories that pervade recent US immigration narratives. In conclusion, I argue that nationalists’ ongoing construction of an imagined nation and it’s claimed borders mobilizes a dominant narrative of a rational citizen-​ subject and a less than human other that does not belong or must be controlled. Human exceptionalism, then, is crucial in the ongoing performance that props up and fuels the sovereign nation’s control over its subjects and borders. As white nationalists use human exceptionalism to suggest white men 6 Donald Trump, “Presidential Announcement Speech,” June 16, 2015, http://​time.com/​ 3923128/​donald-​trump-​announcement-​speech/​. 7 John Fritze, “Trump Used Words Like ‘Invasion’ and ‘Killer’ to Discuss Immigrants at Rallies 500 Times: USA TODAY Analysis,” USA TODAY, August 8, 2019, https://​www.usatoday.com/​ story/​news/​politics/​elections/​2019/​08/​08/​trump-​immigrants-​rhetoric-​criticized-​el-​paso-​ dayton-​shootings/​1936742001/​.

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must control all lives and forms to secure the nation, liberal humanist critics also mobilize anthropocentrism and therefore give support to some of the very logics that enable the ongoing domination of migrants, nonhuman animals, and all of nature. I then return to Chicana/​ecofeminist perspectives to imagine ways of thinking, being and relating that have been largely erased, silenced, and ignored in popularized immigration debates. 1

Chicana/​Ecofeminisms

Chicana and ecofeminist perspectives are not unitary or monolithic, nor do they necessarily map onto one another in neat and uncontroversial ways. In conceptualizing the notion of Chicana/​ecofeminisms, I use a plural form to represent the diversity of thought in both fields and a slash to represent an imagined and imperfect bridge between the two abundant ways of thinking.8 With this in mind, the focus of the current chapter is to think in the borderlands of Chicana feminism and ecofeminism to build partial connections and open up ways of thinking that would not be possible by either perspective alone. Anzaldúa, the prominent Chicana philosopher, storyteller, and community-​ builder, tirelessly critiqued the classic categories and hierarchies produced within the logics of anthropocentric humanism (2002). In liberal humanism, for instance, human reason separates “man” from alleged lesser beings such as nonhuman animals. In this and similar systems of thought that assume humans are superior to nonhumans, a dichotomy is created between humans and nature/​nonhuman animals. In constructing a position of “animality” as a binary and inferior opposite to “humanity,” this hierarchical way of thinking fuels the othering of not only actual nonhuman animals and nature but also women, people of color, migrants, refugees, and other oppressed groups. The othering of human groups, in other words, is made possible by the existence of a category of animality that has often been used to label the others of Western white men as inferior and legitimize the control and domination of multiple oppressed groups.9 In this way, the seemingly separate injustices of white nationalism, ecological destruction, and animal abuse are all legitimized and fueled by this binary, hierarchical way of thinking. 8 In suggesting the synthesis, I call “Chicana/​ecofeminism,” I’m indebted to the prior work of Gwyn Kirk, Kelli Zaytoun, AnaLouise Keating, and Christina Holmes, who have explored the overlaps and intersections of Chicana and ecofeminist perspectives. 9 Greta Gaard, “Ecofeminism Revisited: Rejecting Essentialism and Re-​placing Species in a Material Feminist Environmentalism,” Feminist Formations 23, no. 2 (2011): 26–​53.

80 Bunyak In contrast to anthropocentric ways of thinking, AnaLouise Keating points out that Anzaldúa conceptualizes “the interrelatedness of all forms of life” as she resists “the binary-​oppositional frameworks we generally use in identity formation and social change.”10 In contrast to thinking of “man” as separate and autonomous from “women,” “animals,” and all of nature, Anzaldúa writes that “the binaries of colored/​white, female/​male, mind/​body are collapsing” as “the changeability of racial, gender, sexual, and other categories” renders “conventional labelings obsolete.”11 In addition to pointing out the ways lives and forms escape and spill outside of traditional cultural categories, Anzaldúa’s thinking challenges human exceptionalism by considering the intrinsic value of non-​human beings. She writes, for instance, that “spirit exists in everything … the divine, is in everything … It’s in the tree, the swamp, the sea.”12 Anzaldúa’s stories are born, in part, out of a desire for more livable, inclusive, sustainable worlds. In many indigenous knowledge systems, stories are known to shape the material possibilities for the flourishing of humans, nonhuman animals, plants, and sustainable worlds. In other words, the stories societies tell, or alternatively, the stories that are ignored or erased, radically impact material life and social worlds. Drawing on indigenous traditions and her life in the borderlands, Anzaldúa tells stories that offer alternatives to those in the anthropocentric tradition. Anzaldúa’s work contributes to centering some of the indigenous ways of thinking, living, and storytelling that have been erased or silenced by Western colonialism, imperialism, and genocide. Many ecofeminists have shared this drive to create new narratives and, consequently, new worlds. Early ecofeminists were accurately criticized for centering the perspectives of white middle-​class women as well as for assuming an “essentialist” connection between women and “nature.”13 In fact, some recent thinkers have proposed abandoning the term ecofeminism altogether due to associations with such perspectives. In contrast, recent work by Greta Gaard and Val Plumwood responds to the concerns of Black and third world feminists in order to redefine ecofeminism as a tool to examine the co-​articulating ways that women, 10 11 12 13

AnaLouise Keating, “ ‘I’m a Citizen of the Universe’: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Spiritual Activism as Catalyst for Social Change,” Feminist Studies 34, no. 1/​2 (2008), 60. Gloria Anzaldúa, “Now Let Us Shift … the Path of Conocimiento … Inner Work, Public Acts,” in This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions of Transformation, eds. Gloria Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating (New York: Routledge 2002), 540–​578, 541. Quoted in Keating, “‘I’m a Citizen of the Universe,’” 60. Gaard, “Ecofeminism Revisited,” 26–​53.

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people of color, nonhuman animals, “nature,” and many others are oppressed and controlled.14 Gaard points out that in humanistic ways of thinking, “the claim for the superiority of the self is based on the difference between self and other, as manifested in the full humanity and reason that the self has but the other supposedly lacks.”15 Ecofeminists emphasize that nonhuman animals are not the only beings that come to be animalized and defined as lacking “full humanity.” The conceptual and material linkages or associations of women, people of color, nature, and nonhuman animals to “animality” reinforce the inferiority of each of these identity categories as well as shore up the alleged superiority of a rational white male citizen subject.16 In bringing together the already related ideas of thinkers such as Anzaldúa, Gaard, and Plumwood, Chicana/​ecofeminisms offer possibilities of identifying and critiquing the co-​articulating ways various subordinated groups are simultaneously marked as inferior. The resulting insider/​outsider configurations are ingrained within cultural narratives, social institutions, and everyday lives. These hierarchies work to continually reproduce borders between humans-​nonhumans and citizens-​noncitizens as well as the borders states claim mark their sovereign territories. The state, of course, plays a key role in fueling such hierarchies as it works to control its subjects and borders. In addition to diagnosing such relationalities, Chicana/​ecofeminisms also create possibilities of telling new narratives and creating new worlds. As part of a Chicana/​ecofeminist worldbuilding practice, a politics of difference is acted out not based on artificial borders and rigid identity categories but rather through affinity building among oppressed groups and Anzaldúa’s call to “see that no harm comes to people, animals, ocean …” as we take up the arduous “work of healing” that is so desperately needed.17 After reading the circumstances surrounding aoc’s visit to El Paso using a Chicana/​ecofeminist lens, I return to the work of Anzaldúa to imagine and call forth new worlds that have been silenced and erased within the thought systems of anthropocentric humanism.

14

Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1993); Gaard, “Ecofeminism Revisited”; Margarita Estévez-​Saá and Maria Jesus Lorenzo-​Modia, “The Ethics and Aesthetics of Eco-​caring: Contemporary Debates on Ecofeminism(s),” Women’s Studies 47, no.2 (2018): 123–​146. 15 Gaard, “Toward a Queer Ecofeminism,” Hypatia 12, no. 1 (1997): 137–​156, 138–​139. 16 Ibid. 17 Anzaldúa, “Now Let Us Shift,” 558.

82 Bunyak 2

Research Sample

The research presented in this chapter is part of a larger project exploring animality in relation to migration. The focus of this chapter is the migration narratives of US lawmakers, law enforcers, mass media, and the federal government. The initial data collected included articles published in The New York Times, Huffington Post, The Intercept, Mother Jones, and The Washington Post. I searched each of these publications using title searches for the words “immigration,” “refugees,” and “migration.” I collected all articles published from January 2018 through July 2019. As initial coding and analysis began with an eye toward the construction of migrants’ “animality,” emerging themes suggested avenues for further data collection. Based on these themes, I included the social media accounts and public comments of politicians that were prominently featured in these news reports including Trump, Ocasio-​Cortez, and Ilhan Omar. I also used Google to search for memes and content that drew associations between migrants, Ocasio-​Cortez, Omar, Trump, and nonhuman animals. Other relevant news reports were also collected based on themes derived from the initial data. Data collection continued until thematic saturation occurred. 3

Nationalist Zeal

On the day Congresswoman Ocasio-​Cortez observed the “horrible” conditions in the detention center in Texas, reports of a private Facebook group in which current and former border patrol agents and officials shared racist, sexist, and nationalist memes and comments surfaced. The group, named “I’m 10–​15,” reportedly had 9,500 members at the time. “10–​15” is border patrol code for “aliens in custody.” A member of the group identifying himself as Richard Tyler Jr. exemplified the white nationalist sensibilities pervading the group when he wrote of migrants and asylum seekers, “They are like wild animals, stop feeding them and they won’t hang around and shit on the street.”18 A Chicana/​ecofeminist analysis suggests that comments such as these associate migrants with nonhuman animals and animality, fueling and reinforcing notions that non-​ citizens, people of color, and nonhuman animals are all inferior to an imagined white citizen subject. Indeed, migrants and nonhuman animals allegedly can’t even control their bowels like civilized white men.

18

Ryan Devereaux, “Border Patrol Agents Tried to Delete Racist and Obscene Facebook Posts. We Archived Them,” The Intercept, July 5, 2019.

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In the days leading up to the Congressional visit to the detention center, members of “I’m 10–​15” also posted memes of Ocasio-​Cortez performing oral sex on a migrant through a detention center wall with the caption “Lucky Illegal Immigrant Glory Hole Special Starring aoc.”19 In another image, Trump is pictured forcing aoc’s head toward his crotch. aoc identifies her mother as of Puerto Rican descent and has described herself on Twitter as proud of her own Latina heritage. With aoc’s position as a young woman of color in mind, the misogynist representations circulating in groups like “I’m 10–​15” fuel an ongoing animalization and exoticization of Latina sexuality and objectification of women in general. On reddit, users have compiled some of these sexist and racist memes circulating the internet under a thread labelled “TheRightCantMeme.” The images include comparisons of aoc to a sex doll and suggestions that she had appeared in a porno during college. Meme makers frequently question her intelligence by suggestions including that she thinks “ribbed condoms” “don’t even taste like ribs”—​a suggestion that both normalizes consumption of animal flesh and sexualizes a Latina woman. Trump fueled similar sentiments about Latina sexuality in a 2015 tweet suggesting “sooo many Sanctuary areas want out of this ridiculous, crime infested & breeding concept.” The notion of refugees “breeding” in sanctuary cities calls forth an image of what Joon Kim, Ernesto Sagás, and Karina Cespedes describe as an animalized hypersexual “fertile brown immigrant” woman and an “anchor baby mama.”20 Unlike the reproduction of the imagined white “virtuous mother,” the “breeding” of Latina women, like that of dogs and horses, must be managed and controlled in order to protect the nation.21 The repetition of such narratives continually constructs whiteness as normal and desirable, with dangerous consequences for non-​white people including the aforementioned caging of women and children, deportations, and prolonged detentions. “I’m 10–​15” group members additionally described photos of a father and his 23-​month-​old daughter who had drowned crossing the Rio Grande as fake because their bodies appeared uncharacteristically “clean” for migrants. Group members lamented “tonks,” a slang slur describing migrants that refers to the sound a flashlight makes connecting with a migrant’s skull, and suggested filling the Rio Grande with “gators” and “sharks” to prevent border crossings. One 19 Ibid. 20 Joon K. Kim, Ernesto Sagás and Karina Cespedes, “Genderacing Immigrant Subjects: ‘Anchor Babies’ and the Politics of Birthright Citizenship,” Social Identities 24, no. 3 (2018), 322. 21 Ibid.

84 Bunyak meme pictured a child-​sized piece of meat wrapped in a foil that resembles the mylar blankets provided to some children in Border Patrol custody—​the caption said “Little tonk blanket ideas!” From a Chicana/​ecofeminist perspective, suggestions that migrants are dirty and the association of migrant children with dead animal flesh reinforces white nationalist sensibilities and the inferiority of non-​white migrants. The representations further devalue actual non-​human lives and forms as objects that are then widely abused and used to serve human interests. In the wake of potentially catastrophic ecological change around the globe, these devaluations of everything non-​human only serve to further accelerate the domination, exploitation, and destruction of nonhuman animals and nature for purposes such as profit and consumption. The white nationalist, misogynistic sensibilities of the Facebook group add to a long history of racism and sexism that permeates the US government’s approach to migration and racial minorities. In December 2017, one border patrol agent sent a text message describing migrants as “mindless murdering savages” and “disgusting subhuman shit” just days before striking an undocumented Guatemalan man with a government issued truck.22 In response to this state of affairs, Ocasio-​Cortez, after learning of “I’m 10–​15” tweeted “This isn’t about ‘a few bad eggs.’ This is a violent culture.” In 2015, Marco Gemignani and Yolanda Hernandez-​Albujar revealed that the websites of hate groups in the US contribute to the subject formation of group members—​constructing members of the group as heroic protectors of the nation. The images and stories presented on the websites they examined construct immigrants as a threat to the nation while suggesting that group members have a moral obligation to prevent migrants from entering the US. In other words, group members come to “interpret their practices not so much as animosity against immigrants” but rather “as rational and ethical heroism.”23 In 2019, as the boundaries between organized hate groups and law enforcement seemingly continue to erode, current and former border patrol employees in the group “I’m 10–​15” were constructing their own subjectivities in similar ways as the hate groups studied by Gemignani and Hernandez-​Albujar. In one exchange in “I’m 10–​15,” members of the group debated the use of lethal force against migrants who throw rocks at border agents. After a group member suggested “I was just following orders hasn’t been an effective defense 22 23

Tim Elfrink, “ ‘Mindless Murdering Savages’: Border Agent Used Slurs before Allegedly Hitting Migrant with his Truck,” The Washington Post, May 20, 2019. Marco Gemignani and Yolanda Hernandez-​Albujar, “Hate Groups Targeting Unauthorized Immigrants in the US: Discourses, Narratives, and Subjectivation Practices on their Websites,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 38, no. 15 (2015): 2754–​2770, 2766.

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in about 72 years,” a member identifying himself as Bob Wilkinson, claiming to be a former Border Patrol supervisor, suggested this attitude made this group member a “fucking snowflake.” Wilkinson continued, “the fact that the President recognizes rocks as deadly weapons is a good thing” implying that Trump’s views legitimized the use of deadly force. A member of the group identifying himself as Eric Castillo added, “Bro im gonna go home alive to my family and stop the threat … I’ve been rocked before and I missed my chance to pop a round due to me falling trying to avoid the rock. Fuker ran back to the river … Don’t be a freaking Debbie downer bro.” Castillo ended the exchange saying “bro next time its on.” Racism, violence, and the murder of migrants is here constructed as necessary to protect the nation and any patrol agents unwilling to buy into this culture and pull the trigger are either “snowflakes” or “Debbie downers.” As a result of these circumstances, by mid-​July, 62 current and 8 former Border Patrol agents were under investigation for their involvement in “I am 10–​15.” It came to light that Carla Provost, chief of the border patrol at the time of the reports, had previously participated in the group. The animosity toward migrants and asylum seekers also extends beyond the confines of the Border Patrol as stories of migrants as subhumans, invaders, gang-​members, anchor-​ babies, and vermin circulate through US institutions such as the mass media, Department of Homeland Security, law enforcement communities, courts, The White House, and Congress. As widely reported, this “culture” of hate has seemingly spread throughout US law enforcement communities over a period of many years.24 An fbi assessment from 2006 suggested that white supremacist organizations had goals of “infiltrating law enforcement communities or recruiting law enforcement personnel” and the fbi has continually warned of the “resurgence” of right-​wing extremism in subsequent years.25 According to a classified fbi Counterterrorism Policy Guide obtained by The Intercept, by April 2015 “domestic terrorism investigations focused on militia extremists, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizen extremists often have identified

24

25

Will Carless and Michael Corey, “To Protect and Slur,” Reveal News, June 14, 2019. https://​ www.revealnews.org/​article/​inside-​hate-​groups- ​on-​facebook-​police- ​officers-​trade-​ racist-​memes-​conspiracy-​theories-​and-​islamophobia; Emily Hoerner and Rick Tulsky, “Cops Around the Country Are Posting Racist and Violent Comments on Facebook,” Injustice Watch, 2019, accessed May 14, 2020, https://​www.injusticewatch.org/​interactives/​cops-​troubling-​facebook-​posts-​revealed/​. Alice Speri, “The FBI Has Quietly Investigated White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement,” The Intercept, January 31, 2017.

86 Bunyak active links to law enforcement officers.”26 In one instance, Philadelphia Police Officer Christian Fenico, in a post about refugees, wrote “Let them starve to death. I hate every last one of them.”27 The City of Philadelphia has paid at least $115,000 to settle two cases in which Fenico has been accused of unprovoked and excessive force.28 The case illustrates that vitriolic rhetoric is again often directly related to physical violence against subordinated groups. Trump, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer in subsequent years, has spread similar sentiments. For instance, he has often recited a poem called “The Snake,” originally written by Oscar Brown Jr., since he began his campaign for presidency in 2015. Before he orates the lyrics, Trump tells his audience that they should “think of this in terms of immigration.”29 He then tells the story of a woman finding a dying snake on a walk—​the kind-​hearted woman takes in the snake and provides food, shelter, and the heat of a fire. In return, the venomous animal strikes and kills the woman, saying “you knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.”30 In Trump’s usage, the story combines sexism, racism, and anthropocentrism and, like much of the content posted in “I’m 10–​15,” simultaneously reinforces the inferiority of women, people of color and nonhuman animals in relation to Trump, the thousands of cheering white nationalists at his rallies, and all white men with citizenship. Unpacking Trump’s use of the poem, a Chicana/​ecofeminist reading reveals that all brown migrants and asylum seekers are animalized as poisonous, deadly threats to the nation. Actual nonhuman animals are also constructed as inferior as the symbol of the snake is represented as an other that is dangerous, wild, and less than human. The association of the two othered groups, those of migrants and nonhuman animals, reinforces their mutual subordination and inferiority. The poem additionally associates women with nature since after all it is a “silly” woman that is irrational enough to care for the animal other. Plumwood discusses the association of women with nature and emotion and men with culture and reason writing, “modern anthropocentrism treats any difference from humanity as inferior which leads to the subordination of all parties who are seen as part of” or closer to “nature.”31 The inferior silly woman 26 Ibid. 27 Hoerner and Tulsky, “Cops Around the Country.” 28 Ibid. 29 Donald Trump. “Remarks by President Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference.” February 23, 2018. 30 Ibid. 31 Val Plumwood, “Decolonizing Relationships with Nature,” in The Post-​Colonial Studies Reader, eds. Bill Ashcroft, Helen Tiffen and Gareth Griffiths (London: Routledge, 2006): 503–​506, 504.

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and the snake are both constructed as closer to nature than the imagined rational citizen that is encouraged to be reasonable enough to control women, nonhuman animals, and immigration. In relation to a need to control the border to protect the nation, Trump’s use of the poem further feminizes the nation as a “silly woman” therefore justifying Trump’s increasingly masculine, militaristic and aggressive approach to border policy and migration.32 The story ends when the violent aggressive other strikes and kills the caring woman, in this case constructing all migrants as a violent and deadly threat. In speaking to his audience, Trump constructs himself and his followers as “tough” rational citizen subjects that desperately need to act to prevent migrants from “invading” a nation at risk of being feminized by policies based on compassion for non-​whites, non-​humans, and non-​ citizens. In other words, he further humanizes an imagined white male citizen in relation to the animalized brown immigrant other and anyone silly enough to have compassion. In this worldview, The US government’s hostile border policies are presented as the only reasonable option for his followers. In the aftermath of the Congressional visit to El Paso, in a series of subsequent attacks widely believed to be directed at Representatives Ocasio-​Cortez, Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley, Trump tweeted on July 14 “So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt, and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly … and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” In campaign style rallies in the following weeks, Trump continued his attacks while his supporters, in an adaption of the chants of “Lock Her Up” directed at political opponent Hillary Clinton in 2016, hollered “Send Them Back!” In this racist and sexist series of comments, Trump others these women-​of-​color congresswomen as inferior outsiders in comparison to himself and the blindly nationalistic attendees at his rallies. The language of infestation, as well as that of invasion, is frequently employed by The White House, lawmakers, and law enforcers to stoke fears of a threatening other. Bobby Duncan, the Mayor of Yucaipa, California, was among the many social media users to mobilize lyrics from “The Snake” when in March 2019 he 32

Amy N. Heuman and Alberto González, “Trump’s Essentialist Border Rhetoric: Racial Identities and Dangerous Liminalities,” Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 47, no. 4 (2018): 326–​342.

88 Bunyak shared an image of a cobra’s body with Representative Omar’s head and the words “You knew what I was before you let me in!!”33 In 2015, Texas Agricultural Commissioner Sid Miller turned to social media to compare an image of refugees to one of rattlesnakes, writing “Can you tell me which of these rattlers won’t bite you? Sure, some of them won’t, but tell me which ones so we can bring them into the house.”34 In January 2019, Donald Trump Jr. compared migrants to nonhuman animals in zoos, when he turned to Instagram to support his father’s proposed border wall, writing “You know why you can enjoy a day at the zoo? Because walls work.” At all levels of government, migrants have been frequently compared to nonhuman animals for years. Not only do these comparisons legitimize the mistreatment of migrants, they reinforce the assumptions of anthropocentric humanism that enable the use and abuse of actual nonhuman animals to serve human interests. After all, many animal ethicists compellingly argue that nonhuman animals should themselves not be caged in zoos for purposes of human entertainment. The circumstances surrounding the Congressional delegation to the El Paso facility highlight the ways women, people of color, migrants, and nonhuman animals are marked as inferior as associations are made among these identity categories. In particular, members of these groups are frequently othered based on their alleged “animality” as they are compared to actual nonhuman animals. The narratives and images discussed above also demonstrate the fact that despite Anzaldúa’s assertion that the categories and markings used to other various groups “are outworn and inaccurate, those in power continue using them to single out and negate those who are ‘different’ because of color, language, notions of reality, or other diversity.”35 As white nationalist stories legitimize concentration camps, the caging of children, as well as the abuse and murder of migrants, many leftist academics and politicians increasingly condemn the rhetoric that legitimizes these conditions as “dehumanizing.” 4

Humanist Hubris

As the conditions in migrant detention centers were increasingly coming under public scrutiny in the build-​up to Ocasio-​Cortez’s visit to the Texas 33 34 35

Joe Nelson, “Yucaipa Mayor Apologizes Over Offensive Facebook Posts, But Muslim Advocacy Group Demands Resignation,” San Bernardino Sun, April 10, 2019. Jim Malewitz, “Miller Facebook Post Compares Reguees to Rattlesnakes,” The Texas Tribune, November 19, 2015. Anzaldúa, “Now Let Us Shift,” 541.

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shelter, Congress passed a bipartisan $4.59 billion supplemental spending bill by an 84 to 8 vote in the Senate and a 305 to 102 vote in the house.36 On the same day aoc visited the shelter, Trump signed the bill into law. Ocasio-​Cortez, who voted against the measure, pointed out that the funds were being directed to agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Health and Human Services, and the Pentagon that were accused of neglecting, abusing, and dehumanizing migrants and asylum seekers. Supporters of the bill suggest the money will be used to improve the treatment of migrants, but Ocasio-​Cortez asked, “How do you justify throwing $5 billion at the people who are torturing children?”37 In her view, these agencies “prioritize and incentivize dehumanizing behavior” and she suggests at least some members of the Democratic Party had acknowledged that the bill “throws more money at all the wrong places to dehumanize more people and reward bad behavior.”38 Omar, Tlaib, and Pressley joined aoc in voting against the bill. Omar pointed out the lack of restrictions regarding the ways funds could be used saying “We’ve sent money that we don’t know if it’s going to continue to be used to put proper beds, to buy toothpaste, to assist these children in any kind of way and their families.”39 Despite the resistance from some progressive Democrats, the bill in question is only one example of longstanding bipartisan support for problematic and xenophobic immigration policy. In his 1995 State of the Union Address, then President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, declared “All Americans … are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That’s why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens.”40 From 2008 to 2016, Barack Obama’s Democratic administration waged a brutal campaign of deportations and oversaw the abuse of migrant children and asylum seekers being held in custody directly by dhs

36

Judy Hirschfeld Davis and Emily Cochrane, “House Passes Senate Border Bill in Rare and Striking Setback for Pelosi,” The New York Times, June 28, 2019. 37 Katz, “The Whole Facility’s Culture.” 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 Bill Clinton, State of the Union Address, 1995.

90 Bunyak and by government contractors.41 Despite a long history of successful implementation of bipartisan anti-​immigrant policies, many politicians, including Obama, do narrate migration in less explicitly racist ways in comparison to the white nationalist stories discussed earlier. In doing so, frequent appeals are made to recognize the humanity of migrants and asylum seekers so as to expand the circle of people that deserve ethical consideration to include the many children in cages, refugee border-​crossers, and undocumented workers toiling in low paying jobs. In December 2018, Democratic Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia, for example, asked then Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielson in an oversight hearing if she viewed “ ‘illegal aliens’ to be human or subhuman?”42 Johnson would go on to vote to support the nearly $5 billion bill passed into law in July 2019. Johnson’s exchange with Nielson reflects his anthropocentric humanist sensibility that relies on the very categories of difference used to other many humans, nonhuman animals, and all of nature in order to bring a small number of additional lives under the ethical umbrella as defined by those in power. In addition to reinforcing the hierarchical dichotomy between human and all that is not human, humanists that take this approach nearly always cling to the binaries of citizen/​non-​citizen that undoubtedly play a less obvious but absolutely crucial role in structuring insider/​outsider relationships. In a 2018 report in The Washington Post, Rachel Hatzipanagos made a similar appeal to include migrants as ethical and political subjects writing, “the tactic of dehumanizing the ‘enemy’ is not one invented by [the Trump administration]. Historically, it has been perfected through movements powered by hate and bigotry … But fixing our broken immigration system won’t come by demonizing immigrants, ripping apart families and detaining children. It will come by remembering that immigrants son humanos. They’re human.”43 Matsuoka and Sorenson discuss how such tropes rely on a human-​ animal hierarchy by suggesting migrants (or other human groups) should not be “treated like animals” (­chapter 3, this volume). In this case, the recognition of migrants’ dehumanization only partially uncovers the intersecting oppressions facing migrants and nonhuman animals—​it fails to recognize that the comparison of humans to nonhuman animals is only an insult because of the 41 42 43

Tonya Golash-​Boza, Deported: Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor and Global Capitalism (New York: nyu Press, 2015). Hank Johnson, “Rep. Johnson Questions Sec. Nielsen on Death of Child at Border,” Press Release. December 20, 2018. Rachel Hatzipanagos, “How a Picture Turned a Sea of Humanity into an ‘Invading Army,’ ” The Washington Post, October 26, 2018.

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assumption that nonhuman animals are inferior, expendable, dangerous, and unworthy of respect or care. Chicana/​ecofeminist and cas perspectives, in contrast, suggest that nonhuman animals should be treated with respect and compassion. At the same time as liberal and progressive politicians and commentators have called into question the dehumanization of migrants, many also suggest that white nationalists may not be human. As has been discussed in this chapter, Matsuoka and Sorenson also critically examine anti-​immigrant “accusations” that migrants “are animals.” They rightly note that such claims emanating from powerful people and institutions fuel violence against both migrants and actual nonhuman animals. I want to suggest that tropes of accusation can also be used against those in power. For example, an August 14, 2019 column in the la Times, titled “Is Trump Missing the Thing That Makes People Human?” suggested Trump lacked a “human” capacity for empathy.44 In March 2019, Democratic Representative Omar suggested publicly that the difference between President Obama and Trump is that “one is human, the other is really not.” In 2018, comedian Bill Maher compared Trump to an orangutan based on his orange tan and alleged sub-​human intelligence.45 As these examples demonstrate, although the meanings ascribed to the category of “human” are contested and varied, the notion that the “human” is superior to the “non-​human” runs rampant throughout migration narratives in the US. Tropes of accusation (i.e., migrants are animals, Trump is an animal) are used both by those in power and those that resist that very power. Although the language of Maher and Omar are not as explicitly racialized and sexualized as those of white nationalists, Colleen Glenney Boggs questions such frameworks by suggesting that anthropocentrism “does not protect human beings from abjection but enables abuse by creating a position of animality that is structurally opposed to humanity.”46 Thus, these representations reinforce taken for granted understandings of species differences that inevitably collide with notions of race, gender, and ability in the meaning making processes that disproportionately include white heterosexual able-​bodied men within the privileged category of “human.”

44 45 46

Virginia Heffernan, “Is Trump Missing the Thing That Makes People Human?,” Los Angeles Times, August 14, 2019. Beth Shilliday, “Roseanne Supporters Are Calling for HBO to Fire Bill Maher for Calling Trump an Orangutan,” Hollywood Life, May 29, 2018. Colleen Boggs, Animalia Americana: Animal Representations and Biopolitical Subjectivity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 42.

92 Bunyak In contrast, or more accurately, in addition, to calls for more respectful, compassionate treatment of migrants that leave the hierarchical binaries between human and nonhuman animals/​nature unchecked, a Chicana/​ecofeminist perspective suggests a need to imagine new narratives that come not only from “within the system” but also, as Anzaldúa points out, that “must come from outside.”47 Gaard and Anzaldúa point out that xenophobia and anti-​immigrant sentiments are most effectively resisted and challenged by simultaneously dealing with sexism, ableism, speciesism, and other forms of oppression. It is through new paradigms and alliances that marginalized and oppressed groups have the best opportunity to create new, inclusive worlds able to support a flourishing diversity of ways of being and relating. In recognizing both the harms humans and actual nonhuman animals experience because of such hierarchical ways of thinking, a Chicana/​ecofeminist sensibility suggests a need for new ways of thinking that do not rely on human-​subhuman, culture-​ nature, and citizen-​alien hierarchies as grounds for ethical and political consideration and agency. 5

Anthropocentrism and the Sovereign Nation

Border studies has to date not come to terms with the importance of speciesism inherent in contemporary constructions of sovereign nations, national borders, and dominant understandings of citizenship. Alan Smart and Josephine Smart suggest that border studies has largely ignored border crossings by non-​human lives and, in an effort to address this gap, they begin to contemplate non-​human border crossings.48 Such a consideration is indeed a small step toward a less anthropocentric approach to border studies. However, national borders themselves are impossible to understand without considering the importance of anthropocentrism within liberal humanistic systems of thought. As evidenced in the US narratives in this chapter, nonhuman animals and animality are frequently central to how nations, borders, and citizenship are imagined, performed and practiced. In A Companion to Border Studies, Brendan O’Leary compares the construction of political borders by nation-​states to a butcher’s dismemberment

47 48

Anzaldúa, “Now Let Us Shift,” 541. Alan Smart and Josephine Smart, “Biosecurity, Quarantine and Life across the Border,” in A Companion to Border Studies, eds. Thomas Wilson and Donnan Hastings (Hoboken, New Jersey: Willey—​Blackwell, 2012), 354.

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of a sheep’s body.49 However, liberal democratic nations do not simply make claims to territories willy-​nilly as they please. Bordermaking, in other words, is not always a top down process. Nations and borders need to be performed and legitimized continually to remain credible. Within liberal democracies, nationalism is one way to prop up a state’s claims of sovereignty over a territory, but moreover a nationalistic culture allows the state to legitimately control and dominate both its human and non-​human subjects. Likewise, a butcher does not merely dismember a sheep independently. In the case of the professional butcher, she lives in a culture that allows or even encourages nonhuman animals to be dismembered for human use. Otherwise, the butcher would lose her standing as a legitimate professional. In this chapter, nationalism and anthropocentrism have been shown to co-​articulate to construct common sense understandings of nations, borders, citizenship, race and humanness. In the logics of liberal democracy and Western humanism, more generally, nations are populated by rational citizens that have historically been human. The state, as practiced in recent centuries, thus relies on a distinction between human and non-​human. Moreover, sovereign nations make claims of power over geographic territories. Nation-​states also claim power over not only the rational citizens that legitimize their rule, but also all of the nonhuman lives and forms within a territory. In this context, non-​citizens, plants, nonhuman animals, and all other non-​human lives and forms are generally ranked and treated as inferior to citizens. It thus becomes possible to draw associations between different “inferior” groups to reconstruct them as less than human and enable their abuse, domination, and, in some cases, extermination. Indeed, the above analysis suggests that in the US the abuse of non-​humans and non-​ citizens is institutionalized as well as a common practice in the everyday lives of many citizens. Critical animal studies perspectives are beginning to call out the speciesism inherent in traditional understandings of nations, national borders, sovereignty, citizenship, and liberal democratic governance. As the world teeters on the brink of irreversible and catastrophic ecological changes, cas perspectives are demonstrating that many of the foundations of the nation state system of governance are deeply anthropocentric (and inherently violent). Liberal democracies are under threat of being transformed into new forms of government as states seek to securitize borders and control all the lives and forms within their claimed territories. It is time to look to other ways of living that do

49

Brendan O’Leary, “Partition,” in A Companion to Border Studies, eds. Thomas Wilson and Donnan Hastings (Hoboken, New Jersey: Willey-​Blackwell, 2012), 29–​47.

94 Bunyak not serve human interests at the expense of all the abundant lives and forms that people share this world with. 6

Chicana/​Ecofeminist Possibilities

Anzaldúa wrote in Now Let Us Shift: With awe and wonder, you look around, recognizing the preciousness of the earth, the sanctity of every human being on the planet, the ultimate unity and interdependence of all beings-​-​somos todos un paiz. Love swells in your body … linking you to everyone/​everything—​the aboriginals in Australia, the crows in the forest, the vast Pacific Ocean. You share a category of identity wider than any social position or racial label. This conocimiento motivates you to work actively to see that no harm comes to people, animals, ocean-​-​to take up spiritual activism and the work of healing. Te entregas a tu promesa to help your various cultures create new paradigms, new narratives. White nationalist misogynists, including the many lawmakers and enforcers discussed in this chapter, ascribe animality to groups of people based on their race, nationality, and gender. For instance, they suggest that Latinx migrants, as a racial group, lack cleanliness, purity, civility, and self-​control. It is clear that their nationalistic sentiments construct an imagined self that is a vulnerable white American citizen and threatening others that include migrants, refugees, women, and actual nonhuman animals. In echoing a sensibility that was commonplace in many indigenous ways of thinking, Karen Barad points out that the boundary making practices that distinguish “human” from less than human produce crucial materializing effects within systems of power.50 As categories of race, sexuality, gender, and species are constructed and hierarchized, patriotic white men are conceptualized as belonging at the top of the ladder and law enforcement officials are constructed as having a moral duty to deter immigration by any means necessary including the practices of caging children, family separations, and use of lethal force in questionable circumstances. The nation must be constantly protected to ensure that national, racial, and species borders are maintained, and white privilege upheld.

50

Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007).

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In resistance to white nationalism, humanists use animality to suggest specific, individual political opponents, such as Trump, lack certain allegedly “human” capacities, such as empathy or intelligence. Liberal humanists also suggest migrants should not be “treated like animals.” Although this chapter is not even close to a thorough account of these contested definitions of the “human,” in the limited examples presented above, humanists here construct themselves on a moral high ground with a sense of righteousness and as “better” “humans” than their political opponents. As has been discussed, humanist lawmakers also frequently cling to categories of citizenship and nationality in a largely bipartisan program of anti-​immigrant nationalism. Both white nationalists and their humanist critics fuel the ongoing anthropocentrism that dominates migration narratives in the US. The categories used to divide and oppress: race, gender, citizenship, nationality, and humanity are maintained in both systems. New stories and new acts of resistance are necessary in the face of such anthropocentrism, racism, name-​calling, and violence. Anzaldúa rejects nationalism of all forms when she declares “I’m a citizen of the universe. People talk about being proud to be American, Mexican, or Indian. We have grown beyond that. We are specks in this cosmic ocean.”51 She regrets that “we let color, class, and gender separate us from those who would be kindred spirits” as “the walls grow higher, the gulfs between us wider, the silences more profound.”52 Anzaldúa uses the concept of nos/​otras with a slash to represent the bridge used to bring together self and others as well as possible in troubling historical contexts. She describes the concept, “The Spanish word nosotras means ‘us.’ In theorizing insider/​outsider I write the word with a slash between nos (us) and otras (others). Today the division between the majority of ‘us’ and ‘them’ is still intact … But the future belongs to those who cultivate cultural sensitivities to differences and … carry us into a nosotras position.”53 Similarly, Keating points out that Anzaldúa “offers an alternative to binary self/​other constellations, a philosophy and praxis enabling us to acknowledge, bridge, and sometimes transform the distances between self and other.”54 Anzaldúa provides one vision for an imagined world where we practice building bridges, relationships, and kin while fostering difference through

51 52 53 54

Quoted in Keating, “ ‘I’m a Citizen of the universe.’ ” Gloria Anzaldúa, “La Prieta,” in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, eds. Anzaldúa, Gloria and Cherrie Moraga (Berkeley, CA: Third Woman Press, 1981), 229. Gloria Anzaldúa, Interviews/​Entrevistas, ed. AnaLouise Keating (New York, NY: Routledge, 2000). Keating, “ ‘I’m a Citizen of the universe.’ ”

96 Bunyak respect—​a world not yet realized and not possible if we cling to the old hierarchies such as humanity/​animality, male/​female, and culture/​nature. Humans do not, in this construction, sit on top of any hierarchy but rather are only a part of a larger interconnected world that is shared by diverse species, lives, and forms. Felicity Amaya Schaeffer suggests that altering widespread “destruction and violence against the earth, humans, and all life forms,” we must “slow down and listen to the spirit-​beings all around us” and become “utterly otherwise.”55 With this in mind, Schaeffer writes “When Anzaldúa notes that a gust of wind can remind us of ancient knowledges, she draws from Mayan cosmology that acknowledges the multiple presences that inhabit the land we stand on, pulling our sense of relationality toward the multidimensional beings and space/​times of the past-​present-​future that can be felt in one moment and in one place. We commune with nature-​animal-​object beings as metaphor but even more so to the extent that our very being and shape alchemically changes as we change the forces and matter all around us, in constant motion.”56 As with many other indigenous philosophies that recognize the interrelationships between storytelling and material “reality,” Schaeffer and Anzaldúa encourage living and communing with other humans, other animals, and all of nature according to principles of relationality, respect, and reciprocity. In rejecting both nationalism and anthropocentrism, a Chicana/​ecofeminist perspective may even suggest that humans, and the US government, do not possess legitimate authority to own lands or claim territories. Instead, nature, nonhuman animals, plants, and lands are conceptualized as having their own intrinsic purpose and embodied value. As Joy Harjo, the first American Indian Poet Laureate, writes “Everyone comes into the world with a job to do—​I don’t mean working for a company, a corporation—​we were all given gifts to share, even the animals, even the plants, minerals, clouds … all beings.”57 The divisions between human-​animal, citizen-​noncitizen, US-​Mexico require tremendous investment, effort, and violence to maintain. Without human exceptionalism, the current divisions would not be possible. In “El Mundo Zurdo,” Anzaldúa imagines a practice of coalition building with hopes of such a respectful, inclusive world: 55 56 57

Felicity Amaya Schaeffer, “Spirit Matters: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Cosmic Becoming across Human/​Nonhuman Borderlands,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 43, no. 4 (2018), 1008. Ibid, 1006. Joy Harjo, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings. (New York: W.W. Norton, 2013), 126.

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We are the queer groups, the people that don’t belong anywhere, not in the dominant world nor completely within our own respective cultures. Combined we cover so many oppressions. But the overwhelming oppression is the collective fact that we do not fit, and because we do not fit we are a threat. Not all of us have the same oppressions, but we empathize and identify with each other’s oppressions. We do not have the same ideology, nor do we derive similar solutions. Some of us are leftists, some of us practitioners of magic. Some of us are both. But these different affinities are not opposed to each other. In El Mundo Zurdo I with my own affinities and my people with theirs can live together and transform the planet.58 Chicana/​ecofeminism, consequently, advocates for all those seeking to have their differing ways of thinking-​being recognized and respected while critiquing binary hierarchical systems of categorization that continually rank human and nonhuman animals in reference to an apex defined as a white, male, hominoid, rational political citizen. We do not have to appeal to Western notions of the “human,” or the “animal,” to be able to foster and care for difference in our shared multispecies worlds—​we can transform what it means to be human and animal by using the knowledges we inherit from our past, the tools we have in the present, and our visions of the future.

References

Anzaldúa, Gloria. “La Prieta.” In This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Anzaldúa, Gloria and Cherrie Moraga, 220–​233. Berkeley, CA: Third Woman Press, 1981. Anzaldúa, Gloria. Interviews/​Entrevistas, edited by AnaLouise Keating. New York, NY: Routledge, 2000. Anzaldúa, Gloria. “Now Let Us Shift … the Path of Conocimiento … Inner Work, Public Acts.” In This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions of Transformation, edited by Gloria Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating, 540–​578. New York: Routledge, 2002. Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. Boggs, Colleen. Animalia Americana: Animal Representations and Biopolitical Subjectivity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.

58

Anzaldúa, “La Prieta,” 233.

98 Bunyak Calma, Justine. “America Is Closing Its Doors to Refugees Right When the World is Driving More and More to Flee.” Mother Jones, February 8, 2018. Carless, Will, and Michael Corey. “To Protect and Slur.” Reveal News, June 14, 2019. https://​www.revealnews.org/​article/​inside-​hate-​groups-​on-​facebook-​police-​officers-​trade-​racist-​memes-​conspiracy-​theories-​and-​islamophobia/​. Clinton, Bill. “State of the Union Address.” 1995. Devereaux, Ryan. “Border Patrol Agents Tried to Delete Racist and Obscene Facebook Posts. We Archived Them.” The Intercept, July 5, 2019. Epps, Douglas, and Rich Furman. “The ‘Alien Other’: A Culture of Dehumanizing Immigrants in the United States.” Social Work & Society 14, no. 2 (2016): 1–​14. Elfrink, Tim. “ ‘Mindless Murdering Savages’: Border Agent Used Slurs Before Allegedly Hitting Migrant with his Truck.” The Washington Post, May 20, 2019. Estévez-​Saá, Margarita, and Maria Jesus Lorenzo-​Modia. “The Ethics and Aesthetics of Eco-​caring: Contemporary Debates on Ecofeminism(s).” Women’s Studies 47, no.2 (2018): 123–​146. Fritze, John. “Trump Used Words Like ‘Invasion’ and ‘Killer’ to Discuss Immigrants at Rallies 500 Times: USA TODAY Analysis.” USA TODAY, August 8, 2019. https://​www. usatoday.com/​story/​news/​politics/​elections/​2019/​08/​08/​trump-​immigrants-​rhetoric-​criticized-​el-​paso-​dayton-​shootings/​1936742001/​. Gaard, Greta. “Toward a Queer Ecofeminism.” Hypatia 12, no. 1 (1997): 137–​156. Gaard, Greta. “Ecofeminism Revisited: Rejecting Essentialism and Re-​placing Species in a Material Feminist Environmentalism.” Feminist Formations 23, no. 2 (2011): 26–​53. Gemignani, Marco, and Yolanda Hernandez-​ Albujar. “Hate Groups Targeting Unauthorized Immigrants in the US: Discourses, Narratives, and Subjectivation Practices on Their Websites.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 38, no. 15 (2015): 2754–​2770. Golash-​Boza, Tonya. Deported: Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor and Global Capitalism. New York: nyu Press, 2015. Grabell, Michael, and Topher Sanders. “If You’re a Predator, It’s a Gold Mine.” Mother Jones, July 27, 2018. Johnson, Hank. “Rep. Johnson Questions Sec. Nielsen on Death of Child at Border.” Press Release. December 20th 2018. Harjo, Joy. Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings. New York: W.W. Norton, 2013. Hatzipanagos, Rachel. “How a Picture Turned a Sea of Humanity into an ‘Invading Army.’ ” The Washington Post. October 26, 2018. Heffernan, Virginia. “Is Trump Missing the Thing That Makes People Human?” Los Angeles Times. August 14, 2019. Heuman, Amy N., and Alberto González. “Trump’s Essentialist Border Rhetoric: Racial Identities and Dangerous Liminalities.” Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 47, no. 4 (2018): 326–​342.

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Hirschfeld Davis, Judy, and Emily Cochrane. “House Passes Senate Border Bill in Rare and Striking Setback for Pelosi.” The New York Times, June 28, 2019. Hoerner, Emily, and Rick Tulsky. “Cops Around the Country Are Posting Racist and Violent Comments on Facebook.” Injustice Watch, 2019, https://​www.injusticewatch.org/​interactives/​cops-​troubling-​facebook-​posts-​revealed/​. Holmes, Christina. Ecological Borderlands: Body, Nature, and Spirit in Chicana Feminism. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2016. Katz, Jonathan. “ ‘The Whole Facility’s Culture is Rotted from the Core’: What Alexandria Ocasio-​Cortez Saw Inside the El Paso Camps.” Mother Jones, July 2, 2019. Keating, AnaLouise. “ ‘I’m a Citizen of the Universe’: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Spiritual Activism as Catalyst for Social Change.” Feminist Studies 34, no. 1/​2 (2008): 53–​69. Kim, Joon K., Ernesto Sagás, and Karina Cespedes. “Genderacing Immigrant Subjects: ‘Anchor Babies’ and the Politics of Birthright citizenship.” Social Identities 24, no. 3 (2018): 312–​326. Kirk, Gwyn. “Ecofeminism and Chicano Environmental Struggles: Bridges across Gender and Race.” In Chicano Culture, Ecology, Politics: Subversive Kin, edited by D.G. Pena, 177–​200. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998. Malewitz, Jim. “Miller Facebook Post Compares Reguees to Rattlesnakes.” The Texas Tribune, November 19, 2015. Morin, Karen. “Wildspace: The Cage, the Supermax, and the Zoo.” In Critical Animal Geographies: Politics, intersections, and hierarchies in a multispecies world, edited by K. Gillespie and R.C. Collard, 73-​92. New York, Routledge, 2015. Nelson, Joe. “Yucaipa Mayor Apologizes Over Offensive Facebook Posts, But Muslim Advocacy Group Demands Resignation.” San Bernardino Sun, April 10, 2019. O’Leary, Brendan. “Partition.” In A Companion to Border Studies, edited by Thomas Wilson and Donnan Hastings, 29–​47. Hoboken, New Jersey: Willey-​Blackwell, 2012. Plumwood, Val. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1993. Plumwood, Val. “Decolonizing Relationships with Nature.” In The Post-​Colonial Studies Reader, edited by Bill Ashcroft, Helen Tiffen and Gareth Griffiths, 503–​506. London: Routledge, 2006. Schaeffer, Felicity Amaya. “Spirit Matters: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Cosmic Becoming across Human/​Nonhuman Borderlands.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 43, no. 4 (2018): 1005–​1029. Shapiro, Ashley R. “The Criminalization of the Immigration System: The Dehumanizing Impact of Calling a Person Illegal.” Richmond Public Interest Law Review 21 (2018): 117–​145. Shapiro, M. J. “Narrating the Nation, Unwelcoming the Stranger: Anti-​Immigration Policy in Contemporary America.” Alternatives 22, no. 1 (1997), 1–​34. Shilliday, Beth. “Roseanne Supporters Are Calling for HBO to Fire Bill Maher for Calling Trump an Orangutan.” Hollywood Life, May 29, 2018.

100 Bunyak Smart, Alan, and Josephine Smart. “Biosecurity, Quarantine and Life across the Border.” In A Companion to Border Studies, edited by Thomas Wilson and Donnan Hastings, 354. Hoboken, New Jersey: Willey-​Blackwell, 2012. Speri, Alice. “The FBI Has Quietly Investigated White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement.” The Intercept. January 31, 2017. Trump, Donald. “Presidential Announcement Speech.” June 16, 2015. http://​time.com/​ 3923128/​donald-​trump-​announcement-​speech/​. Trump, Donald. “Remarks by President Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference.” February 23, 2018. https://​www.whitehouse.gov/​briefings-​statements/​ remarks-​president-​trump-​conservative-​political-​action-​conference-​2/​. Trump, Donald. “Remarks by President Trump at a California Sanctuary State Roundtable.” May 16, 2018. https://​www.whitehouse.gov/​briefings-​statements/​ remarks-​president-​trump-​california-​sanctuary-​stateroundtable/​. Zaytoun, Kelli. “ ‘Now Let Us Shift’ the Subject: Tracing the Path and Posthumanist Implications of La Naguala/​The Shapeshifter in the Works of Gloria Anzaldua.” MELUS 40, no. 4 (2015): 69–​88.

­c hapter 3

“Like an Animal”

Tropes for Delegitimization Atsuko Matsuoka and John Sorenson Abstract Atsuko Matsuoka and John Sorenson examine two types of tropes, “like animals” and “treated like animals,” which commonly appear as accusation and complaint, or form of resistance, respectively, to gain understanding of how taken-​for-​granted human-​animal relationships influence border politics of the nation state and are used to oppress (im)migrants/​refugees. By using Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Animal Studies they show how the dominant maintain power and the less powerful challenge the dominant discourse and practice by using ideas about nonhuman animals and reveal the intersectional character of power and domination. They contend that an analysis of speciesism is a “must” to address injustice against (im)migrants/​ refugees and examination of border politics. Addressing justice must consider trans-​ species social justice.

Keywords speciesism –​trans-​species social justice –​intersectionality –​critical discourse analysis –​ critical animal studies

1

Introduction

To study language is to study power. In this chapter we investigate two common tropes concerning nonhuman animals in order to examine how speciesism shapes the border politics of the nation-​state and the exclusion of certain human migrants. The first trope constitutes an accusation, involving the characterization of a human as another type of animal. The second is a complaint/​ form of resistance against being treated like another type of animal. We focus on how such lexical and rhetorical practices are directed at immigrants but argue that investigating these figures of speech reveals important points for

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004440654_005

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a broader understanding how power operates. Our approach is informed by critical discourse analysis and critical animal studies. Critical discourse analysis examines the meaning, rhetoric, and style of texts and talks, identifying power relations operating through them; this approach takes a clear political stance, focusing on dominance and inequality to show how power, control, and relations of inequality are normalized.1 A key function of dominant discourse is to manufacture consent and acceptance of hierarchies of power. Ideology is a major means of manufacturing consent and it is important to investigate common sense assumptions that are implicit in conventional linguistic interactions and practices; these embedded assumptions are ideologies that legitimize existing power relations.2 Teun van Dijk identified the objective of critical discourse analysis as examination of how powerful groups control public discourse, how such discourse controls the views and actions of less powerful groups, and the consequences of this control, such as social inequality.3 Examining the use of common tropes of being, or being treated, “like an animal” and taking critical animal studies as a theoretical basis, we reveal how racist and speciesist ideologies intersect in discursive power. Critical animal studies presents a corrective to anthropocentric analyses of ideology by recognizing nonhuman animals as beings with agency, personhood, and subjectivity, whose lives are intrinsically valuable, and respects their autonomy and dignity.4 Explicitly activist, it rejects not only cruel treatment of other animals but their use as resources for human ends, opposes their systemic and institutionalized exploitation, and supports efforts to liberate them from oppressive conditions. Importantly, adopting an intersectional perspective to various forms of exploitation, critical animal studies sees protecting the interests of nonhuman animals as a matter of trans-​species social justice: “consideration 1 Norman Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis: Papers in the Critical Study of Language (Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1995): 1–​26; Norman Fairclough, “Critical Discourse Analysis and the Marketization of Public Discourse: The Universities,” Discourse & Society 4, no. 2 (1993): 133–​143; Teun van Dijk, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” in Handbook of Discourse Analysis, eds. Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi Hamilton (Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 2001): 249–​254. Gilbert Weiss and Ruth Wodak, Critical Discourse Analysis: Theory and Interdisciplinarity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002): 1–​29. 2 Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 70–​83. 3 Van Dijk, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” 355. 4 For critical animal studies, see Anthony J. ii Nocella et al. eds. Defining Critical Animal Studies: An Intersectional Social Justice Approach (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2014), xvi-​xxxvi; Atsuko Matsuoka, and John Sorenson, eds., Critical Animal Studies: Toward Trans-​ species Social Justice (London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018), 1–​17; John Sorenson and Atsuko Matsuoka eds., Dog’s Best Friend?: Rethinking Canid-​Human Relations (Montreal and Kingston: McGill & Queen University Press, 2019).

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of interests of all animals (including humans) in order to achieve institutional conditions free from oppression and domination.”5 For the purpose of this chapter, we searched media texts addressing “immigrants” and “animals” since 2010 and found two major common tropes regarding nonhuman animals: i.e., accusation and complaint/​resistance. We selected a text that forms an accusation, which shows how more powerful groups control public discourse and another text that embodies the complaint/​resistance trope and demonstrates how less powerful groups counter dominant discourse. We analyzed these texts using Van Dijk’s critical discourse analysis approach. 1.1 “These aren’t People. These are Animals.” Among the many controversies created by the 45th US President Donald Trump’s angry, hyperbolic rhetoric was the one that followed his May 16, 2018 comment at a meeting with California sheriffs and mayors on immigration, in which he said of some immigrants: “These aren’t people. These are animals.” We selected the transcript of this meeting to examine the accusation trope to understand how powerful groups control public discourse, partly because the social and political context of the meeting is readily apparent (a statement by the president to other government figures, concerning a controversial issue) and because it is particularly well-​known, its continuing resonance evidenced by the fact that over a year later strong reactions persist. According to Van Dijk, understanding control of public discourse requires examination of context. He defines context as “the mentally represented structure of those properties of social situation that are relevant for the production or comprehension of discourse.”6 This includes time, place, participants, their social or institutional roles, their knowledge, goals, opinions, and ideologies. The more one controls what Van Dijk calls these “categories,” the more control one has over discourse and thus more power. This meeting was held in the White House Cabinet Room on May 16th, 2018. The timing is important. In March 2018, the US Department of Justice (i.e., the Trump administration) sued the state of California, alleging that California state legislation, in particular the trust Act, the truth Act, and Senate Bill 54, violated the Constitution by limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities. At the time of the White House meeting, the case was still at the lower court. The Trump administration alleged that these laws prevented state and local law 5 Atsuko Matsuoka and John Sorenson, “Social Justice beyond Human Beings: Trans-​Species Social Justice,” in Animals in Social Work: Why and How They Matter, ed. Thomas Ryan (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 70. 6 Van Dijk, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” 355.

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enforcement agencies from using their resources related to federal immigration matters. Senate Bill 54 was introduced in response to Trump’s Executive Order to eliminate sanctuary cities, i.e., those which limit cooperation with federal immigration law enforcement. This political context is important in reading the transcript of the meeting. Participants included mayors, sheriffs, and local leaders from California, plus Attorney General Jeff Sessions, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Neilsen, and Acting Deputy of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ice) Thomas Homan. They were either invited by the President’s office or members of the Trump administration and are members of the elite because of their positions and roles and they were special types of elite participants who were praised by the President in his introduction, as seen in the quote below. Trump characterized them as courageous and brave for opposing California’s laws.7 This set the context for the discourse produced in this meeting. The transcript began with the President’s remarks.



the president Good afternoon. I’m greatly honored to be here with the courageous mayors and sheriffs and local leaders from across the state of California. A great state. Each of you has bravely resisted California’s deadly and unconstitutional sanctuary state laws. You’ve gone through a lot, too, although it’s becoming quite popular what you’re doing. A law that forces the release of illegal immigrant criminals, drug dealers, gang members, and violent predators into your communities. California’s law provides safe harbor to some of the most vicious and violent offenders on Earth, like ms-​ 13 gang members putting innocent men, women, and children at the mercy of these sadistic criminals.

Trump’s introductory statement is a good example of how the powerful control public discourse. The meeting was set by the President’s office and the country’s most powerful politician began by clearly determining the topic, thus shaping the context of the discourse that emerged from it. Moreover, the statement indicates that only selected participants, those who opposed

7 White House, “What You Need to Know About the Violent Animals of MS-​13,” May 21, 2018. https://​www.govinfo.gov/​content/​pkg/​DCPD-​201800338/​html/​DCPD-​201800338.htm.

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California’s sanctuary state laws, were there. In this sense the knowledge, opinions, and experiences they brought and the actions they took, or would take, were already controlled. The context of the emerging discourse was clearly fixed for the powerful to be in control; the meeting ensured that discourse production would be in line with what the President and his office intended. Van Dijk points out the importance of examining structures of talk in addition to content in investigating control of discourse. Vital to this is who controls the topic and speech acts.8 Throughout this meeting, participants’ speech acts were uniform. Quote 2 below is from Trump’s talk just before he introduced the speakers. The context was enforced by identifying the topic, alluding to acceptable opinions and ideologies, and constructing “we vs them,” wherein “we” are good and legal. The structure of each participant’s talk was controlled not only by speech acts but also by the topic of the meeting, as it was determined by the host and enforced by the President before they spoke. We have the worst laws anywhere in the world for illegal immigration. There’s no place in the world that has laws like we do. Catch and release—​ think of it. We catch somebody, we find out they’re criminals. We end up having to release them, and they go into our society … We all remember the tragic case of Marilyn Farris who was murdered by an illegal immigrant who had been arrested six times prior to breaking into Marilyn’s home, raping her and savagely beating her to death with a hammer. And this is one example, but there are many examples. I’ve been saying it for a long time. We cannot let this butchery happen in America. The state of California’s attempts to nullify federal law have sparked a rebellion by patriotic citizens who want their families protected and their borders secured. They want border security. They want protection. That’s what we’re all about. We’re about protection, both from international and from, frankly, people crossing our border illegally. I will now go around the room and ask these incredible mayors and officials to discuss their brave stand on behalf of their constituents. They are very popular, they are very well respected. These are the top people. And they are people that other people listen to, and they listen to them from around the country. (Emphasis is ours.)

8 Van Dijk, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” 356.

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Trump’s introduction was followed by talks by seventeen invited mayors, sheriffs, and others in power. Each talk began only when Trump introduced a speaker and the pattern was uniform. First, speakers thanked the President for having them and for his work. They reiterated that their and his actions were supported by their people, echoing what Trump said in the above quote. In turn, Trump thanked and praised each speaker’s work. For example:



speaker Thank you, Mr. President. the president Thank you. speaker I just want to start off by saying, on behalf of everyone here, thank you for inviting us. There are more people in California, I think, that you know who support what you’re doing, who believe in your agenda in securing our borders. Everywhere in between, from San Francisco to Los Angeles, you have millions of people who want to see that our borders are secure and that our neighborhoods are safe. So we want to thank you for what you’re doing. the president Thank you.

Both the pattern and content of each speech were consistent. Repeatedly, speakers described their experiences and emphasized, first, lack of communication between federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies due to changes in state laws that ostensibly threatened public safety and, second, that their actions, and those of the President, were supported by their constituents, including immigrant communities. No contradictory experiences were presented. The structure of the talk, i.e., control of the topic and of the speech acts, legitimized the discourse produced. However, when Trump stated “These aren’t people. These are animals,” the speech sequence veered from this pattern. Trump made this infamous statement after Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims expressed that California’s Sanctuary laws had caused “us all kinds of turmoil.” She said that before these changes: it was perfect because we didn’t have to take our time, with our staff, to do anything. ice was in there doing their work in a safe, controlled, environment … But now ice is the only law enforcement agency that cannot use our databases to find the bad guys. They cannot come in and talk to people in our jail, unless they reach a certain threshold. They can’t do all kinds of things that other law enforcement agencies can do. And it’s really put us in a very bad position.

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In response, Trump said:

the president It’s a disgrace. Okay? It’s a disgrace. sheriff mims It’s a disgrace.

Here we see Trump and Mims acting in concert to support a main claim of the discourse—​California’s sanctuary laws interfere with their work and security.





the president And we’re using that, and we’re working hard, and I think it will all come together, because people want it to come together. It’s so ridiculous. The concept that we’re even talking about is ridiculous. We’ll take care of it, Margaret. We’ll win. sheriff mims Thank you. There could be an ms-​13 member I know about—​if they don’t reach a certain threshold, I cannot tell ice about it. the president We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in—​and we’re stopping a lot of them—​but we’re taking people out of the country. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals. And we’re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that’s never happened before. And because of the weak laws, they come in fast, we get them, we release them, we get them again, we bring them out. It’s crazy. The dumbest laws—​as I said before, the dumbest laws on immigration in the world. So we’re going to take care of it, Margaret. We’ll get it done. We’re going to ask that man right there, because that man can do it. [Laughter.] Right now he’s the most important man in the room. Kevin can do it. (Emphasis ours.)

Taking turns, Mims and Trump built consensus; what the Sheriff raised was followed up by the President and generalized. Trump introduced, next, House Majority (in 2018, now Minority) Leader, Republican Kevin McCarthy to elaborate on legal action the Trump administration was taking against California, emphasizing that this action had local support, such as that provided by the invitees to the meeting. Here, another powerful politician reinforced what Trump had been saying. The consistency of the information shared created an illusion that all agreed on what was said and that what was said was credible.

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Trump’s statement in quote 5 echoed his expression of “catch and release” in quote 2 above. Although here he did not directly characterize immigrants as “animals,” the expression “catch and release” is a common term used in sport fishing and implies hierarchical relationships among the desirable and the undesirable, like those between humans and other animals. Otto Santa Ana examined anti-​immigrant metaphors in the Los Angeles Times and argued that animal metaphors such as “devour the weak and helpless” or “catch and release,” as found in Trump’s speech, reinforce a hierarchy of humans, white vs racialized and citizens vs immigrants.9 As subordinated beings, nonhuman animals exist in discourse as a category that also provides space to include a wide variety of undesirable humans. As Garrett Bunyak notes in ­chapter 2 of this volume, ecofeminist theorists have pointed out that these subaltern identity categories are mutually-​reinforcing and solidify the power of the dominant group.10 In Trump’s speech, the rhetorical use of animals was intended to create negative images of “people coming into the country” and shape negative discourse toward California’s sanctuary laws. It was a tool to delegitimize (im)migrants and laws protecting them. But it also galvanized resistance. There were immediate outcries at what many understood as racism and objections to Trump’s “use of government power to dehumanize nonwhite bodies”;11 outrage on Twitter was reported even after 11 months.12 Trump’s use of centuries-​old rhetoric of presenting undesirable others as nonhuman animals seemed to capture people’s minds and characterization of certain immigrants as “animals” continued to be seen as the most blatant sign of his virulent racism. For example, Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke likened Trump’s remarks to rhetoric heard in Nazi Germany.13 9 10 11

12 13

Otto Santa Ana, “ ‘Like an Animal I Was Treated’: Anti-​Immigrant Metaphor in US Public Discourse,” Discourse & Society 10, no.2 (1999), 201. Garrett Bunyak, “Inferiority by Association: Animals, Migrants, and Chicana/​Ecofeminist Possibilities,” in “Like an Animal”: Critical Animal Studies Approaches to Borders, Displacement, and Othering, eds. Natalie Khazaal and Núria Almiron (Leiden: Brill, 2020). Jason Sattler, “Donald Trump is Using His Power to Dehumanize People Who Aren’t White. It Can Be Fatal,” USA Today, June 14, 2018, https://​www.usatoday.com/​story/​ opinion/​2018/​06/​14/​donald-​trump-​immigration-​puerto-​rico-​policies-​lethal-​nonwhites-​ column/​697856002/​. Alexandra Ma, “Twitter Freaks Over an Old Clip Where Trump Appears to Call Asylum Seekers ‘Animals’—​But They’re Wrong,” Business Insider, April 6, 2019, https://​www.businessinsider.com/​trump-​clip-​viral-​on-​twitter-​ms13-​animals-​2019-​4. Robert Mackey, “Trump’s Rhetoric Echoes Nazi Germany, Beto O’Rourke Says, Accurately,” The Intercept, April 5, 2019. https://​theintercept.com/​2019/​04/​05/​beto-​orourke-​trump-​ nazi-​germany/​.

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Trump’s “immigrants are animals” rhetoric had contemporary European counterparts as well. A few examples will suffice. At a 2015 rally, French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen compared asylum seekers coming to Europe to the fourth-​century “barbarian invasion” of Rome.14 In 2015, addressing the Calais crisis, UK Prime Minister David Cameron told itv News about “a swarm of migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean seeking a better life, wanting to come to Britain.”15 In 2016 the Danish right-​wing government and anti-​ immigration Danish People’s Party proposed moving migrants with criminal records and those who had been denied asylum but could not be deported to Lindholm Island, formerly a laboratory for the state veterinary institute’s research on contagious nonhuman animal diseases. Acknowledging that this could contravene international law, Danish People’s Party representative Martin Henriksen nevertheless praised the plan as “a signal to the world that Denmark is not attractive” for migrants.16 In Austria, in April, 2019 Christian Schilcher, deputy mayor of Braunau am Inn, birthplace of Adolf Hitler, was forced to resign because of his poem “The Town Rat” that compared immigrants to rats and warned against the danger of mixing cultures. The poem appeared in a publication of the anti-​immigration Freedom Party, which was founded in the 1950s by former Nazi ss members.17 This rhetoric did not go uncriticized. For example, the Refugee Council of UK called Cameron’s comment “irresponsible” and “dehumanising.”18 As for “The Town Rat,” even conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who had partnered with the Freedom Party, described it as “abhorrent, inhuman, and deeply racist.”19 These critiques condemned dehumanizing rhetoric but did not examine how power operated 14 15 16

17 18 19

rt News, “Le Pen Compares Migrant Influx to Barbarian Invasion of Rome,” September 15, 2015, https://​www.rt.com/​news/​315466-​le-​pen-​migrant-​barbarian-​invasion/​. bbc, “David Cameron: ‘Swarm’ of Migrants Crossing Mediterranean,” July 30, 2015, https://​www.bbc.com/​news/​av/​uk-​politics-​33714282/​david-​cameron-​swarm-​of-​migrants -​crossing-​mediterranean. cbc Radio, “Denmark Treating Migrants Like ‘Inferior Race’ by Sending Them to Remote Island: MP,” December 7, 2018, https://​www.cbc.ca/​radio/​asithappens/​as-​it-​happens-​ thursday-​edition-​1.4935124/​denmark-​treating-​migrants-​like-​inferior-​race-​by- ​sending-​ them-​to-​remote-​island-​mp-​1.4935751. David Brennan, “Politician from Hitler’s Hometown ‘Did Not Want to Insult’ with Poem Comparing Migrants to Rats,” Newsweek, April 23, 2019, https://​www.newsweek.com/​ austria-​racist-​poem-​fpo-​adolf-​hitler-​migration-​christian-​schilcher-​1403565. bbc, “David Cameron.” Associated Press, “Official in Hitler’s Birthplace Quits over Poem Comparing Migrants to Rats,” Ottawa Citizen, April 23, 2019, https://​ottawacitizen.com/​news/​world/​official -​in-​hitlers-​birthplace-​quits-​over-​poem-​comparing-​migrants-​to-​rats/​wcm/​51a9ec7b -​3ae6-​46af-​8d37-​c7a1bd4f63d2.

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through its use. Let us briefly look at other common strategies to delegitimize (im)migrants. As evinced by Cameron’s comments, racist depictions typically emphasize the threat migrants and refugees pose, their overwhelming numbers, characterized as an invasion or onslaught. A 2017 United Nations University workshop in Bellagio examined media coverage of migration and noted that depictions of overwhelming numbers of migrants entering Europe misrepresented the fact that most refugees remain in non-​European countries and that, in global context, those trying to reach Europe “represented neither a deluge nor a flood, but rather a stream.”20 The workshop noted that reports concentrating on the volume of refugees dehumanized them and contributed to alarmism and xenophobia.21 Another key theme concerns their foreign character that cannot be assimilated, as in the case of “The Town Rat.” Associations with rats and vermin are common, connoting dirt, disease, and contamination. Migrants and refugees are associated with nonhuman animals, alien others who are considered abject and repulsive, and whose deaths are acceptable, as the Introduction to this volume shows. Such rhetorical tools of power consistently figure as part of discursive and social practices of determining who is owed justice and who is not. As Bunyak observes in his chapter for this volume, anthropocentrism is crucial in determining who belongs in the imagined nation, as nonhuman animals and various subordinated categories of humans are equated and devalued. Discursive practices are conditions of worldview control and lead to social consequences.22 According to O’Rourke, speaking about Trump’s comments above, such consequences include hate crimes, violence, and threats against Muslims, deportation of mothers who sought sanctuary in the US, and imprisonment of their children.23 Discursive practices such as the rhetoric of invasion inspires violence. For example, in November 2018, white supremacist Robert Bowers killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue after posting comments about an “invasion” of migrants on right-​wing media sites, warning that Jews were trying to destroy the white race through immigration.24 Meanwhile, those 20 21 22 23 24

Rebecca Brubaker and Parvati Nair, Surges and Swarms A Conversation on Responsible Coverage of Migration (United Nations University, October, 2018), 7, https://​i.unu.edu/​ media/​gcm.unu.edu/​attachment/​4356/​Bellagio-​web-​03ix18.pdf. Brubaker and Nair, Surges and Swarms, 8–​9. Van Dijk, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” 354–​355. Mackey, “Trump’s Rhetoric Echoes Nazi Germany.” Lois Beckett, “Pittsburgh Shooting: Suspect Railed Against Jews and Muslims on Site Used by ‘Alt-​Right,’ ” The Guardian, October 27, 2018, https://​www.theguardian.com/​us-​news/​ 2018/​oct/​27/​pittsburgh-​shooting-​suspect-​antisemitism.

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who dare to help migrants and refugees are criminalized. For example, after an Arizona jury refused to convict humanitarian aid volunteer Scott Warren for providing water and food to migrants crossing the desert from Mexico, federal prosecutors announced their intent to retry him.25 In 2017, the European Union reduced its coast guard patrols in the Mediterranean, limiting them to areas far from where most shipwrecks are known to occur. Italy cut rescue programs that had saved thousands of lives and has charged activists who rescue migrants at sea.26 Italy’s far-​right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini denounced rescuers as “accomplices, potential murderers, criminals,” and a “danger to national security.”27 Thus, actions countering the dominant discourse of treating immigrants “like animals,” were met with oppressive dominant power. The rhetoric of invasion and nonhuman animals forms the discursive practice of othering, which sustains domination and renders mistreatment acceptable. Next, we explore further how the “animal” trope is deployed as a tool of discursive power and how we can oppose this power after gaining a better understanding of the complaint/​resistance trope first. 1.2 “We Were Treated Like Animals” Here we turn to consideration of the second trope, which takes the form of complaint/​resistance. To discuss this, we chose a text, “14 times the Trump Administration has treated Immigrants like ‘animals,’ ” posted on the blog of America’s Voice (a liberal non-​profit organization founded in 2008 to support immigration reform for full civil, labour, and political rights for immigrants and their families, not to be confused with right-​wing America’s Voice News). The text was posted on May 21, 2018, within a week of Trump’s “These are animals” statement and as a direct response to it. We selected this text for several reasons. First, as Santa Ana notes: “What makes discourse analysis critical is its focus on real-​world problems of injustice.”28 Critical 25 26

27 28

Bob Ortega, “Prosecutors to Retry Volunteer Worker Who Aided Migrants,” CNN, July 2, 2019, https://​www.cnn.com/​2019/​07/​02/​us/​scott-​warren-​migrant-​humanitarian-​prosecution-​ invs/​index.html. Zach Campbell, “Abandoned at Sea,” The Intercept, April 1, 2017, https://​theintercept.com/​ 2017/​04/​01/​europe-​keeps-​its-​rescue-​ships-​far-​from-​the-​coast-​of-​libya-​where-​thousands-​of-​ refugees-​have-​drowned/​; Catarina Demony, “Italy under Fire over Charges Against Migrant Rescue Volunteer,” Reuters, June 28, 2019, https://​www.reuters.com/​article/​us-​portugal-​italy-​ rescue/​italy-​under-​fire-​over-​charges-​against-​migrant-​rescue-​volunteer-​idUSKCN1TT1IF. Al Jazeera, “Sea-​Watch Hails Italian Court’s Decision to Free Carola Rackete,” July 3, 2019, https://​www.aljazeera.com/​news/​europe/​2019/​07/​sea-​watch-​hails-​italian-​court-​decision-​ free-​carola-​rackete-​190703070005678.html. Otto Santa Ana, Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse (Austin, TX: University of Austin Press, 2002), 16.

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discourse analysis addresses problems people actually encounter and this text reported unjust incidents that reflected Trump’s rhetorical construction “immigrants are animals.” Second, the post’s timeliness placed it in the same political situation as the President’s meeting where immigration issues and national identities were used as rhetorical tools to maintain dominant power and white racism. However, the context differed, as it focused on people facing the consequences of Trump’s policies. Third, it is useful to examine how a less powerful group counters dominant discourse as this text was a blog written by a grassroots organization to counteract the discourse produced by Trump’s meeting. The excerpt below describes the context. The text’s location was on the website of a grassroot organization, America’s Voice. It notes the time, what happened since Trump’s use of the trope, and the organization’s interpretations of the situation not only since his remark but from the time Trump came into power:29 Last week, Donald Trump referred to immigrants as “animals,” a comment which has been criticized by a wide range of advocates and commentators for its dehumanization. While apologists have tried to parse what Trump actually meant by the comment, the scary fact is that the Trump Administration treats immigrants like animals, period. We’ve seen it every day since the inception of this White House, and the Administration continues to find ways to expand its reach and power on immigration. The Trump Administration has treated immigrants scarily inhumanely, and below are just some of the ways. (Bold and links are original.) The structure of the text is another key to investigate control of discourse.30 The statements above and below are good examples of how it was done. The statements were linked to online documents which validated their arguments; also linked were editorials and columns from major mainstream US media that criticized Trump’s rhetoric. After a short introduction, America’s Voice listed 14 incidents from various states where people faced mistreatment by the Trump administration. Each situation was noted by a heading highlighting the situation, followed by a synopsis of what people faced. Each heading was linked to online news or reports that discussed the incidents in more detail. For example: 29 30

America’s Voice, “14 Times the Trump Administration Has Treated Immigrants Like ‘Animals,’ ” May 21, 2014, https://​americasvoice.org/​blog/​trump-​treats-​immigrants-​like-​ animals/​. Van Dijk, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” 356–​359.

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–​ Border Patrol detains two US citizen women for speaking Spanish (Montana): the two women were detained outside of a Montana gas station for forty-​five minutes after doing nothing wrong. The agent said on video that he wanted to see their id s because they were speaking Spanish—​a seeming violation of cbp’s policy on not profiling people based on race or ethnicity … –​ ice tries to frame Dreamer as being a gang member (Washington): Daniel Medina Ramirez, a Dreamer with active daca status, was picked up as a collateral arrest when his father was detained. Even though Daniel had his papers, ice stripped him of daca status, pretended that he was a gang member because he had tattoos, and put him in detention for more than a month. A federal judge later ruled that ice was lying when it claimed Daniel was gang-​ affiliated.31 (Bold and links are original.)



The style and structure of the text took the format of a list of facts, providing information and links to media reports, intended to show that immigrants’ experiences constituted mistreatment by the authorities. America’s Voice is a grassroots organization, without institutional authority like that of the President and other participants in the May 16 meeting; here, “America’s voice” is presented as the voices of ordinary Americans. The text was presented as objective, describing people’s experiences, supported by reports to provide credibility, and allowing readers to form their opinions. It resisted Trump’s “they are animals” discourse by presenting experiences of people who were not gang members but were treated inhumanely. The complaint/​resistance trope, “treated like animals,” was used not only to protest individual treatment, but also institutional violence toward racialized others. The incidents happened in various states, including California, signaling that they were not isolated events but systemic, the result of policies and political decisions. The incidents showed that the Trump administration, federal agencies, and law enforcement offices/​officers exercised their power in an unjustifiable manner. America’s Voice’s blog describes incidents of violence, not all direct physical violence, but practices which harm individuals and families. The incidents depicted people’s powerlessness under the Trump administration and the style and structure of the text created a discursive space in which readers were encouraged to question unlawful actions inflicted by the authorities in the name of the

31

America’sVoice, “14Times theTrump Administration HasTreated Immigrants Like ‘Animals,’ ” May 21, 2014, https://​americasvoice.org/​blog/​trump-​treats-​immigrants-​like-​animals/​.

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law, and question dominant discourse presented by powerful groups. While Trump’s assertion that “they are animals” was intended to justify repression, America’s Voice used the trope “treated like animals” as a form of complaint/​ resistance through which less powerful groups contested their marginalization within a dominant discourse. The trope is widely used to contest unjust treatment of migrants. Just to name a few in recent years: African men held for immigration violations at a Texas detention camp were “ ‘treated like … animal[s]‌’: pepper-​sprayed, beaten, shackled, held in solitary confinement, denied medical care, and kept in filthy conditions like a ‘chicken coop,’ as well as being verbally abused as ‘monkeys, animals … and terrorists.’ ”32 Migrants held at centers in Arizona,33 Illinois, and Wisconsin made similar complaints of being “treated like animals.”34 The trope “treated like animals” is a common form of complaint/​resistance concerning unjust refugee situations; here we list examples from Europe and Asia. As people fled war in Iraq and Syria, the bbc found migrants “treated like animals” in a Hungarian camp near the Serbian border.35 The bbc also quoted the emergency director of Human Rights Watch who observed people kept like “cattle in pens” in “abysmal” conditions “only fit for animals.”36 The following year, Luxembourg’s foreign minister Jean Asselborn called for Hungary’s expulsion from the European Union for treating asylum seekers “worse than wild animals” as its right-​wing government whipped up xenophobic fears.37 Noor Ilyas, a Rohingya refugee in southern Bangladesh, described his fear that “we will become like animals if we stay in these camps” with limited food, no 32

33

34

35 36 37

Texas A&M University, “ ‘I Was Treated Like an Animal’ Abuses Against African Detainees at the West Texas Detention Facility,” School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic, March 22, 2018, https://​law.utexas.edu/​wp-​content/​uploads/​sites/​11/​2018/​03/​2018-​03-​ IC-​WTDF-​Report.pdf. Pamela Ren Larson, “ ‘They Treated Us Like We Are Animals:’ ICE Drops More Migrants at Bus Station as Churches Are Overloaded,” USA Today, December 28, 2018, https://​www. usatoday.com/​story/​news/​2018/​12/​27/​ice-​drops-​off-​migrants-​phoenix-​greyhound-​bus-​ station/​2429545002/​. Ashlee Rezin, “ ‘They Treat People Like They’re Animals’: Dreamer Released after ICE Detains Him,” Chicago Sun-​Times, February 1, 2018, https://​chicago.suntimes.com/​news/​ they-​treat-​people-​like-​theyre-​animals-​dreamer-​released-​after-​ice-​detains-​him/​; Maria Verza, “Overcrowding, Abuse Seen at Mexico Migrant Detention Center,” Associated Press News, June 16, 2019, https://​www.apnews.com/​cae4919e5d5d4d6eb280785618dfa865. bbc, “David Cameron.” bbc News, “Migrant Crisis: People Treated ‘Like Animals’ in Hungary Camp,” September 11, 2015, https://​www.bbc.com/​news/​world-​europe-​34216883. Matthew Weaver and Patrick Kingsley, “Expel Hungary from EU for Hostility to Refugees, Says Luxembourg,” The Guardian, September 13, 2016, https://​www.theguardian.com/​ world/​2016/​sep/​13/​expel-​hungary-​from-​eu-​for-​hostility-​to-​refugees-​says-​luxembourg.

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rights, no education for children and loss of religion.38 Filipino refugees held by the Malaysian Immigration Department complained of being treated “like animals” as they were kept in “cramped … filthy” conditions, verbally abused, denied medical treatment, and fed “stale and burned food good for swines” before being deported.39 The clear message is that migrants/​refugees have been abused and received treatment that is inappropriate for their status as humans, thus outrageous, unjustifiable, even unthinkable. Unfortunately, these critiques do not stop such unjust treatment, nor do they expose its roots. A critical animal studies perspective allows us to dig deeper into these oppressive practices of power. 2

Dehumanization and Animalization

Just as being characterized as “like an animal” is considered an ultimate insult, so is a complaint about being treated “like an animal” a declaration of one’s ontological significance. To receive such abuse and miserable treatment is to be removed from what one considers one’s proper place in a speciesist hierarchical system and denied privileges associated with human status. These tropes act as moral filters to determine which human is deserving of justice and the protection of the state. Speciesism’s moral exclusion of nonhuman animals provides a template for excluding other humans from the national borders. However, the reason why such abuse is considered appropriate or acceptable for other animals remains unexplained, simply existing as a given. The “treated like an animal” trope is an indictment of brutality but one that we only reveal halfway. We do not indict the system of violence, only the mistreatment of certain victims. Complaints about being “treated like an animal” tacitly acknowledge that nonhuman animals are treated badly. If nonhumans were considered individual beings deserving of justice and treated with compassion and respect, the complaint/​resistance trope could not work. This shows that the complaint/​ resistance trope is an integral part of the discourse and practice of human

38 39

Noor Ilyas, “I Am a Rohingya Refugee: We Will Become Like Animals if We Stay in These Camps,” Guardian, August 27, 2018, ttps://​www.theguardian.com/​world/​2018/​aug/​27/​ i-​am-​a-​rohingya-​refugee-​we-​will-​become-​like-​animals-​if-​we-​stay-​in-​these-​camps. Jerry Choong, “ ‘We’re Treated Like Animals’: Filipino Refugees Reveal Sordid Condition in Immigration Dept Detention,” Malay Mail, July 4, 2019. https://​www.malaymail.com/​ news/​malaysia/​2019/​07/​04/​were-​treated-​like-​animals-​filipino-​refugees-​reveal-​sordid-​ condition-​in-​immi/​1768363

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domination that we humans readily accept and maintain. While we may deplore the brutal treatment that (im)migrants and refugees suffer, the rhetorical structure that shapes complaints of injustice nevertheless reinforces the speciesist hierarchy that serves to legitimize their own oppression and victimization of other animals. The tropes of being, or being treated, “like animals,” work effectively both to support dominant discourse to oppress (im) migrants as others and to ineffectively contest oppressive practices by powerful groups, because of another layer of oppressive discourse that exists in relation to nonhuman animals. Speciesist human-​nonhuman relations are omnipresent, and given this, become invisible within oppressive socio-​political and economic structures, which exclude certain migrants and maintain national borders. We must dig deeper, not stop halfway, as partial excavation fails to expose the fundamental form of oppression involved in being treated “like an animal.” Oppression is based on a conviction that there is a fundamental ontological and ethical divide between humans and other animals. Placing human others closer to nonhuman others uses tactics such as dehumanization and animalization. David Livingstone Smith maintains that the potency of dehumanizing rhetoric lies in its assertion that other humans are sub-​human, that they are human only in outward, physical form but lack some essential quality that makes them eligible for ethical consideration and equitable treatment.40 Dehumanization allows people to deviate from accepted norms about how other humans should be treated and to engage in otherwise-​deplorable behaviour by changing the status of their victims. Whereas dehumanization can involve depiction of humans as objects or machines, here we consider only a particular form of dehumanization, in which humans are depicted as nonhuman animals. Defining dehumanization as animalization is somewhat misleading because it overlooks the fact that humans are an animal species. Nevertheless, this convenient term reflects how depicting certain humans as nonhuman animals excludes them from the sphere of ethical concern. Because the victims are characterized as being of lesser value, as nonhuman animals, they can be used instrumentally and mistreatment and violence toward them come to be considered acceptable. Wulf Hund, Charles Mills, and Sylvia Sebastiani examine a specific form of animalization that depicts humans as apes and monkeys, which they define as simianization.41 Simianization has been particularly 40 41

David Livingstone Smith, Less Than Human: Why We demean, enslave and exterminate others (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011). Wulf Hund, Charles W. Mills and Sylvia Sebastiani, Simianization: Apes, Gender, Class and Race (Munster: lit Verlag, 2016).

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popular, doubtless because many physical similarities between humans and other primates make the comparison an obvious one.42 Dominant groups emphasize and exaggerate similarities between a particular group of humans and other primates, providing spurious “evidence” to both establish hierarchy among humans and separate the dominant group from other animals. Nonhuman animal imagery has been incorporated into ideological systems to justify conquest, imperialism, and racism.43 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson discuss how certain metaphors are so pervasive that the idea or imagery conveyed in the metaphor seems self-​evident, thus, accepted “as is.” Importantly, some of these metaphors depict the structure of another idea.44 “They are animals” is a metaphor that makes ontological claims, determining what “they” are, thus categorizing them. At the same time, it connects to societal and cultural values of what “they,” i.e., “animals,” are, as substance and materiality. Nonhuman animal images served not just as random insults but were woven into institutions and whole societies. In the West, since Plato and Aristotle, the idea of the Great Chain of Being has presented the hierarchy of human and other animals as unquestioned.45 The idea of hierarchy among humans has been used to justify colonialism, imperialism, and racism, which are all linked to hierarchy between humans and other animals. In the Americas, colonizers characterized indigenous humans as wild beasts, considering this as justification for genocide.46 Similarly, characterization of Africans as more animal-​like and lower than Europeans on a hierarchical scale of being served to justify their enslavement and exploitation.47 The use of nonhuman animals as a trope, deploying nonhuman animal metaphors to denigrate other humans, requires no explanation in the process of devaluing them and making them powerless, as the metaphor functions so effectively within oppressive structures such as imperialism, colonialism, and racism because of its link to another, more fundamental oppressive system, that of human-​nonhuman relationships. Packaged together, the current hierarchical idea becomes grounded in this more deeply rooted structure. Santa Ana argues that influential groups 42 43

John Sorenson, Ape (London: Reaktion, 2009). Claire Jean Kim, Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural Age. (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 44 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1980). 45 Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964). 46 Richard Drinnon, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-​Hating (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1997). 47 Kim, Dangerous Crossings, 3–​60.

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use a metaphor such as “immigrants are animals” to reinforce an existing discourse of racism.48 We argue further that such a metaphor perpetuates racism because of taken-​for-​granted speciesism. The “immigrants are animals” metaphor, in fact, reinforces both racism and speciesism. For the characterization of humans as nonhuman animals to operate as an insult, it must be based on a negative view of nonhuman animals and human superiority. Nonhuman animals are understood as inferior, dangerous, and unworthy of ethical consideration. European thought emphasized the idea of a fundamental divide between humans and other animals and viewed humans as the center of the world. For centuries, religious and secular thinkers agreed on the idea of human exceptionalism and that other animals lacked qualities such as language, thought, reason, ability to feel pain, a soul, and continuous identity over time, thus making it permissible to enslave, use, kill, and eat them. Western thinkers imagined an absolute division between humans and other forms of life, with other animals existing only as resources for human use. The animalization of humans reveals the operation of two systems of oppression, one lodged within the other. The domestication (i.e., enslavement) of nonhuman animals 11,000 years ago allowed the development of techniques of subjugation, control, management, and violence.49 Nonhuman animal domestication affected not only how humans treated other animals but also how humans treated each other. Lakoff and Johnson observe that some metaphors allow certain dominant structures to be reflected, but they hide other relationships.50 Nonhuman animal enslavement is a good example. Very few humans recognize nonhuman animal use as enslavement or the killing of nonhuman animals as murder because nonhumans are considered resources, not beings with agency. Similarly, nonhuman animal use is not judged to be exploitation or oppression, since nonhumans are not considered equal to humans. The process of enslaving nonhuman animals established a model for authoritarian attitudes, detachment, and ruthless violence; as exploitation and enslavement of nonhuman animals became accepted and institutionalized, it provided the template for other types of oppression.51

48 49 50 51

Santa Ana, “Brown Tide Rising,” 83–​103; Santa Ana, “ ‘Like an Animal I Was Treated.’ ” Charles Patterson, Eternal Treblinka (New York: Lantern Books, 2002), 3–​50. Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 61–​76. David Nibert. Animal Rights/​Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), 21–​27; Patterson, Eternal Treblinka, 3–​50.

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While religious ideologies maintained that humans were divinely created to dominate all other forms of life, scientific racism sought to assemble evidence to prove that some humans were more evolved than others, who remained stuck at a form of earlier development that made them more animal-​like. Western colonialism merged speciesism and racism to depict non-​white humans as more bestial entities, child-​like but also dangerous, requiring control, discipline, and guidance.52 The utility of such rhetoric has guaranteed its long life. 3

Conclusion

In this chapter we examined two tropes, “like animals” and “treated like animals,” which commonly appear as accusation and complaint, or form of resistance, respectively, to investigate how taken-​for-​granted human-​nonhuman relationships influence border politics of the nation state and are used to oppress (im)migrants/​refugees. Dominant groups use the accusation trope to justify exclusion of certain (im)migrants/​refugees; less powerful groups contest their marginalization within a dominant discourse by using the complaint trope. Although it is a basic biological fact that humans are indeed animals, this fact seems extremely troubling for many. Arguments about what distinguishes humans from other animals have been matters of enduring concern and controversy in Western science and philosophy and the disparagement of nonhuman beings, dehumanization, and animalization remain powerful tools in ideologies of domination. Within this structure of violence, characterizing (im)migrants/​refugees as animals is considered an outrageous insult. It operates as a widespread technique of condemnation, disparagement, and vilification, facilitating colonial domination. Indeed, Maria Lugones identifies this hierarchy as “the central dichotomy of colonial modernity” as the distinction between human and nonhuman was imposed upon the colonized. Discourses of speciesism and racism have parallel histories, rhetoric, and strategies.53 The tropes “they are animals” and “we were treated like animals” oscillate within such parallel histories, grounded in ideas such as the Great Chain of Being. Rather than perpetuating the oppressive conditions that have been constructed with these rhetorical tools, we must challenge them, both in discourse and practice by revealing their roots. 52 Kim, Dangerous Crossings, 24–​139; Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery (New York: Mirror Books, 1996). 53 Maria Lugones, “Toward a Decolonial Feminism,” Hypatia 25, no. 4 (2010), 743.

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Developing an understanding of intersectionality, a key aspect of analysis for critical animal studies, helps us to do so. We argue that the distinction between humans and other animals has provided a basis for exploitation of human others by obscuring the constructed cultural and economic systems in which nonhuman animals are considered fundamentally inferior and made available for use by humans. When equated with nonhuman animals, (im)migrants/​refugees are therefore considered equally able to be exploited and marginalized and to have no say in border politics. Through intersectional analysis, hidden discourses, or what ecofeminist Marti Kheel calls “truncated narratives” of dominance, need to be revealed.54 We contend that to expose these narratives and discourses we must address foundational forms of oppression. Thus, addressing speciesism is indispensable to counter persistent injustice against (im)migrants/​refugees. In other words, justice beyond humans, trans-​species social justice, must be set as a fundamental goal to be achieved.

References

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54 Marti Kheel, “From Heroic to Holistic Ethics: The Ecofeminist Challenge,” in Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature, ed. Greta Gaard (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), 255–​259. The concept of “truncated narratives of dominance” was used in Ruth Koleszar-​Green and Atsuko Matsuoka, “Indigenous Worldviews and Critical Animal Studies: Decolonization and Revealing Truncated Narratives of Dominance,” in Critical Animal Studies: Toward Trans-​Species Social Justice, ed. Atsuko Matsuoka and John Sorenson (London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018): 333–​349.

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Ilyas, Noor. “I am a Rohingya Refugee: We Will Become Like Animals if We Stay in These Camps.” Guardian. August 27, 2018. https://​www.theguardian.com/​world/​2018/​ aug/​27/​i-​am-​a-​rohingya-​refugee-​we-​will-​become-​like-​animals-​if-​we-​stay-​in-​these-​ camps. Kheel, Marti. “From Heroic to Holistic Ethics: The Ecofeminist Challenge” In Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature, edited by Greta Gaard, 243–​271. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993. Kim, Claire Jean. Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural Age. NY: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Koleszar-​ Green, Ruth, and Atsuko Matsuoka. “Indigenous Worldviews and Critical Animal Studies: Decolonization and Revealing Truncated Narratives of Dominance.” In Critical Animal Studies: Toward Trans-​Species Social Justice, edited by Atsuko Matsuoka and John Sorenson, 333–​349. London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1980. Larson, Pamela Ren. “ ‘They Treated Us Like We Are Animals:’ ICE Drops More Migrants at Bus Station as Churches Are Overloaded.” USA Today. December 28, 2018. https://​ www.usatoday.com/​story/​news/​2018/​12/​27/​ice-​drops-​off-​migrants-​phoenix-​greyhound-​bus-​station/​2429545002/​. Lovejoy, Arthur O. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964. Lugones, Marìa. “Toward a Decolonial Feminism.” Hypatia 25, no. 4 (2010): 742–​759. Ma, Alexandra. “Twitter Freaks Over an Old Clip Where Trump Appears to Call Asylum Seekers ‘Animals’—​But They’re Wrong.” Business Insider. April 6, 2019. https://​www. businessinsider.com/​trump-​clip-​viral-​on-​twitter-​ms13-​animals-​2019-​4. Mackey, Robert. “Trump’s Rhetoric Echoes Nazi Germany, Beto O’Rourke Says, Accurately.” The Intercept, April 5, 2019. https://​theintercept.com/​2019/​04/​05/​beto-​ orourke-​trump-​nazi-​germany/​. Matsuoka, Atsuko, and John Sorenson. “Social Justice beyond Human Beings: Trans-​ Species Social Justice,” In Animals in Social Work: Why and How They Matter, edited by Thomas Ryan, 64–​79. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Matsuoka, Atsuko, and John Sorenson eds., Critical Animal Studies: Toward Trans-​species Social Justice. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018. Nibert, David. Animal Rights/​ Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002. Nocella, Anthony J. ii, John Sorenson, Kim Socha, and Atsuko Matsuoka eds. Defining Critical Animal Studies: An Intersectional Social Justice Approach. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2014.

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Ortega, Bob. “Prosecutors to Retry Volunteer Worker Who Aided Migrants.” CNN. July 2, 2019. https://​www.cnn.com/​2019/​07/​02/​us/​scott-​warren-​migrant-​humanitarian-​ prosecution-​invs/​index.html. Patterson, Charles. Eternal Treblinka. New York: Lantern Books, 2002. Rezin, Ashlee. “ ‘They Treat People Like They’re Animals’: Dreamer Released After ICE Detains Him.” Chicago Sun-​Times. February 1, 2018. https://​chicago.suntimes.com/​ news/​they-​treat-​people-​like-​theyre-​animals-​dreamer-​released-​after-​ice-​detains-​ him/​. rt News. “Le Pen Compares Migrant Influx to Barbarian Invasion of Rome.” September 15, 2015. https://​www.rt.com/​news/​315466-​le-​pen-​migrant-​barbarian-​invasion/​. Santa Ana, Otto. “ ‘Like an Animal I Was Treated’: Anti-​Immigrant Metaphor in US Public Discourse.” Discourse & Society 10, no.2 (1999): 191–​224. Santa Ana, Otto. Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse. Austin, TX: University of Austin Press, 2002. Sattler, Jason. “Donald Trump is Using His Power to Dehumanize People Who Aren’t White. It Can Be Fatal.” USA Today, June 14, 2018. https://​www.usatoday.com/​story/​ opinion/​2018/​06/​14/​donald-​trump-​immigration-​puerto-​rico-​policies-​lethal-​nonwhites-​column/​697856002/​. Smith, David Livingstone. Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011. Sorenson, John. Ape. London: Reaktion, 2009. Sorenson, John, and Atsuko Matsuoka, eds. Dog’s Best Friend?: Rethinking Canid-​ Human Relations, Montreal and Kingston: McGill & Queen University Press, 2019. Spiegel, Marjorie. The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery. New York: Mirror Books. 1996. Texas A&M University. “ ‘I Was Treated Like an Animal’ Abuses Against African Detainees at the West Texas Detention Facility.” School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic. March 22, 2018. https://​law.utexas.edu/​wp-​content/​uploads/​sites/​11/​2018/​ 03/​2018-​03-​IC-​WTDF-​Report.pdf. Van Dijk, Teun, A. 1993. “Principles of Discourse Analysis.” Discourse and Society 4, no. 2: 249–​283. Van Dijk, Teun, A. “Critical Discourse Analysis.” In Handbook of Discourse Analysis, edited by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi Hamilton, 353–​371. Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 2001. Verza, Maria. “Overcrowding, Abuse Seen at Mexico Migrant Detention Center.” Associated Press News. June 16, 2019. https://​www.apnews.com/​cae4919e5d5d4d6e b280785618dfa865.

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Weaver, Matthew, and Patrick Kingsley. “Expel Hungary from EU for Hostility to Refugees, Says Luxembourg.” The Guardian. September 13, 2016. https://​www.theguardian.com/​ world/​2016/​sep/​13/​expel-​hungary-​from-​eu-​for-​hostility-​to-​refugees-​says-​luxembourg. Weiss, Gilbert, and Ruth Wodak. Critical Discourse Analysis: Theory and Interdisciplinarity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. White House. “What You Need to Know About the Violent Animals of MS-​13.” May 21, 2018. https://​www.govinfo.gov/​content/​pkg/​DCPD-​201800338/​html/​DCPD-​ 201800338.htm.

­c hapter 4

Species Traitor?

Foundations and Tensions in Human/​Animal Scholarship and Advocacy Debra Merskin Abstract Debra Merskin explores how animals are the ultimate Others. Being referred to as an animal or animal-​like is the lowest regard one can be assigned and is often the phrase media turn to when describing groups of immigrants and refugees and what individuals themselves reference when describing dehumanizing experiences. Yet where does that leave animals? This chapter is a theoretical reflection on this intersectionality including how this perspective can help unpack concepts of nationalism, anthropocentrism, and species exceptionalism. Also addressed are tensions inherent within and between social justice groups for considering animal suffering as on par with that of human, in particular immigrant and refugee humans.

Keywords race –​species –​immigration –​speciesism –​intersectionality

In the 1997 film Life is Good, the main character Guido (played by Roberto Benigni) has a conversation with his young son Giosué (Giorgio Cantarini):



giosué “No Jews or Dogs Allowed.” Why do all the shops say, “No Jews Allowed”? guido Oh, that. “Not Allowed” signs are the latest trend! The other day, I was in a shop with my Chinese friend and his pet kangaroo, but their sign said, “No Chinese or Kangaroos Allowed,” and I said to my friend, “Well, what can I do? They don’t allow kangaroos.” giosué We let everyone in our shop, don’t we? guido Well, tomorrow, we’ll put one up. We won’t let in anything we don’t like. What don’t you like? giosué Spiders.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004440654_006

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guido Good I don’t like Visigoths. Tomorrow, we’ll get a sign: “No Spiders or Visigoths Allowed.”

This poignant exchange illustrates not only parallel constructions of certain human beings by others as lesser than, as animals, but also emphasizes the interchangeability of identities, depending on who is in power, who is deciding.1 The construction of discursive equivalencies between marginalized human groups and animals can be found throughout human history.2 In the 1800s in the United States, for example, when Italians, Irish, and other groups immigrated, press stories and editorial cartoons portrayed them as rats, apes, and other “vermin,” and used terms such as “waves,” “tides,” or other encroaching metaphors in order to construct a “US,” (earlier immigrants and refugees) and a “them.”3 In 2019, a New York Times article titled “Vicious bigotry, reluctant acceptance: An American story,” describes how in essence Italian immigrants to the US “became white”: “The story of how Italian immigrants went from racialized pariah status in the 19th century to White Americans in good standing in the 20th offers a window onto the alchemy through which race is constructed in the United States, and how racial hierarchies can sometimes change.”4 Such “penalties of blackness” were applied to a number of immigrant and refugee groups and changed depending on the economic and political interests of the nation’s leaders.5 In a study of Los Angeles Times coverage between 1994–​1996 in California, Proposition 187 (followed by Proposition 209), Otto Santa Ana found the use of metaphors such as “brown tide” and “a relentless flow” as well as animal comparisons to typify coverage of these anti-​affirmative immigrant/​ anti-​affirmative action pieces of legislation. Furthermore “immigrants were seen as animals that can be attacked and hunted” in expressions related to giving chase, as quarry.6 Giorgio Agamben’s concept of refugees and stateless individuals as “bare life” or those whose death isn’t punishable applies to the human as animal/​animal as human construction situating this Other as apart from moral consideration.7 This is not discursive behavior of the past, however, 1 While humans are animals, this chapter uses the term “animal” to describe animals other than human for ease of writing and understanding. 2 Paul Waldau, Animal Studies: An Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 3 Otto Santa Ana, Brown Tide Rising (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2002); Brent Staples, “How Italians Became White,” New York Times, October 12, 2018, https://​www.nytimes.com/​ interactive/​2019/​10/​12/​opinion/​columbus-​day-​italian-​american-​racism.html. 4 Staples, “How Italians Became White.” 5 Ibid. 6 Santa Ana, Brown Tide Rising, 84. 7 Giorgio Agamben, “We Refugees,” Symposium 49, no. 1 (1995): 114–​119.

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as in 2019, the 45th president of the United States stated in a Cabinet meeting related to undocumented immigrants, “You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people, these are animals, and we’re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that’s never happened before.”8 The irony of course is that indigenous peoples who already resided in what became constructed as “The United States” and “North America” were also constructed by colonizers as parallel problems with other inhabitants such as wolves, coyotes, prairie dogs, and bison.9 “Once a group of people is defined as somehow not fully human, as animal-​like, or as a disease or national burden, then it is easier to treat such individuals like debased people or animals.”10 They lose individuality and become “a mass phenomenon.”11 This chapter is a theoretical reflection on this intersectionality, how this perspective can help unpack concepts of nationalism, anthropocentrism, and species exceptionalism.12 I join Maneesha Deckha in asserting that “the animal advocacy movement should be regarded as a women’s movement as it gives rise to gendered, class, and racialized practices that impact the lives and experiences of its primarily female membership.”13 Common ideological roots are explored that position animals other than humans as part of a threatening horde of outsiders (particularly predator species), who pose a threat to dominant culture. Lessons learned from other social movements, and the combining of shared goals are presented as to why incorporating speciesism into strategies for fighting discrimination and oppression is essential. Thoughts of racial/​ethnic/​religious minorities are included to show how categories such as “Black,” or “Jew,” and “animal” are socially constructed. This assertion is not without tensions and these are discussed as they apply to theory and practice. The following sections briefly describe the foundations of the human/​animal divide, followed by an examination of the common ideological roots that

8 9 10 11 12

13

Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “Trump Calls Some Unauthorized Immigrants ‘Animals’ in Rant,” New York Times, Mary 16, 2018, https://​www.nytimes.com/​2018/​05/​16/​us/​politics/​trump-​ undocumented-​immigrants-​animals.html. Debra Merskin, Seeing Species: Re-​Presentations of Animals in Media and Popular Culture (New York: Peter Lang, 2018). Joe R. Feagin, “Foreword,” in Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Discourse, ed. Otto Santa Ana (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2002), xi. Agamben, “We Refugees,” 114–​119. Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1 (1989): 139–​67; Maneesha Deckha, “Animal Advocacy, Feminism, and Intersectionality,” DEP 23 (2013): 48–​65. Deckha, “Animal Advocacy,” 50.

128 Merskin underpin “isms” such as racism, ageism, and sexism. I then argue for including speciesism in the array of distinctions. Also addressed are tensions inherent within and between social justice groups for considering animal suffering as on par with that of human. The discussion includes grounding this argument in an understanding of the implications for scholars, activists, and scholar-​ activists who might be viewed within human social justice groups as species traitors. Questions explored include: What are the origins of the human/​animal divide? What sustains the distinction? How does one write about, be an ally to, both humans and other animals in ways that don’t erase difference but acknowledge commonalities? How can the media do a better job of reporting stories, photographing scenes, and communicating social change in order to bring communities together rather than reinforce divisions? It is useful to understand the nature of reifying distinctions, defenses of ideological grounds of species separation, as a practice of animation toward a more compassionate world, rather than engagement in “oppression Olympics.”14 1

Foundations: The Great Divide The use of animals for our purposes without consideration of their interests is so pervasive and our dependence upon it so great, it becomes invisible to us in much the same way that exploitation of women and minorities was invisible for too long.15 alice walker

All societies create categories of meaning, behavior, and rules of right-​conduct for members. Religion, along with certain forms of spirituality, have proscribed views of the “proper” place of animals. In many belief systems, animals are seen as not having souls, therefore not worthy of consideration or certainly lower in status in terms of moral worth. This is particularly true in Christianity, a belief system in which animals are generally thought to have been created and exist entirely for human use, even with the encouragements of stewardship and husbandry. Some religions modify this with regard to humane treatment, such as Judaism, but for the animal the end result is the same. In Christianity, for example, the Great Chain of Being has persevered as a model and powerful 14 15

pattrice jones quoted in Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals & The Earth, eds. Carol J. Adams and Lori Gruen (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), 100. Bernard E. Rollin, “Animal Pain,” in The Animal Ethics Reader, eds. Susan J. Armstrong and Richard G. Botzler (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2016), 115.

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visual metaphor that inspired universal hierarchical ranking of beings placing humans above other animals and male humans above females. A 16th century rendition of the model, was used to visually organize beings who had been spoken of and written about in religious texts (see ­figure 4.1). Reification of this hierarchy thereby became a way of rationalizing differential treatment that persists till today. At the top of the ordering is the god figure, underneath are angels. Below the “higher” beings we find humans. According

­f igure 4.1  The Great Chain of Being source: 1579 drawing of the great chain of being from didacus valades, rhetorica christiana. public domain.

130 Merskin to this structure, male generativity (God is represented as male) is at the top, which fulfills patriarchal visions of a natural order. Angels are below God, humans are below them, and the animals follow. Animals useful to humans such as goats, chickens, cows, and horses rank above those that are lesser so (wildlife), and all rank above snakes and serpents. This model has historically been used to demonstrate and justify difference as natural, pre-​ordained, and thus human/​male superiority over all else as the proper nature of power and dominance. The ideology that informed this framework, inherited from Biblical times, came to influence the regard (or lack thereof) for qualities and abilities of other beings. Belief in placement of higher or lower order has significant implications for humans and other animals. According to philosopher Sam Keen, dehumanization strategy is used to establish enemies and to rationalize their disposability: On the scale of dehumanization, we drop from the midpoint of the subhuman barbarian to the nonhuman, from the savage to the animal … the lower down in the animal phyla the images descend, the greater sanction is given to the soldier to become an exterminator of pests.16 In science, animals have not fared much better. For example, during the 17th century, Rene Descartes believed animals were mere machines, “subject only to the dictates of biological law.”17 Unfortunately, Descartes influenced more than 500 years of science wherein he held that animals were mere automata. Having no souls, unlike humans, they were viewed as incapable of experiencing pain. Some scientists today still believe this, resulting in the torture, suffering (experimentation without the use of anesthetic), and death of millions of animals. In addition to a lack of soul, the ability to reason has been heralded as a benchmark for difference, and has not been limited to animals. In fact, “in the fairly recent past, women, blacks, the poor, the blind and the deaf, as well as animals, have been subject to moral disqualification on the grounds of inability to reason.”18 Yet we know that reason is no simple mode of thought and that, contrary also to Descartes, humans are not simply and only rational, we 16 17 18

Sam Keen, Faces of the Enemy: Reflections on the Hostile Imagination (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), 60–​61. Linda Birke, “Animals and Biological Determinism,” in Feminism and Sexuality: A Reader, eds. Stevi Jackson and Sue Scott (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 107. David Selby, Earthkind: A Teachers’ Handbook on Humane Education (Stoke-​on-​Trent, Staffordshire, UK: Trentham Books Limited, 1995), 17.

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are also emotional. Each of us, animals and humans, are individuals with complex, interesting, and developed social lives and histories. Some enlightenment thinkers such as Michel de Montaigne, Voltaire, Jeremy Bentham, and John Stuart Mill, challenged Descartes’ line of thought and argued against the use of and justification of reason/​rationality, the view that animals are irrational, for if “value and dignity depend entirely on reason, animals cannot matter.”19 In 1789, Bentham wrote: Other animals, which, on account of their interests having been neglected by the insensibility of the ancient jurists, stand degraded into the class of things … The day has been, I grieve it to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated … upon the same footing as … animals are still. The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps, the faculty for discourse? … the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? … The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes.20 The marked divide, the “insuperable line,” has been concretized in religious doctrine that places humans “above” all other beings also says that humans transcend urges whereas animals do not and cannot. The emphasis is not only on difference but also on superiority—​that the differences that make us human make us superior. The idea of animal, of inhuman/​e, also “represents the forces that we fear in our own nature, that we are unwilling to regard as a true part of it.”21 The messiness of sex and sexuality, bodily functions, and appetites is not seen as being of the human world, but of the animal.22 19

Mary Midgley, Animals and Why They Matter (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1998), 11. 20 Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (New York: Prometheus, 1789/​2012), 311. 21 Midgley, Animals and Why They Matter, 193. 22 Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (New York: W. W. Norton, 1930/​1989).

132 Merskin When a person is not viewed as responsible for their actions, or able to control them, it is not unusual for them to be regarded as less-​than-​human, and actions are viewed as “seeds that lie hidden in our nature.”23 These parts of ourselves, what might be called instincts, or drives, exist in a liminal zone between who we think we are and who we actually are, under a given set of circumstances. Hence, “the animal [is] the constitutive outside within the human itself.”24 These borders are thus erected not only as an external, but also an internal state wherein defense of territory, however defined, becomes the fundamental charge of being fully human and not animal. The term “animal” can mean different things based on how it is used and who uses it. “Opposed to humans it tends to mean everything we think we are not, or whatever we wish to transcend—​the beast within, for example.”25 Thus, “good” = human, “bad” = animal. Then “what do we mean when we speak of ‘animal’?”26 While humans are most definitely not dogs, or horses, or giraffes, they are also not us. Some animals, particularly those closest to us who we refer to as domesticated and call pets (cats, dogs, birds) are often ascribed human characteristics (anthropomorphised), whereas others are placed in different categories (wildlife, farmed animals, live stock) so that they might be used by us in ways we generally prefer not to think about too much, for example as lab/​experimental animals, food, or for entertainment. Some species simultaneously occupy multiple categories, such as rabbits (oryctolagus cuniculus) who function simultaneously as pets, meat, and experimental objects. Thus, there are not clear biological distinctions, rather, there are social constructions based on perceived usefulness or threats to power or status. 2

Intersections There is no such thing as a single-​issue struggle, because we do not live single-​issue lives. audre lorde

23 Midgley, Animals and Why They Matter, 193. 24 Kelly Oliver, Animal Lessons: How They Teach Us to Be Human (New York: Columbia, 2009), 230. 25 Birke, “Animals and Biological Determinism,” 104. 26 Margo DeMello, “Introduction to Human-​Animal Studies,” in Teaching the Animal, ed. Margo DeMello (New York: Lantern Books, 2010), xi.

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In a 1968 essay in the New Yorker (“The Letter Writer”), Isaac Bashevis Singer writes about a solitary man, Herman Gombiner, a Nazi Holocaust survivor, who lives alone in a New York City apartment, alone except for a little mouse he names Huldah, who he daily gives a bite of cheese and a saucer of water. When Gombiner awakens from being ill and unconscious, his first thought goes to the welfare of his little companion who he believes may have died. In utter despair, with deeper care for Huldah’s well-​being than his own, he sees her not as a species lesser-​than his own, but rather as his friend and his responsibility. He contextualizes her existence within the scope of the world’s cruelties and injustices: “You’ve served your time in this forsaken world, the worst of all worlds, this bottomless abyss, where Satan, Asmodeus, Hitler, and Stalin prevail … You are no longer confined to your hole—​hungry, thirsty, and sick, but at one with the God-​filled cosmos, with God Himself … Who knows why you had to be a mouse?”27 This eulogy comes from deep within himself, his own experiences seeing the ways humans treat other humans, knowing of the murder of his entire family by the Nazis. He does not distinguish Huldah as something, rather than as someone, evidenced in this famous passage: What do they know—​all those scholars, all those philosophers, all the leaders of the world—​about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka. And yet man demands compassion from heaven.28 Invoking the horrors of the concentration camp the expression “eternal Treblinka” is a bold step, philosophically, morally, and ethically. Adopting this phrase as the title of his 2002 book Charles Patterson traces the parallels in the corporatized, industrialized slaughter of animals and humans in modern times offering views of the process, the parallels in human enslavement and mass production economics such as that advocated by Henry Ford. Artistic reflections such as the work of Judy Chicago, after her visit to Auschwitz, visually reveals parallels. She wrote, in Holocaust Project: From Darkness to Light, “Many would argue that moral considerations do not have to be extended to animals, but this is just what the Nazis said about the Jews. By constantly describing 27

Isaac B. Singer, “The Letter Writer,” in Isaac Bashevis Singer Collected Stories: Gimpel the Fool to the Letter Writer (New York: The Library of America, 1968), 750. 28 Ibid.

134 Merskin Jews as ‘vermin’ and ‘pigs,’ the Nazi regime convinced the German public it was necessary to destroy them.”29 Indeed, during World War ii, Nazi propaganda referred to Jews as Untermensche, subhuman, “as leeches, lice, bacteria, or vectors of contagion” and as rats.30 At the same time, American propaganda presented Asians as rat-​ like.31 These expressions are not and were not purely metaphoric. In the ideology of the times these were literal beliefs that resulted in unimaginably horrific treatment. For “people are more likely to commit violence against a group they do not view as fully human” and the more likely violence is seen as acceptable the less another is viewed deserving of “the moral concern that humans owe each other.”32 Importantly, “human domination over animals may also justify interhuman domination including slavery, genocide, and intergroup prejudices or violence.”33 None of this makes any actual sense and defies scientific or experiential knowledge, but “for some reason we continue to conceive of the universe in a fashion, and we relegate nonhuman creatures to a lower position” on the scale of consideration and moral regard.34 Furthermore, the persistent, consistent, and corroborated patterns of mass media portrayals predicted by Accumulation Theory come to make these re-​ presentations seem normal and natural.35 For example, “instead of viewing Muslims as people who have been symbolically portrayed as animals, they begin in our minds to become animals, imaginatively transposed with images that represent them.”36 Sherry Colb writes about how one goes from being Jewish to being “Jewish,” and similarly how animals become “animals” out of 29

Judy Chicago, Holocaust Project: From Darkness to Light (New York: Viking Penguin, 1993/​ 2002), 58. 30 David L. Smith, Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others (New York: Macmillan, 2011), 15; N. C. W. Spence, “The Human Bestiary,” The Modern Language Review 96, no. 4 (2001): 913–​30. 31 Smith, Less Than Human; Merskin, Debra. Media, Minorities, & Meaning: A Critical Introduction (New York: Peter Lang, 2011). 32 Rebecca C. Hetey, and Jennifer L. Eberhardt, “The Interplay of Mechanistic and Animalistic Dehumanization in the Criminal Justice System,” in Humanness and Dehumanization, eds. Paul G. Bain, Jeroen Vaes, and Jacques Philippe Leyens (New York: Routledge, 2013), 148. 33 Kimberley Costello and Gordon Hodson, “Exploring the Roots of Dehumanization: The Role of Animal-​Human Similarity in Promoting Immigrant Humanization,” Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 13, no. 1 (2010): 3–​22, 4. 34 David L. Smith qtd. in Neil Conan, “Less Than Human: The Psychology of Cruelty,” National Public Radio, March 29, 2011. 35 Melvin L. DeFleur and Everette Dennis, Understanding Mass Communication: A Liberal Arts Perspective (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1978). 36 Erin Steuter, and Deborah Willis, At War with Metaphor: Media, Propaganda, and Racism in the War on Terror (Lexington, KY: Lexington Books, 2009), 4.

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design—​when they are farmed, managed, domesticated, grown, owned.37 They are named for the purposes they have been bred for (dairy, beef, pork) and are thus not farm but farmed animals, living (for however short their lives may be) in created, constructed, controlled circumstances whose lives and deaths are in the hands of humans. “Animals thus become ‘animals’ when people breed them into the world, capture them, or purchase them to be harmed and killed for the sake of others.”38 Similarly, the term “slave” has been interrogated as an erasure of individuals and what was done to them, replaced by “enslaved.” Eric Zorn argues that this shift matters, even if awkward and uncomfortable “it’s precisely because ‘enslaved person’ is a repellent contradiction in terms that we should try to use it more often.”39 Patricia Hill-​Collins notes, “Certain ‘races’ of people have been defined as being more body-​like, more animal-​like, and less god-​like than others.”40 Deemed as inferior, they were thus treated as such: Blacks, held some pro-​slavery writers, to be a different species, were subjugated as slaves, saleable units of production whose feelings and interests, like those of the horse and oxen, were of little or no consequence. Oppression of animals, with its markets, auctions, branding, crowded forms of conveyance and treadmill conditions, it has been suggested, provided the prototype for the oppression of black people through slavery.41 Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality reveals the multidimensionality of identity that includes species, as, I argue, animals are the most silenced of marginalized beings.42 Rather than just considering animals as not-​human, I argue that the complexity of their lives, whether they are male or female, young or old, and of what species, matters. This is tricky busines, as there are

37

Sherry F. Colb, “Linking Judaism and Veganism in Darkness and in Light,” in Jewish Veganism and Vegetarianism: Studies and New Directions, eds. Jacob Ari Labendz and Shmuly Yanklowitz (Albany, NY: Suny Press, 2019), 267–​86. 38 Ibid, 271. 39 Eric Zorn, “Language Matters: The Shift from ‘Slave’ to ‘Enslaved May be Difficult, But It’s Important,” Chicago Tribune, September 06, 2019. https://​www.chicagotribune.com/​columns/​eric-​zorn/​ct-​column-​slave-​enslaved-​language-​people-​first-​debate-​zorn-​20190906-​ audknctayrarfijimpz6uk7hvy-​story.html. 40 Patricia Hill-​Collins, “Black Women and the Sex/​Gender Hierarchy,” in Feminism and Sexuality: A Reader, eds. Stevi Jackson and Sue Scott, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 310. 41 Selby, Earthkind, 17. 42 Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex,” 139–​67.

136 Merskin “risks in making such comparisons,” given histories of oppression experienced by people of color in which they were regarded as “animals,” treated as animals, considered, like animals, as property, or in discourse devalued as “animals.”43 Bringing actual animals into the fold of compassion does not mean disregarding that treatment or symbolism. I am not suggesting that we are all the same. What matters is bringing the concept of living being to the center for consideration of moral inclusiveness and treatment, as captivity can be both physical and psychological. As Alice Walker writes: “The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men.”44 3

Other Others

To “Other” another being is to create difference, on whatever basis, in a way that creates an Us and a Them. It is about power and is a dynamic relational process wherein both individual and collective identity are created and affirmed through designation of whatever one is or isn’t thus, conversely the Other is or is not. Other denies agency and creates space for “moral distance and detachment that lead[s]‌to the creation and perpetuation of oppressive practices and institutions.”45 According to Edward Said, “Each age and society recreates its Others” but this does not mean that Othering of one group necessarily ends when these Others are embraced in its divisive and dangerous hold.46 Simultaneously, as Lori Gruen and Kari Weil point out, while Othering designates differences it also, in the case of women and animals, generates “saming” wherein both animals and women are denied the status of person, denied souls.47 They are paradoxically both denied and yet equated in many ways. 43

Karen Morin, “Wildspace: The Cage, the Supermax, and the Zoo,” in Critical Animal Geographies: Politics, Intersections, and Hierarchies in a Multispecies World, eds. Kathryn Gillespie and Rosemary-​Claire Collard (London: Routledge, 2015), 73. 44 Alice Walker, “Forward,” in Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery (New York: Heretic Books, 1982), 14. 45 Chris J. Cuomo and Lori Gruen, “On Puppies and Pussies: Animals, Intimacy, and Moral Distance,” in Daring To Be Good: Essays in Feminist Ethico-​Politics, eds. Bat-​Ami Bar On and Ann Ferguson (New York: Routledge, 1998), 12. 46 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), 322. 47 Lori Gruen and Kari Weil, “Teaching Difference,” in Teaching the Animal, ed. Margo DeMello (New York: Lantern Books, 2010): 127–​42; Lori Gruen, Entangled Empathy (New York: Lantern, 2014); Kari Weil, Thinking Animals (New York: Columbia, 2012).

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In their study of out-​group dehumanization, Kimberley Costello and Gordon Hodson note that “dehumanization can result from animalistic-​outgroup comparisons,”48 such as comic books, sheet music, newspaper stories, movies, and propaganda posters that presented African Americans as apes or ape-​like and as “soul-​less animals.”49 An 1878 anthropology textbook presented this description: She had a way of pouting her lips exactly like what we have observed in the orangutan. Her movements had something abrupt and fantastical about them, reminding one of those of the ape. Her ear was like that of many apes … these are animal characters. I have never seen a human head more like an ape than that of this woman.50 Further contributing to this view of Africans as other-​than-​human was the equating of an unbridled sexual appetite with animality, gender, and race. This is evident in a statement by a then-​prominent European physician who said, Black women’s “animal-​like sexual appetite went so far as to lead black women to copulate with apes.”51 These attitudes persist, albeit more covertly. For example, a contemporary book on tort law discusses workplace harassment of an African American woman in which coworkers “engaged in offensive behavior and name calling that traded on centuries-​old negative images of Blacks as animals, monkeys, and filthy creatures.”52 While a full history of the marginalization of women (and of the groups discussed in this chapter) is beyond the scope of this essay, a few points are worth mentioning for context. In the mid 19th century, for example, in the United States and in Europe, women were thought to be ruled by biology, gullible to urges whereas men were not. Thus, by extension, women were 48 Costello and Hodson, “Exploring the Roots of Dehumanization,” 2. 49 Phillip Goff, Jennifer Eberhardt, Melissa Williams, and Matthew Christian, “Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization, and Contemporary Consequences,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94, no. 2 (2008): 292–​306; Jan N. Pieterse, White in Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995); David Smith qtd. in Conan, “Less Than Human,” 117. 50 Zuleeyma T. Halpin, “Scientific Objectivity and The Concept of ‘The Other,’ ” Women’s Studies International Forum 12, no. 3 (1989), 287, quoted in Hill-​Collins, “Black Women and the Sex/​Gender Hierarchy,” 140. 51 Quoted in Sander Gilman, “Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-​Century Art, Medicine, and Literature,” Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (1985): 205–​43, 212. 52 Martha Chamallas and Jennifer B. Wriggins, The Measure of Injury: Race, Gender, and Tort Law (New York: nyu Press, 2010), 26.

138 Merskin comparable to animals. This included women’s intelligence (thought of as lesser than men’s) as well as being innately unable to make rational decisions. The direct impact of biological forces (such as hormones) was thought to make women less intelligent, less capable of sensible decision making, less or more sexual. As such women were thought of as outside the circle of moral consideration. Women were not to be educated (what was the point?) and were essentially property. Whereas men were viewed as strong and rational, women were weak and irrational. Incapable of reason, women were thus to be kept, as is property, for the use and often abuse, of men. Much of this view of women has to do with the fear of losing power, and “external power is important … in so far as it shapes institutions which work to protect the fantasies of the dominant group. Had women been that group, they would no doubt have expressed their own fantasies institutionally in the same way.”53 However, being that men (in systems of patriarchy) are the dominant gender group, there was and is much to be gained by both in reality and symbol, of viewing women as lesser-​than. Stereotypes of both women and animals and women as animals are still seen and heard in language (fox, chick, bitch) as well as in cultural re-​presentations. The same arguments have been made about sexual preferences and race. Homosexuality, it was argued, is due to biology.54 Race has been used as an explanation to justify differential treatment on the basis of difference, stereotypically asserting some groups are more or less capable of certain things because of race. These arbitrary distinctions of bodily geographies are made in order for those with power (economic, social, symbolic) to maintain their positions, which, in the United States, have historically been White and male. Oppressions on the basis of difference, said to be biological, thus “revolve‌ around the same axis of disdain for the body; both portray the sexuality of subordinate groups as animalistic and therefore deviant.”55 The late 19th century American publication Puck, for example, presented Irish immigrants as dangerous and animal-​like.56 David Nibert notes: “by suggesting that aspects of the oppressed peoples’ nature were more like [devalued] other animals, elites and their apologists argued against the creation of social welfare systems, as such programs would only prolong continued

53 Midgley, Animals and Why They Matter, 78. 54 Janell L. Carroll, Sexuality Now: Embracing Diversity (Belmont, CA: Cengage, 2012), 273. 55 Hill-​Collins, “Black Women and the Sex/​Gender Hierarchy,” 310. 56 L. Perry Curtis, Apes and Angels: The Irishman in Victorian Caricature (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971).

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existence of ‘biologically inferior’ humans.”57 To control populations, state sponsored forced sterilization programs, for example, as well as many mental institutions, were created to stop the reproduction of those deemed inferior. Globally these horrors continue. During the Rwandan genocide, for example, Hutus referred to Tutsis as cockroaches.58 An editorial cartoon alluded to US President Barack Obama in a story about a chimpanzee attack.59 In a study of newspaper stories in which the death penalty was the possible outcome for Black and White defendants, Phillip Goff et al found that stories using animal associated words such as “predator,” “beast,” and “animal” more often described Black defendants than White.60 The word “animal” is “often broadly applied to an individual who has committed acts we find particularly loathsome or heinous.”61 In the post 9–​11 speeches of then President George W. Bush, references to Saddam Hussein were animalist, referred to him as scurrying and hiding in his den, and other rodent-​like behaviors.62 This isn’t to say that people aren’t doing horrible things to one another, they are, but the argument here is that invoking animals as a way of describing the worst of the worst of humans does nothing to help people and ultimately harms our relationships with certain animals who have nothing to do with human conflict. This disdain, this seeing women, non-​Christians, homosexuals, and people of color as lesser than White men and ascribing “animal” traits to them served and continues to serve as a foundation for racist, sexist, and classist prejudice, and contributes to legal, cultural, economic, and political discrimination. These fictions, these constantly renewed categories, drawing on Agamben, are created to justify boundaries of state/​nation/​territory as well as those between species.63 Thus, this begs the question then, if animals are the lowest of the low where does that leave them in terms of voice and visibility?

57

Kathryn P. Morgan, “Describing the Emperor’s New Clothes: Three Myths of Education (In)equality,” in The Gender Question in Education: Theory, Pedagogy & Politics, ed. Ann Diller (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996), 77. 58 Smith, Less Than Human. 59 Merskin, Media, Minorities, & Meaning. 60 Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, and Christian, “Not Yet Human,” 292–​306. 61 Steuter and Willis, At War with Metaphor, 74. 62 Debra Merskin, “Making Enemies in George W. Bush’s Post-​9/​11 Speeches,” Peace Review 17, no. 4 (2006): 373–​81. 63 Agamben, “We Refugees,” 114–​119.

140 Merskin 4

Isms

Racism can be defined as prejudice and discrimination, for whatever reason, on the basis of what someone looks like accompanied by the belief that one’s own race is superior. Racism (like sexism) is institutionalized. Maintenance of socially constructed evaluative differences have long been used to justify unfair hiring practices, inequitable medical care, legal and political representation as well as the foundation of psychological theories of difference. Speciesism has similar dynamics: “the taken-​for-​granted belief that humans are superior to and have the right to dominate all other creatures, and that ‘humanity’ alone bears the hallmarks of intelligence and sentience.”64 As a term, “speciesism” can be traced to a 1970 pamphlet written by Richard Ryder in which he identifies the sharp moral distinctions that are drawn between humans and all other animals.65 In 1975 Peter Singer expanded on this concept in Animal Liberation referring to prejudice or bias in favor of one’s own species. According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (“If You Care”): In the same way that other ugly ‘isms’ result in discrimination against other humans based on arbitrary factors like the color of their skin, their gender, their sexual orientation, or their physical capabilities, speciesism ascribes an inferior status to those who don’t happen to be human. It defines ‘animals’ (other than humans) as little more than research tools, food, fabric, or toys—​objects to satisfy human whims—​just because they’re not members of our species. Simply put, speciesism is a bias in favor of the human race over other animal races, just as one particular set of humans may be biased against another. It is the misguided belief that one species is more important than another.66 Language, in the form of discourse, offers a lens through which we can see the privileging of some groups over others, the erasure of experience, and the hiding of history. Joan Dunayer notes, “The way we speak about other animals is inseparable from the way we treat them.”67 For example, terms such 64 Annie Potts, “Introduction: Combating Speciesism in Psychology and Feminism,” Feminism & Psychology 30, no. 3 (2o10): 291–​301, 292. 65 Richard D. Ryder, Leaflet, Oxford University, 1970. 66 “If You Care About Social Justice You Should Fight Speciesism,” PETA, https://​www.peta. org/​features/​speciesism-​social-​justice/​. 67 Joan Dunayer, Speciesism (Derwood, NY: Ryce, 2004), xiii.

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as “manage” or “cull” when the act is killing; referring to animals who are experimented upon as “data points”; or through oxymorons such as humane slaughter are terms to veil experience and reality. In the interest of reflexivity, I write as an anti-​racist heterosexual White vegan feminist woman. While I know well the experience of gender discrimination, I can only empathize with those who have experienced and experience daily discrimination on the basis of their race, ethnicity, and sexuality or other markers of “difference” against White patriarchally ascribed norms. Empathizing with other humans does not make my concern for my own group any less, but rather widens the circle of compassion. At the same time, I am careful when defining speciesism to be accurate knowing that calling/​treating other humans as “animals” has and continues to be very real in the world. Thus, this essay is “Not about equal treatment—​some humans require more or less” rather “equal consideration of interests.”68 In the following sections I describe some of the arguments that come from scholars of color writing about animals. Some as vegans, some not, but to give a sense of consciousness about animals from groups who so often experience the parallel labeling of being animals by colonizers and oppressors. Anthony Nocella, John Sorenson, Kim Socha, and Atsuko Matsuoka write that, “despite” the “historical precedent for intersectionality, animal activists’ concerns often remained disconnected from other social justice movements.”69 Two explanations are offered. One has to do with the need for animal activists to focus on animals for their own sake and second because some in human activist communities “scorned concern for nonhumans as a waste of time and resources that would be better used to help humanity.”70 A third reason could also be that of privilege, that the majority of those involved in other-​than-​human animal activism were/​are primarily White and thus, not for any reason other than lack of experience, do not have to consider whether they will be judged on the basis of their race. In the sections that follow authors of marginalized groups speak to parallels they see in construction of categories of groups including “animal.” Ordinarily I would not identify scholars by race. We don’t see White scholars identified as such so why scholars-​of-​color? Reasserting one’s “humanity” is one response, but as Syl Ko writes, “the strategy of asserting one’s humanity-​humanization—​is

68 69 70

Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (New York: Cambridge, 1980), 22. Anthony J. Nocella, John Sorenson, Kim Socha, and Atsuko Matsuoka, Defining Critical Animal Studies (New York: Peter Lang, 2014), x. Ibid, xx.

142 Merskin a lot like animalization.”71 The concept of races (and with it the concept of species superiority) came with White Europeans. In the interest of inclusiveness and advancing this topic, a handful of authors are cited as representative of a point of view in a field (animal studies, food studies, veganism/​vegetarianism) that is dominated by White perspectives. 4.1 Jewish Views To refer to the treatment of animals, particularly intensive animal agriculture as practiced in the West, as a holocaust or genocide is tricky business. This is something peta found out when they launched their 2003 campaign “Holocaust on a Plate.”72 While the term is not solely associated with the murder of 6 million Jews and others by the Nazis during World War ii, the association is there. As with Singer’s story earlier in this essay, it is compelling when a member of persecuted groups relays the similarities. “Being a religious Jew does not necessarily incline a person toward ethical veganism” writes Colb.73 However, some are inspired by the teaching of religious texts and The Torah by the injunction “not to cause tza’ar ba’ alei chayim, the pain of living beings or—​to interpret the words literally—​the pain of those who are owners of a life.” Thus, “the current system of animal agriculture arguably and profoundly violates Jewish rules about humane slaughter.” Others see parallels between the herding of cattle, the dehumanization of people, and the slaughtering as similar to the ways Jews have been treated historically in general, and in particular in World War ii concentration camps. Colb describes the process of becoming Jewish, either through conversion or through lineage but also the psychological process of identifying through foodways, religion, humor, or other cultural characteristics, of “becoming.”74 As a daughter of Holocaust survivors, she also writes that becoming vegan “was the act of someone who had felt internally forced to be a ‘Jew’ bearing witness to that force and then refusing to be a collaborator in the overwhelming majority of the population’s choice to force animals to become ‘animals.’”75

71

Syl Ko, “By ‘Human,’ Everybody Just Means ‘White,’ ” in Aphro-​ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters, eds. Aph Ko and Syl Ko (New York: Lantern, 2015/​2017), 21. 72 David Teather, “ ‘Holocaust on a Plate’ Angers US Jews,” The Guardian, March 3, 2003, https://​www.theguardian.com/​media/​2003/​mar/​03/​advertising.marketingandpr. 73 Colb, “Linking Judaism and Veganism,” 267–​68. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid, 269–​70.

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In the documentary Speciesism (2013), Mark Devries interviews a variety of people including Peter Singer, Richard Dawkins, a member of the American Nazi Party, a disability rights activist, a man dying next to a factory farm, a vivisector, a holocaust survivor, and a Rabbi.76 The film uses logic, rather than shock, to interrogate how it is possible to discriminate between one being and another. He asks “What if [our assumption of superiority] really is just a prejudice? What if we’re … one species more powerful by luck, tyrannizing over all the others and not stepping back to notice what we’ve been doing?” Questions such as this prompt one interviewee to state “when you come out on the other side of the argument intellectually, you’re confronted with a holocaust that’s occurring everywhere, at all times, and everyone you know … they’re all participating.” The Holocaust survivor discusses how he had visited the former camps, seen the piles of boots, glasses, and hair and then, when visiting a slaughterhouse years later, “I saw piles of hearts and hooves … and I got to thinking about the highly efficient and dispassionate process used in both cases, that the perpetrators felt no guilt … that my fellow Jews were transported in cattle cars. It made me realize the slogan we’d been using, ‘never again,’ was not really about what others shouldn’t do to us.” 4.2

African American Views Animal. We, as Black folks, react very strongly to this word when it is used to draw any sort of relation or comparison to us. After all, the label animal was and continue to be one of the most destructive ever applied to us. One of the easiest ways to violate a person or group of people is to compare or reduce them to “animals.’ ”77

In an essay titled “Emphasizing Similarities Does Nothing for the Oppressed,” Syl Ko writes of assumptions and privilege in the similarities argument, noting that indeed, whether it is of species or race or other constructed differences, the science is sound for similarities, differences of degree not kind.78 Regardless of the amount of data that show differences between human beings are little more than skin color, and the science that shows differences between humans 76 Mark Devries, Speciesism: The Movie (Motion Picture: United States, 2013); Mark Devries, Mark Devries Biography, 2019, https://​speciesismthemovie.com/​mark-​devries/​. 77 Aph Ko and Syl Ko, Aphro-​ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters (New York: Lantern, 2017), 20. 78 Syl Ko, “Emphasizing Similarities Does Nothing for the Oppressed,” in Aphro-​ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters, eds. Aph Ko and Syl Ko (New York: Lantern, 2017).

144 Merskin and animals also varied but not more/​less superior, racist and speciesist beliefs remain, among some, intact. A compelling other way of looking at the issue is that those supporting racist and speciesist practices maybe that they in fact know we are similar. Drawing on Cora Diamond, Ko writes that many rights arguments do not “get to the heart of why animal exploitation, torture, and slaughter happen.79 The ‘difference’ is, in the case of humans and animals, created by us as a functional device. As a result, many terms that are animal-​ specific carry within them the parameters for how to treat that being.”80 Thus, it is within language, the power of words and terms, that we can rebalance the dynamics. “Just calling someone an ‘animal’ or ‘nonhuman’ is more than enough to justify extreme violence toward that person.”81 Just as it is necessary to avoid using expressions such as mankind, or non-​White (which privileges maleness and/​or Whiteness as the standard against which all other groups are measured), Ko argues that “de-​centering whiteness”… “encourages us to move away from the human-​animal divide.”82 Psyche Williams-​Forson writes about how food (choices, accessibility) and health related issues such as high blood pressure, obesity, Type-​2 diabetes, and heart disease are connected to racism and related racial disparities in the healthcare system.83 Furthermore, knowledge of methods of healthy eating is a form of power “and that knowledge also provides a certain amount of access.”84 Ko thereby advocates for a more “nuanced sense” of understanding and use of terms such as “human” and “animal” which entails “a commitment in our community to understand the white/​black and human-​animal binaries as not merely bearing upon one another but deeply intertwined, with all four terms functioning to uphold the superiority of whiteness.”85 5

Finding a Home

Intersectionality “is a theory and methodology that instructs its adherents to examine the mutually generative and integrative nature of social identities as

79 80 81 82 83 84 85

Cora Diamond, “Eating Meat and Eating People,” Philosophy 53, no. 206 (1978): 465–​479. Syl Ko, “Emphasizing Similarities,” 40. Ibid, 41. Ko and Ko, Aphro-​ism, 43. Psyche Williams-​Forson, “Preface,” in A. Breeze Harper Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and Society (New York: Lantern, 2010), ix-​xi. Ibid, x. Ibid, 27.

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well as the power relations and the structures and hierarchies of difference to which they give rise.”86 Discrimination doesn’t occur “along a single categorical axis,”87 but rather among multiples. This inclusive approach to thinking about identity has only recently included species and is not without its tensions. Most forms of social justice advocate for inclusion whenever differential treatment or regard is present. It would seem that fighting discrimination and oppression no matter what species one belongs to would also be part of the philosophy and practice. Feminist scholarship in particular is a natural home for consideration “of how lives are mediated by multiple axes of difference and dominance” including species, for at least two reasons: (1) feminism is a social justice movement that includes all other markers of difference such as gender, race, ethnicity, age, and social class, and (2) the use of animals has highly gendered aspects, particularly in terms of agricultural use of animals that varies based on their reproductive capacities.88 Thus, to include to which species one belongs in the array of isms is an opportunity for discussions of domination or in/​exclusion and is consistent with tenets of human social justice movements. In a 2014 study of dairy production (fieldwork and textual analysis) in the Pacific Northwest, Kathryn Gillespie extended bodily geographies to include those of other species (who are also male and female) and situated them in the global political economy of production and consumption. It is their reproductive capacities that make dairy industry animals (females) and by extension also hens (eggs) useful, but when they are no longer reproductively viable, they are slaughtered for their bodies. This is a form of sexualized violence and “gendered commodification of … male and female animal bodies.”89 Alice Hovorka stated, in a study of gender roles and species positionality in Botswana, “identities are emergent properties not reducible to naturally given biological essences or socially constructed role expectations.” Furthermore, that women’s relationship/​portrayal aligned with smaller, less “important” animals such as chickens whereas men were associated with larger animals such as cows. As such, “positionality is discursively bounded and reinforces ideas about when, where, and how they can be and are recognized and valued.”90 86 87 88 89

Deckha, “Animal Advocacy,” 48. Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex,” 139–​67. Deckha, “Animal Advocacy,” 50. Kathryn Gillespie, “Sexualized Violence and the Gendered Commodification of the Animal Body in Pacific Northwest US Dairy Production,” Gender, Place, & Culture 21, no. 10 (2013): 1321–​37, 1332. 90 Alice J. Hovorka, “Women/​ Chickens vs. Men/​ Cattle: Insights on Gender-​ Species Intersectionality,” Geoforum 43 (2012): 875–​84, 811.

146 Merskin Awareness of and activism around this does not diminish the importance or urgency of attending to human bodies, but rather includes all sentient beings. In their introduction to Jewish Veganism and Vegetarianism, Jacob Ari Labendz and Shmuly Yanklowitz state “adopting an intersectional approach does not entail collapsing the distinctions between species or oppressions, because differences fundamentally matter. It offers, instead, a moral and political framework for analysis, forging alliances, and taking action.”91 Thus, “feminist intersectional praxis is not imperiled by the recognition of the animal advocacy movement … as a feminist movement or of the issues it champions to end animal suffering as, broadly speaking, feminist ones.”92 Scholars such as Carol Adams, Greta Gaard, Josephine Donovan, Lori Gruen, Marti Kheel, and Kelly Oliver have been arguing something similar for years.93 Deckha adds that animals should be a concern of feminists in terms of advocacy and that incorporation is not abandonment of human social issues, i.e. “the mainstream feminist humanist community should view animal issues as feminist issues and animal advocacy as a women’s movement.”94 Aph Ko argues that, for African Americans, “intersectionality doesn’t really trouble the systems looming over us that we never created,” the theory isn’t forward looking, and “deals with the external conditions of racism and oppression that impact our lives but doesn’t speak to the internal struggles that arise after colonization.”95 It is a beginning, however, a lens through which the variety of ways difference is imposed are articulated and related but doesn’t offer a map to the future. Another model, the Interspecies Model of Prejudice, is useful as it proposes that fundamental beliefs in human-​animal divide set the foundation 91

Jacob Ari Labendz, and Shmuly Yanklowitz, eds., Jewish Veganism and Vegetarianism: Studies and New Directions (Albany, NY: Suny Press, 2019), xiv. 92 Deckha, “Animal Advocacy,” 51. 93 Carol Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-​ Vegetarian Critical Theory (New York: Continuum, 1990); Greta Gaard, Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature (Temple University Press, Philadelphia PA, 1993); Josephine Donovan, “Animal Rights and Feminist Theory,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 15, no. 2 (1990): 350–​75, Josephine Donovan, “Feminism and the Treatment of Animals: From Care to Dialogue,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 31, no. 2 (2006): 305–​29; Gruen, Entangled Empathy; Marti Kheel, “The Killing Game: An Ecofeminist Critique of Hunting,” in The Animal Ethics Reader, eds. Richard George Botzler and Susan Armstrong (Routledge, London, 2003), 390–​400; Oliver, Animal Lessons. 94 Deckha, “Animal Advocacy,” 51. 95 Aph Ko, “Creating New Conceptual Architecture,” in Aph Ko and Syl Ko, eds. Aphro-​ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters. (New York: Lantern, 2016/​2017), 131.

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­f igure 4.2. Interspecies model of prejudice Source: Adapted from Costello and Hodson (2012)

for out-​group dehumanization (Figure 4.2).96 Persistent beliefs in this divide “allow people to exclude some humans from the realm of humanity by likening them to ‘inferior’ animals, with these dehumanizing perceptions predicting prejudice and discrimination.”97 In a two-​part study manipulating human/​animal similarities, Costello and Hodson found that people’s attitudes toward animals (like us, not like us) influence attitudes toward human immigrants.98 When subjects felt animals were more like humans, prejudices toward immigrants lessened whereas when the human/​animal divide was emphasized, prejudices increased. They concluded “by isolating a powerful origin of dehumanizing perceptions (i.e., the animal-​ human divide), we targeted and influenced the roots of dehumanization, removing the legitimacy of such perceptions altogether.”99 Emphasized were similarities that resulted in “re-​categorization,” which “increased immigrant empathy, both of which predicted less prejudicial attitudes toward immigrants.”100 This was the case even among highly prejudicial people. Thus, to oppress any group is to participate in the oppression of others. As Marjorie Spiegel writes in The Dreaded Comparison: Any oppression helps to prop up other forms of oppression. That is why it is vital to link oppressions in our minds, to look for the common, shared aspects, and fight against them as one, rather than prioritizing victims’ suffering (the “either-​or” pitfall). For when we prioritize we are in effect 96 Costello and Hodson, “Exploring the Roots of Dehumanization,” 4. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid. 99 Ibid, 18. 100 Ibid, 3.

148 Merskin becoming one with the oppressor. We are deciding that one individual or group is more important than another, deciding that one individual’s pain is ‘less important’ than that of the next. … To deny our similarities to animals is to deny and undermine our own power.101 Clearly, the connection between Us and Them, of whatever species, is powerful as a motivator of attitudes and ultimately behaviors and has a powerful connection to social justice. Children are socialized to endorse perceptions of human superiority over other animals through parental influence, religious teachings, cultural traditions, and/​or experiences with industries condoning the exploitation of non-​human animals. These socialization practices presumably lead children to endorse the cultural “legitimacy” of dominating, victimizing, or ignoring the plight of non-​human animals.102 6

Tensions

Invoking what Spiegel calls the “dreaded comparison” is delicate work. To advocate for the welfare of members of other species can be seen at the least as ignoring or in the worst case disavowing the suffering of one’s own. Furthermore, to me this has always prompted the question “if the worst thing a human being can be called or treated as is an animal, where does that leave them?” The “profoundly troubling connections” between something as visible and horrific as Hitler’s Final Solution, for example, or genocide in the Americas of indigenous people, can be seen by some as minimizing human suffering by comparing it to the suffering of other beings who, some argue, do not feel, sense, or experience what “we” do. And yet, science and daily experience demonstrate parallels. Yet, how does one write about, be an ally to, both humans and other animals, bear witness, in ways that don’t erase difference but acknowledge commonalities? Albert Camus (1955) wrote, in The Myth of Sisyphus, that it is an artist’s (and by extension writer’s) responsibility to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves:

101 Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery (New York: Heretic Books, 1988), 25. 102 Ibid, 19.

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The miner who is exploited or shot down, the slaves in the camps, those in the colonies, the legions of persecuted throughout the world—​they need all those who can speak to communicate their silence and to keep in touch with them.103 Similarly, in their code of ethics, the Society for Professional Journalists says journalists are to “Seek Truth and Report It” which includes: “Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable. Give voice to the voiceless.”104 I argue for joining this ethic with Patterson’s call to move to “centerstage … the issue of the exploitation and slaughter of animals, as the issue of human slavery did in 19th century America” as animals are truly the most voiceless constituency.105 This encompassing perspective does not deny difference. Living beings are interconnected and, just as humans are not all the same, neither are all animals, or all elephants, or all dogs, or all cows. We need not live in a world of absolute inclusion or exclusion. Rather than take the approach of competition, that it’s them or us, as it were, for economic resources, “we are incurably members of one another.”106 While individualism is stressed as a fundamental value, particularly in American culture, it takes group solidarity for individuals to survive and thrive. Thus “lifeboat thinking” that we must rescue humans first in the midst of quickly disappearing resources, lest the whole ship sink, is supported by a way of thinking that says to think and care about animals is emotional, and therefore not important.107 This model supports an eco-​centric (not ego-​centric) circle, drawing on Mary Midgely, of who should be in the boat. 7

Conclusion

Considering the conditions of marginalization and mistreatment of other species as parallel in no way demeans human beings. To say that animal marginalization, stereotyping, and discrimination is harmful and is analogous with 103 Camus’s quote must be considered however within his unhelpful view of members of other species. While he granted them interior lives, he did not find them rational, an attribute he only ascribed to humans, and therefore as superior. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 1955/​2012), 210. 104 Society of Professional Journalists, “SPJ Code of Ethics,” revised September 6, 2014. https://​ www.spj.org/​ethicscode.asp. 105 Charles Patterson, Eternal Treblinka (New York: Lantern, 2002), xvi. 106 Midgley, Animals and Why They Matter, 21. 107 Ibid, 29.

150 Merskin racism and sexism in no way makes one more or one lesser, particularly when examining re-​presentations of animals other than humans as cultural artifacts. “Like sexism and racism, speciesism is the prejudicial view that there is an ontologically distinct marker, in this case species membership, that adds value to those who belong to the human species and justifies domination of those who don’t.”108 Speciesism is a prejudice, an anthropocentric “attitude of bias toward the interests of one’s own species and against those of members of another species” for whatever reason.109 Hierarchical categorizations of worth, value, inclusion/​exclusion do not exist in vacuum. Prejudices don’t suddenly arrive fully formed. Rather, just as Jews (historical refugees of Roman persecution) were victims of pre-​Nazi and pre-​National state violence and constructed as sub-​human, so too animals as vulnerable others have been constructed as natural scapegoats for emphasizing, reifying, and affirming the human/​animal divide, for whatever purpose. How would exclusion on the basis of species membership operate as ideological explanation for species discrimination? Speciesism, as a concept, is tricky. We know that to decide how to treat someone on the basis of race is deplorable. Yet, there are good and sound reasons to treat members of species differently because of different needs as in what a snake versus a lion versus a kangaroo might need. Each species, as well as every individual member of that species, has a unique point of view. Comparisons of keeping animals in horrific conditions, being experimented upon without their consent, and used as forced labor that parallel other forms of enslavement are bitter enough pills to swallow when thinking about what human beings do to each other. Writers such as Mark Twain and the psychologist Sigmund Freud argued that there exists no other animal who inflicts the kind of cruelty that humans wreak on each other.110 Part of that is the violence language does when used to “reduce” a human to an animal, as Morin notes “caging humans requires producing them as animalistic first.”111 It can be difficult to consider embracing animals in the arms of the moral community of humans. Indeed, millions of human beings suffer starvation, torture, abuse, and victimization every day. Shouldn’t we be paying attention to them? Are we a species traitor if intellectual, financial, and energetic expenses are given to groups who are not human? That’s an argument made many times and is 1 08 Gruen, Entangled Empathy; Weil, Thinking Animals. 109 Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: Harper’s, 1975), 6. 110 Shelly Fisher Fishkin, Mark Twain’s Book of Animals (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011); Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents. 111 Morin, “Wildspace: The Cage, the Supermax, and the Zoo,” 75.

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understandable. “The natural preference for one’s own species does exist.”112 Furthermore, “all social creatures attend mostly to members of their own species, and usually ignore others.”113 I argue that it is not necessary to choose one over the other. Rather, being a compassionate human being means cultivating awareness of the naturalness of caring for others. Believing in ending, or at least not contributing to, suffering, is the goal. A provocative challenge is “Stop treating animals like we treat animals; then it will not be possible to treat humans like animals.”114 How can the media do a better job of reporting stories, photographing scenes, and communicating social change in order to bring communities together rather than reinforce divisions? In a study of framing of moral concerns for others, Bastian et al. studied the framing of human-​animal and animal-​human similarities in the interest of “closing the human-​animal divide.”115 They found that moral inclusiveness is an important tool when generating concern for humans and animals but how that is done, framed, is crucial with implications for animal welfare campaigns: “Animals and humans share many similarities, but simply thinking about these similarities does not necessarily lead to increased moral concern for animals. How the similarity comparison between humans and animals is framed.” They found that “comparing humans to animals maintains the status quo, while it is the comparison of animals to humans that produces increased moral inclusiveness.”116 Furthermore, it is important to situate concern and regard for animals within the broader context of their being physical and/​or psychological refugees from the moral sphere. Advocating for all species does not make one a traitor to one’s own kind, no more than a man arguing for fair and equitable treatment of women makes him traitor to men. For liberation of all it is imperative for scholars and activists to accept animal oppression as an urgent, universal, and related oppression to that experienced by humans at the hands of other humans. While human groups might engage in the “oppression Olympics,” for a variety of legitimate reasons, for animals, whose lives literally depend on our care, the consequences are arguably if not more at least equally as dire. As Deckha notes, “The 1 12 Midgley, Animals and Why They Matter, 104. 113 Ibid, 105. 114 Dinesh Wadiwel, “Animal by Any Other Name? Patterson and Agamben Discuss Animal (and Human) Life,” Borderlands e-​journal 3, no. 1. (2004), http://​16beavergroup.org/​articles/​2004/​06/​17/​rene-​animal-​by-​any-​other-​name-​patterson-​and-​agamben/​. 115 Brock Bastian, Kimberly Costello, Steve Loughnan, and Gordon Hodson, “When Closing the Human-​Animal Divide Expands Moral Concern: The Importance of Framing,” Social Psychological and Personality Science 4, no. 4 (2011): 1–​9, 1. 116 Ibid, 7.

152 Merskin extent of violence that humans perpetrate on animals on a daily and global basis makes any claims about being ‘the most oppressed’ difficult to justify.”117 As Carol Glasser and Arpan Roy state: “There is no liberation without total liberation because all oppressions are rooted in dichotomous thinking that creates arbitrary, but defensible, boundaries … and hierarchical ways of rank ordering and organizing individuals into groups.”118

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156 Merskin Scott, Colin. “Science for the West, Myth for the Rest? The Case of James Bay Cree Knowledge Construction.” In Naked Science: Anthropological Inquiry into Boundaries, Power, and Knowledge, edited by Laura Nader, 69–​86. New York: Routledge, 1996. Selby, David. Earthkind: A Teachers’ Handbook on Humane Education. Stoke-​on-​Trent, Staffordshire, UK: Trentham Books Limited, 1995. Semple, Kirk. “Inside an Immigrant Caravan: Women and Children, Fleeing Violence’. New York Times, April 04, 2018. https://​www.nytimes.com/​2018/​04/​04/​world/​americas/​mexico-​trump-​caravan.html. Singer, Isaac B. The Letter Writer. In Isaac Bashevis Singer Collected Stories: Gimpel the Fool to the Letter Writer, 724–​55. Trans. A. Shevrin and E. Shub. New York: The Library of America, 1968. Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation. New York: Harper’s, 1975. Singer, Peter. Practical Ethics. New York: Cambridge, 1980. Smith, David L. Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others. New York: Macmillan, 2011. Smith, David L. qtd. in Neil Conan. “Less Than Human: The Psychology of Cruelty.” Talk of the Nation, National Public Radio, 2011, March 29. Staples, Brent. “How Italians Became White.” New York Times. October 12, 2018. https://​ www.nytimes.com/​interactive/​2019/​10/​12/​opinion/​columbus-​day-​italian-​american-​racism.html. Society of Professional Journalists. “SPJ Code of Ethics.” Revised September 6, 2014. https://​www.spj.org/​ethicscode.asp. Spence, N. C. W. “The Human Bestiary.” The Modern Language Review 96, no. 4 (2001): 913–​30. Spiegel, Marjorie. The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery. New York: Heretic Books, 1988. Steuter, Erin, and Deborah Willis. At War with Metaphor: Media, Propaganda, and Racism in the War on Terror. Lexington, KY: Lexington Books, 2009. Teather, David. “ ‘Holocaust on a Plate’ Angers US Jews.” The Guardian. March 3, 2003. https://​www.theguardian.com/​media/​2003/​mar/​03/​advertising.marketingandpr. Wadiwel, Dinesh. “Animal by Any Other Name? Patterson and Agamben Discuss Animal (and Human) Life.” Borderlands e-​journal 3, no. 1 (2004). http://​16beavergroup.org/​articles/​2004/​06/​17/​rene-​animal-​by-​any-​other-​name-​patterson-​and-​ agamben/​. Waldau, Paul. Animal Studies: An Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Walker, Alice. “Forward.” In Marjorie Spiegel The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery. New York: Heretic Books, 1982. Weil, Kari. Thinking Animals. New York: Columbia, 2012. Williams-​Forson, Psyche. “Preface.” In A. Breeze Harper Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and Society (ix-​xi). New York: Lantern, 2010.

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pa rt 2 Insights into the Politics, Advocacy, and Laws Related to the Divide

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­c hapter 5

Care Movements, Climate Crisis, and Multi-​Species Refugees Erin M. Evans Abstract Erin M. Evans describes the human-​induced climate change as a global public health crisis. Threats to public health resulting from climate change range from extreme weather events, water scarcity, increasing rates of infectious diseases, and even wildfires, result in forced migration of human and nonhuman animals, also called “climate refugees.” Forced climate migration is one symptom of neoliberal globalization—​a structural deprivation of care that is steering social movements to use care as a political opportunity. These care movements mobilize for goals related to providing and receiving care, including unionizing care workers, protecting indigenous land and animals from industrial production, eliminating abusive animal practices, or establishing universal health care programs. In this chapter, Erin Evans theorizes about the possibilities that these goals offer for broad coalition-​building and for challenging structural arrangements facilitating environmental destruction and increasing populations of human and nonhuman climate refugees.

Keywords climate change –​forced migration –​social movements –​political opportunity structure –​ care work –​animal rights

The wrong Amazon is burning. The wrong ice is melting. rising tide, an environmental defense organization

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© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004440654_007

162 Evans 1

Introduction

Massive fires in the Amazonian rainforests of Brazil received international news attention in 2019. The Amazon forests are home to countless nonhuman animals and over 400 indigenous human groups. Fires are used to clear forest land for industry, including cattle ranching, soybean farms, and other monocrops that mostly go to feeding the grazing cattle. Indigenous human groups that are fighting to protect their land had to flee the fires; nonhuman animals with whom they shared this precious ecosystem fled as well, but more of them died. In an interview for Green Matters, an activist with Amazon Watch described how slow-​moving nonhuman animals, like sloths, couldn’t flee the fires and were “baked alive.” Journalists also described indigenous and mixed-​descent human communities who face “displacement and starvation … (whose) lives are at risk.”1 This isn’t a new situation. An estimated 17 percent of the Amazon rainforest was clear cut in the last 50 years, with cattle ranching accounting for over 80 percent of that deforestation. This illustrates a structural nexus I focus on in this chapter: the connection between environmentally destructive corporate practices, trade policies that encourage multinational corporations to engage in these practices, and the suffering of human and nonhuman animals in corporate paths of destruction. The Amazon rainforest case magnifies the cause-​effect relationship between neoliberal globalization and the displacement of human and nonhuman animals. It is a structural relationship between corporate growth and vulnerable populations who are in the line of metaphorical and, in this case, actual fire. It is imperative for corporations to grow in production and profit. I often tell my students this “Grow or Die” imperative is the new G.O.D. that sanctions many abusive corporate and political practices. This structural imperative fosters a systemic lack of care for humans and nonhumans. Preceding chapters of this volume discuss various components of how humans and nonhumans are deprived of care. Parts One and Three explore how the moral divide between human and animal is constructed and how cultural and political processes reinforce perceptions of nonhuman animals as beings undeserving of care. Part Two focuses on the politics 1 Sophie Hirsh, “The Amazon Fires Are Destroying Indigenous People’s Homes—​ We Interviewed an Amazon Watch Director to Learn More,” Green Matters (2019), https://​www. greenmatters.com/​p/​questions-​about-​the-​amazon-​rainforest-​fires; Ashitha Nagesh, “What about the Nonhuman Animals Caught in the Amazon Rainforest Fires?,” BBC News (August 29, 2019), www.bbc.com/​news/​world-​latin-​america-​49497857.

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of human and nonhuman refugees who escape suffering. The authors discuss laws and policies related to immigration and how forced migration as a phenomenon illuminates our deep social entanglement with nonhuman lives. To add to these perspectives, this chapter focuses on climate change and climate refugees—​human and nonhuman animals who are forced to migrate due to climate change. I use social movements literature to theorize how a structural lack of care coupled with a universal social need for care fosters a coalitional undercurrent of seemingly disconnected movements that all mobilize for care. While this volume broadly theorizes and criticizes speciesism-​as-​framework in discourse about refugees and national borders, this chapter focuses on an intersection of human and nonhuman interests represented by social movements that provide care work. Activists mobilizing on what scholars call an “ethic of care” are making structural interventions that challenge neoliberal policies harming human and nonhuman populations. Neoliberal policies are anchored to three central goals: 1) privatize public goods, 2) dismantle social programs, and 3) eliminate protective government regulations of the market. Pursuing and achieving these goals inflicts forms of structural violence on vulnerable populations, both human and nonhuman. Activists mobilizing transnationally around issues of care and care work directly challenge the harmful structures that deprive care. Care work is central to this analysis for two reasons: 1) care work is necessary to human and nonhuman societies, and 2) care movements challenge neoliberalism’s central tenets, which are antithetical to care. In the following sections, I start by linking climate change as an international crisis to forced climate migration and neoliberal globalization. I do so to highlight the political and economic structures undergirding human and nonhuman climate refugee crises. Then, I discuss care work as a type of labor that is central to these political and economic structures that function violently, ranging from forced climate migration to industrialized nonhuman animal abuse as symptoms of structural violence. Finally, I use social movement theory to explain why care movements, including animal advocacy, are emerging and growing in response to neoliberal structural violence. 1.1 Climate Change and Forced Migration Human-​induced climate change, better described as a climate crisis, is becoming broadly recognized as a public health crisis on an international scale.2 2 Giovanni Bettini and Giovanna Gioli, “Waltz with Development: Insights on the Developmentalization of Climate-​Induced Migration,” Migration and Development 5 (2016): 171–​89; Robin Bronen, “Climate-​Induced Community Relocations: Creating an Adaptive

164 Evans What is not as broadly recognized is how the interests of a global corporate elite, entrenched in international trade policy-​making bodies, contributes to and benefits from the climate crisis. This section offers an overview of evidence that the economic interests of a global corporate elite drive how we generate knowledge about climate change and forced migration, and how this elite benefits from the climate-​migration link. The implications of establishing an empirical cause-​effect relationship between the climate crisis and migration are substantial for international and national political institutions, which is part of the reason why referring to those who migrate due to climate events as refugees is somewhat controversial. (This is also because the term is stigmatized within some receiving countries due to hostility towards immigrants. Other authors in this volume discuss how the devaluation of nonhuman animals is aligned with devaluation of human refugees so that discussion is left out here.) A refugee is defined as a person fleeing from persecution, war, or violence; as a legal status, it affords the person protection by international law and eligibility for different types of aid. There is a separate status for people migrating within national borders due to conflict or natural disasters—​internally displaced persons, or idp s. People with idp status outnumber those with refugee status and are not afforded the same protection. If people who are forced to migrate due to the climate crisis were given legal status as refugees, industrialized nations that leverage the most power in international institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (imf) would be responsible for providing more protection and resources to these displaced people. We see evidence of resistance to bestowing refugee status in reports by both national government agencies and international institutions. Research on climate migration surged after national reports, like the 2011 report on Migration and Global Environmental Change by the UK Government Office of Science, gained attention for exploring the relationship between the climate crisis, migration, and the economic impact of climate migration. Debates about cross-​border migration especially highlight political resistance to allowing refugee status. In the World Bank’s 2014 report on climate migration in the Middle East and North Africa, researchers refuted what they called Governance Framework Based in Human Rights Doctrine,” NYU Review of Law and Social Change 35 (2011): 356–​406; Nigel Clark and Giovanni Bettini, “ ‘Floods’ of Migrants, Flows of Care: Between Climate Displacement and Global Care Chains,” Sociological Review 65, no. 2 (2017): 36–​54; Julie Koppel Maldonado et al., “The Impact of Climate Change on Tribal Communities in the US: Displacement, Relocation, and Human Rights,” Climate change 120 (2013): 601–​14.

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“a hype” of claims that climate migration was a major factor in cross-​border migration.3 This report discussed how extreme weather events increase internal migration, or migration within national borders, and only a small portion of a wealthier quintile migrates across borders when extreme weather events occur. The researchers also emphasized their recommendations for government subsidized social protection programs, including food provisions and infrastructure to combat the effects of weather events. As opposed to focusing on the exploitative environmental and labor practices of the global corporate elite, which contribute to environmental destruction and to the economic precarity of their workers in the Global South, the report focuses on refuting that climate-​induced migration is mostly cross-​border, and also on arguing for more social protection programs and infrastructure to assuage the effects of climate crises. In 2018, the World Bank Group published another report on climate change and internal migration resulting from slow-​onset effects of climate change, like crop failure, sea level rise, and water stress. In the three regions they examined, researchers predicted that 143 million people would leave their homes by 2050 due to these conditions. The report emphasizes how internal climate migration in regions like Sub-​Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America threatens a nation’s ability to develop economically. One facet of the so-​called economic development in the Global South are structural adjustment programs that are implemented by the World Bank and imf. In exchange for imf loans, countries in economic crises often agree to trade policies that are friendly to foreign investors. These so-​called investors, or multinational corporations, benefit from hyper-​exploitative labor practices and lax environmental regulations. Multinational corporations often engage in destructive resource extraction and unbridled polluting all in the name of production and economic development. The 2018 report evaluates the suffering caused by the Global North and environmentally destructive corporate practices, while supporting those corporate practices as development. Although countries of the Global North hold much of the responsibility for the climate crisis, as primary contributors of greenhouse gases, political and corporate leaders avoid being held accountable to provide care to climate refugees. In addition to research conducted by international and governmental organizations, there is also a good amount of academic research on the connection

3 Quentin Wodon, Andrea Liverani, George Joseph, and Nathalie Bougnoux, Climate Change and Migration: Evidence from the Middle East and North Africa, The World Bank (Washington D.C., 2014), xxv.

166 Evans between climate change, international relations, and forced migration.4 For the purpose of this chapter, I’ll highlight that while some scholars conceptualize forced migration due to climate as an adaptation to economic development,5 other scholars conceptualize it as a symptom of neoliberal development and expansion.6 While both of these conceptualizations seek to destigmatize climate refugees, the second is critical of development because of its link to unregulated exploitation of workers and the environment. People who benefit the least from such economic development and from global manufacturing industries, like hyper-​exploited workers of the Global South, suffer the most from the climate crisis to which the global industries contribute the most.7 In regions where the state does not provide protective infrastructure (levies, transport during natural disasters, disaster relief, etc.), people are left to fend for themselves when extreme weather events, crop failures, and water scarcity occur. As mentioned, the 2011 report by the UK Government Office of Science recommended that more resources be put toward protective infrastructure in countries that are vulnerable to forced migration due to climate change. Given that the funding for such projects would likely come from the World Bank and imf, the ensuing debt and strings attached would add to the same debt agreements that allowed mining, factories, and other forms of so-​called foreign direct investment that contribute to the climate crisis. Building protective infrastructure in countries of the Global South this way would strengthen their dependence on the Global North and absolve multinational corporations of responsibility for the climate crises they create. Debt contributes to the stranglehold that structural adjustment programs create and industries that are most responsible for forced climate migration could continue to profit from doing so.8 Policy arrangements between private industry and domestic and international government entities incentivize environmental destruction and negate corporate responsibility. For instance, local and state governments along the Atlantic coastline in the United States incentivized development in areas that 4 Victoria Mence and Alex Parrinder, “Environmentally Related International Migration: Policy Challenges,” in A Long Way to Go: Irregular Migration Patterns, Processes, Drivers and Decision-​ Making, ed. Marie McCauliffe and Khalid Koser (anu Press, 2017). 5 Katha Kartiki, “Climate Change and Migration: A Case Study from Rural Bangladesh,” Gender and Development 19, no. 1 (2011). 6 Bettini and Gioli, “Waltz with Development.” 7 J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley Parks, A Climate of Injustice (Cambridge, MA: mit Press, 2007). 8 Romain Felli and Noel Castree, “Neoliberalising Adaptation to Environmental Change: Foresight or Foreclosure,” Environment and Planning A 44 (2012).

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were vulnerable to hurricanes and flooding, despite warnings from regulators that the climate crisis made these weather events imminent. Then, following climate disasters like Hurricane Sandy, federal aid was provided both for immediate relief to residents and for long-​term support in less direct ways, like welfare provisions to those forced to migrate. While private developers profit from building in environmentally vulnerable areas, public funding is used for the disastrous results of that development.9 This is analogous to structural arrangements at the international level. Multinational corporations from countries of the Global North are incentivized to develop in poorer countries, where people are more vulnerable to labor exploitation and environmental regulations are often not as strict. People in these regions are not only exploited for their labor, they also suffer the effects of destructive corporate practices, like illness-​inducing pollution and, eventually, the acute and slow onset conditions of the climate crisis. Extreme, or acute, weather events (e.g., hurricanes, floods, wildfires) and slow onset conditions (e.g., droughts, crop failures, land erosion) force human and nonhuman animals to migrate as climate refugees. The intersection between human and nonhuman suffering sheds light on the structural nexus of this global social problem—​care. Activists and social movement organizations are addressing these structural arrangements in a way that empowers communities who suffer the most from the environmentally destructive industrial practices and resulting climate events, which force them to migrate.10 Care work for both human and nonhuman animals expose this structural nexus and the possibilities for activist interventions. 2

Care Work and Human Climate Refugees

Care work refers to forms of paid and unpaid labor that meet non-​material needs requiring nurture like nursing, teaching, house work, and childcare. As a form of labor, care work is universally necessary. People require care during childhood and sickness, as guidance while learning how to read, write, do arithmetic, and at home for emotional and public health needs. Care work is integral to a functioning society. Given its centrality, the well-​developed literature on care work reveals what a gendered and highly exploited sector of the labor market it is. Caring professions are the lowest wage jobs in the labor sector and 9 10

Gilbert M. Gaul, The Geography of Risk: Epic Storms, Rising Seas, and the Cost of America’s Coasts (Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 2019). Bettini and Gioli, “Waltz with Development.”

168 Evans are mostly held by women.11 Paid care workers (nannies, teachers, nurses, etc.) and unpaid care workers (family members caring for children, aging parents, ill partners, etc.) are largely under compensated and under-​valued. The typically unpaid stay-​at-​home parents are often belittled; nurses suffer high injury and assault rates in the workplace; and domestic workers are often abused and overworked, especially live-​in nannies.12 As more women in industrialized countries entered the higher-​income white-​collar workforce, the demand for childcare workers and other domestic labor increased, and so did the number of women who migrate to provide care work in another country. This transnational economy in care comprises “global care chains … a series of personal links between people across the globe based on the paid or unpaid work of caring.”13 Nigel Clark and Giovanni Bettini’s work focused on these global care chains and climate migration. Instead of framing an entrance of climate refugees into industrialized nations as the social problem, which is exemplified in-​part in the reports from international institutions described earlier, they describe the hyper-​exploitation of much needed care workers in industrialized nations as the social problem, where an invaluable form of labor is systematically abused and devalued. Migrating populations provide a consistent stream of hyper-​exploitable labor. Domestic and international policies are often designed to attract people with formal training in caring professions like nurses to the Global North. (This continues to be the case with the relationship between the United States and the Philippines.) The care-​drain, if you will, leaves countries of the Global South with compounding social problems related to fractured families and their own care deficit.14 Claiming that climate migrants are adapting to the 11 12

13 14

Arlie Russel Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983). Mignon Duffy, “Doing the Dirty Work: Gender, Race, and Reproductive Labor in Historical Perspective,” Gender & Society 21, no. 3 (2007): 313–​36; Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russel Hochschild, eds., Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy (London: Granta Books, 2003); Paula England, Michelle Budig, and Nancy Folbre, “Wages of Virtue: The Relative Pay of Care Work,” Social Problems 49 (2002): 455–​73; Friedrich Engels, The Origins of the Family: Private Property and the State (New York: International Publishers, 1884); Clark and Bettini, “ ‘Floods’ of Migrants”; Arlie Russel Hochschild, “Global Care Chains and Emotional Surplus Value,” in On the edge: Living with Global Capitalism, ed. Will Hutton and Anthony Giddens (London: Jonathan Cape, 2000). Hochschild, “Global Care Chains and Emotional Surplus Value.” Rhacel Salazar Parrenas, “The Care Crisis in the Philippines: Children and Transnational Families in the New Global Economy,” in Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy, ed. Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russel Hochschild (London: Granta Books, 2003).

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climate crisis, as opposed to climate refugees escaping the long-​term effects of industrial production, perpetuates the myth that rich countries are helping so-​called underdeveloped countries, when they are actually exploiting the Global South for environmental and labor resources. Although the apocalyptic discourse surrounding climate refugees is stigmatizing, the adaptation frame deflects attention from an ongoing need for exploitable labor, especially care work.15 3

Care Work and Nonhuman Climate Refugees

I reconceptualize care work, as a type of labor, to include providing various forms and degrees of care to nonhuman animals. Farmers, wildlife rehabilitators, guardians for companion nonhuman animals, and animal rights activists targeting industries like meat and dairy production all provide forms of care work. There are two types of relationships between human and nonhuman animals in the context of the climate crisis and migration that are most relevant here. First, the human-​induced climate crisis and extreme weather events cause free-​living nonhuman species death, displacement, or a disruption in normal migration routes, all of which can lead to extinction for vulnerable species.16 The industrial practices that contribute to the climate crisis often destroy nonhuman habitats, exemplified dramatically, and tragically, in the Amazonian fires discussed earlier. Second, the climate crisis disrupts domestic human-​ nonhuman relationships in farming practices, especially in countries of the Global South. Anthropologists explored the effects of the climate crisis on communities with nonhuman-​animal-​centered livelihoods, including indigenous groups in North America and vulnerable populations in Africa and other regions.17 They describe how the climate crisis makes it more difficult for these vulnerable 15

16 17

Rebecca Cassidy, “Lives with Others: Climate Change and human-​nonhuman Relations,” Annual Review of Anthropology 41 (2012): 21–​36; Bettini and Gioli, “Waltz with Development”; Giovanni Bettini, “Climates Barbarians at the Gate? A Critique of Apocalyptic Narratives on Climate Refugees,” Geoforum 45 (2013): 63–​72. Gretta T. Pecl et al., “Biodiversity Redistribution under Climate Change: Impacts on Ecosystems and Human Well-​Being,” Science 355, no. 6332 (2017): eaai9214. Tristan Pearce et al., “Advancing Adaptation Planning for Climate Change in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region (ISR): A Review and Critique,” Reg. Environ. Change 11, no. 1 (2011): 1–​17; Jason Prno et al., “Community Vulnerability to Climate Change in the Context of other Exposure-​Sensitivities in Kugluktuk, Nunavut,” Polar Res. 30, no. 7363 (2011): 1–​21; Cassidy, “Lives with Others.”

170 Evans populations to maintain such livelihoods due to water shortages or crop failures, leading to changes in lifestyles and sometimes movement from rural to urban areas for wage work. The communities forced to migrate effectively lose their land to the climate crisis, and therefore to the industries most responsible for greenhouse emissions. It is a globalized dispossession of land by-​other-​means.18 In the Global North, our domestic relationships with nonhuman animals are also structurally entangled with industries most responsible for contributing to the climate crisis. One recent example is how in the US there are more than 163 million dogs and cats whose food consumption makes up 25–​30% of the total environmental pollution by industrialized meat production.19 Although this production doesn’t disrupt our relationships with companion nonhuman animals as it does for pastoral communities in the Global South, as an example it shows how a destructive practice—​industrial meat and dairy production—​that inflicts harm on human and nonhuman animals is sewn into the structural fabric of our lives. Industrial food production more broadly is a nexus of social problems caused by a structural deprivation of care. Food is often produced not by providing care to plants we eat or to the nonhuman animals we kill for food, but by mechanizing what should have been care, where any evidence of care is replaced by mass-​scale polluting machines that inflict horrific suffering on nonhuman animals and human workers. Multinational corporations burn the Amazon rainforest for grazing cattle; they run concentrated nonhuman animal feeding operations (cafo s) where as much as 1.2–​1.37 billion tons of manure are produced in the US alone, while no waste treatment exists.20 As the largest employer of undocumented immigrants, these industries also hyper-​exploit workers for meat and dairy that will end up on human and nonhuman plates. These structural forms of violence are interconnected and reiterative in many labor sectors, and they are also proving to be a structural opportunity for intervention by care movements.

18 19 20

Cassidy, “Lives with Others.” Gregory S. Okin, “Environmental Impacts of Food Consumption by Dogs and Cats,” PLoS ONE 12, no. 8 (2017): e0181301. Carrie Hribar, Understanding Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and Their Impact on Communities, National Association of Local Boards of Health (Bowling Green, OH, 2015).

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Animal Advocacy, Care Movements, and Political Opportunity

Nonhuman animal advocacy has previously been explored as an issue of care ethics, but neither as a caring profession nor as a care movement.21 Formal organizational nonhuman advocacy is well over 100 years old in the US and the UK, and since its inception activists have consistently engaged in both nonhuman rescue and advocacy against various forms of nonhuman abuse, which requires their emotional labor.22 For instance, a recent National Geographic article covered efforts to rescue free-​living nonhumans during the Amazon wildfires I discussed earlier. A local volunteer described “caring for the nonhuman animals as grueling and emotionally wrenching. They require round-​ the-​clock attention.”23 People who work directly in nonhuman care and rescue typically do so because of a pre-​existing emotional bond they feel to nonhuman animals. Caring for sick and injured nonhumans puts their emotions in the line of fire, where it is guaranteed that they will have to bear witness to nonhuman pain and suffering. This is especially true when those nonhumans are collateral damage of industrial practices, like burning rainforests for cattle production. Nonhuman animal rights activists and rescuers are care workers. They repeatedly expose themselves to photographs and videos of nonhuman abuse and manage their emotional responses in an effort to garner public support and change minds. Researchers find that emotional triggers related to self-​ blame, anger, hopelessness, and internal conflict with other activists are also forms of emotional labor activists engage in, including nonhuman animal 21

22

23

Josephine Donovan and Carol J. Adams, eds., Beyond Animal Rights: A Feminist Caring Ethic for the Treatment of nonhuman animals (New York: Continuum, 1996); Daniel Engster, “Care Ethics and Animal Welfare,” Journal of Social Philosophy 37, 4, no. Winter (2006): 521–​36; Marti Kheel, Nature Ethics: An Ecofeminist Perspective (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008); Eleni Panagiotarakou, “Who Loves Mosquitoes? Care Ethics, Theory of Obligation and Endangered Species,” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 29 (2016): 1057–​70. Kerstin Jacobsson and Jonas Lindblom, “Emotion Work in Animal Rights Activism: A Moral-​sociological Perspective,” Acta Sociologica 56, no. 1 (2013): 55–​68; Harold A. Herzog, “ ‘The Movement Is My Life’: The Psychology of Animal Rights Activism,” Journal of Social Issues 49, no. 1 (1993): 103–​19; James M. Jasper and Dorothy Nelkin, The Animal Rights Crusade: The Growth of a Moral Protest (New York: Free Press, 1992). Natasha Daly, “Inside the Efforts to Help nonhuman animals Hurt by the Amazon Fires,” National Geographic, September 26, 2019, https://​www.nationalgeographic.com/​nonhuman animals/​2019/​09/​inside-​the-​efforts-​to-​help-​nonhuman animals-​hurt-​by-​the-​ amazon-​fires/​.

172 Evans rights advocates.24 These activists bear witness to the explicit violence that economic structures inflict on nonhuman animals and provide care indirectly to nonhumans through their work to change those structures. In this way nonhuman animal rights advocates use their emotional labor to care for nonhumans directly in rescue operations and by demanding increased care of nonhumans in broader society. Nonhuman animal advocacy is also structurally embedded through care work in the meat and dairy industry, which is a top contributor to the climate crisis. For instance, care is inherent to work with nonhuman animals, or at least it’s supposed to be. In terms of food production, what was once Old MacDonald’s Farm is now McDonald’s Inc., where forests are clear cut for grazing and cows are treated like objects who don’t feel pain, like meat machines. They are killed by workers who are treated like machines too, as the Introduction to this volume discussed. In the US, animal agriculture is the largest employer of undocumented immigrants, many of whom are forced to migrate due to the climate crisis events in their country of origin. Undocumented immigrants are in demand in factory farms because they are economically and legally vulnerable, and less likely to fight back.25 Before factory farms, we had more family farms, where farmers knew each nonhuman animal and maybe even felt sad when the nonhumans were killed. They were a type of care worker. With the development of economies of scale (competitive and growth-​oriented economies), businesses must constantly increase production while they decrease overhead, primarily by dividing and mechanizing what was previously skilled labor. In meat and dairy production, the more nonhuman animals you can kill every day, the better the business will do. This is a structural condition that facilitated the emergence of industrialized factory farming and transformed the care-​giving family farmer into the exploited workers we see in undercover videos, abusing nonhuman animals inside of factory farms. According to the US Department of Labor’s Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages in 2019, there are about 268,000 employees in livestock production, but, again, large farming operations are a top employer of undocumented immigrants, and employment records are often inaccurate.26 Hyper-​exploited 24

Paul Gorski, Stacy Lopresti-​Goodman, and Dallas Rising, “ ‘Nobody’s Paying Me to Cry’: The causes of Activist Burnout in United States Animal Rights Activists,” Social Movement Studies 18, no. 3 (2018): 364–​80. 25 Timothy Pachirat, Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011). 26 Hribar, Understanding Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations; Pachirat, Every Twelve Seconds.

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immigrant and refugee workers are forced to be parts of these massive disassembly factories, where nonhuman animals are fattened and slaughtered using heavy machinery and fast-​paced conveyor belts. Exemplifying the use of a care frame, the National Center for Farm Workers has an ongoing campaign called Increase Access to Care, calling for health care provisions for agricultural workers, including those in meat and dairy production. This campaign is just one that mobilizes for access to physical health care because of the unsafe working conditions in meat and dairy production. In addition to threats to their physical safety, refugee and immigrant workers in factory farms also endure conditions that threaten their emotional health. The condition you would notice first if you were inside of an industrialized slaughterhouse is the noise—​the incredible noise of machines and screaming. Then you would smell the excrement and blood, and you would feel the physical sensation of smelling moist dust as it covers your face, hair, the insides of your nose and mouth. Workers in these noxious sensory conditions are killing a nonhuman animal every 12 seconds. They frequently get injured; they feel the constant anxiety of poverty; they likely fear deportation. On top of this, when nonhuman animals know they are going to die, and they don’t want to, they panic, show palpable fear, and they fight. Workers are confronting and absorbing the life-​or-​death responses of every nonhuman animal they have to kill, with a tremendous emotional price. Desensitization coupled with the pressure to work quickly leads people to act brutally and apathetically toward nonhuman animals. The cruelty didn’t start with them. The cruelty started with a broad political and economic shift towards mass production and profit-​imperatives. More nonhuman animal advocacy organizations recognize that blaming workers inside nonhuman animal industries is an exercise in futility because it negates the structural root causes of nonhuman animal abuse.27 The conditions of industrialized meat and dairy production and the industry as a whole negate care of nonhuman animals, human workers, and the environment in the interest of organizational growth and survival. These conditions foster the emergence of broad coalition-​building based on an ethic of care.

27

Lauren Ornelas, Shining a Light on the Valley of Heart’s Delight: Taking a Look at Access to Healthy Foods in Santa Clara County’s Communities of Color and Low-​Income Communities, Food Empowerment Project Humane Research Council (San Jose, CA, 2010); Eric Holt-​ Gimenez and A. Breeze Harper, Food-​Systems-​Racism: From Mistreatment to Transformation, Institute for food and Development Policy (2016).

174 Evans 5

Structural Opportunities and Care Movements

Social movement theory helps us understand the emergence and possibilities of seemingly unrelated movements that are galvanizing care as a political strategy. Three primary approaches are used by social movements scholars to explain the emergence of social movements and the outcomes of those movements.28 Some scholars focus on how activists frame their campaigns to resonate with different audiences, where the different ways that activists can describe their campaigns elicit differing responses depending on the audience.29 For instance, the Amazonian fires could be framed to emphasize the problem of environmental destruction and the extinction of free-​living nonhuman animals, or indigenous land violations, or factory farming and nonhuman animal cruelty. Although these three problems are simultaneously linked to deforestation in the Amazon, activists can choose to emphasize particular aspects because it will resonate more strongly with the audience they are targeting. A second camp of scholars focus on resources available to activists for mobilizing and using growing public support to affect change to culture and politics.30 Simply, movements that have strong organizations and a lot of material, social, and cultural resources are more likely to grow and affect social change. Finally, a third theoretical camp focuses on the ways that political structures steer activists’ strategies and the outcomes of those strategies.31 The political process approach explains movement emergence and outcomes through the political structures that both constrain and offer opportunities to activists to make claims. Political structures, like electoral or legislative processes, 28

29 30 31

Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald, Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings, ed. Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); David A. Snow and Sarah A. Soule, A Primer on Social Movements (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009). David A. Snow, “Framing Processes, Ideology, and Discursive Fields,” in The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, ed. David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi (London: Blackwell Publishing, 2009): 380–​412. Bob Edwards and John D. McCarthy, “Resources and Social Movement Mobilization,” in Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, ed. David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007). Herbert P. Kitschelt, “Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest: Anti-​Nuclear Movements in Four Democracies,” British Journal of Political Science 16 (1986): 57–​85; David S. Meyer, “Protest and Political Opportunities,” Annual Review of Sociology 30, no. 1 (2004): 125–​45; Edwin Amenta et al., “The Political Consequences of Social Movements,” American Review of Sociology 36 (2010): 287–​307.

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differ in their degree of openness or closure to public influence. For instance, if democratic structures include systems of direct voting influence, like the ballot referendum process, that would be a more open opportunity for activists to influence the political system. If a nation is not a democracy, there are no opportunities for activists to use this type of structure to affect political change. The context determines activists’ grievances, how they address those grievances, and the outcomes of what they do. The opportunities offered to activists influence their strategies, which is intuitive, but also powerful for explaining similar patterns of seemingly unrelated movements. I use this third approach and focus on the structural arrangements that reward environmentally destructive practices contributing to the climate crisis and forced migration. I propose that because these arrangements are antithetical to care, they are steering seemingly unrelated movements to contest those arrangements by vying for policies that provide care. Two key features of neoliberal policies are that they disempower workers through free-​ trade agreements and anti-​union activity, and that they seek to dismantle public programs. Care movements, including some multi-​issue nonhuman animal advocacy organizations, mobilize to empower workers and bolster public programs providing care (like free education and universal healthcare). Care movements refer to mobilizations of activists who campaign on behalf of care workers and campaigns that advocate for care providing programs, like parental leave or access to healthcare.32 Their campaigns are mostly uncoordinated between organizations and constituencies focusing on care, ranging from nurses and teachers seeking unionization, to domestic workers seeking better pay. There are two important characteristics of paid and unpaid care workers related to conceptualizing climate refugees and the human-​nonhuman connection. First, care work is a form of labor that is systematically devalued and care workers are predominantly hyper-​exploited. Second, care is necessary to the basic functioning of society, but is not provided as a necessary public good. Think of how K-​12 education in the US is free because it is considered a necessary public good, but how teaching K-​12 remains an underpaid caring profession because public schools are under-​funded. Care movements seek to

32

Mignon Duffy, “ ‘We Are the Union’: Care Work, Unions, and Social Movements,” Humanity & Society 34, no. May (2010): 125–​40; Daniel Engster, “Strategies for Building and Sustaining a New Care Movement,” Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy 31, no. 4 (2015): 289–​312; Nancy Folbre, “Demanding Quality: Worker/​Consumer Coalitions and ‘High Road’ Strategies in the Care Sector,” Politics and Society 34, no. 1 (2006): 11–​32.

176 Evans empower workers like teachers and bolster care as a public good, like through increased school funding. Care is a form of work that is necessary to the basic functioning of a society, and neoliberal policies create a structural deprivation of care. Social movements responding to the structural lack of care, of human and nonhuman animals, are connected through the leveraging of care. Scholars of caring professions and care ethics identify multiple strategies for building a new care movement, including “understanding of the centrality of paid care work as well as the near universality of unpaid care obligations as the potential to be an important for ‘social movement’ unionism.”33 Understanding the centrality of our relationship to nonhuman animals through care work and incorporating nonhuman animal advocacy within the sphere of care movements also has this potential. 6

Conclusion

Human and nonhuman climate refugees, factory farm workers, and nonhuman animals suffering within the same industrial walls are all victims of neoliberal policy and they are all care movement constituents. Prioritizing care as an invaluable basic need is corrosive to the economies of scale and profit-​imperatives driving unbridled environmental destruction and industrialized nonhuman animal exploitation. Unionizing these industries, or working against the existence of these industries all together, instead of blaming employees who might very well be climate refugees is the coalition-​building work that care movements are doing to improve human and nonhuman lives. Political and organizational gains that empower workers inside of institutions that care movements target are particularly effective for changing those institutions from the inside-​out.34 Union organizing and lobbying for public programs like universal healthcare are relevant to the climate crisis, climate refugees, and industrial nonhuman animal abuse because these strategies challenge the heart of neoliberalism. Empowering workers through unions, fighting against free-​trade agreements, and demanding publicly provided services compromises profits and compromises the control owners have over 33 34

Duffy, “ ‘We Are the Union,’ ” 128. Erin M. Evans, “Stumbling Blocks or Stepping Stones? The problems and promises of policy reform goals for the animal advocacy movement.,” Sociological Perspectives 59, no. 4 (2016): 41–​59; Jaime Kucinskas, The Mindful Elite: Mobilizing from the Inside Out (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).

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workers.35 Empowering workers helps disrupt the structural violence of efficiency and profiteering that harms humans, nonhumans, and the environment. Care work is at the nexus of structural violence. Care workers can be victims of abuse, they can be perpetrators of abuse, and they are almost always at the frontlines of structural violence, witnessing its effects on victims receiving their care. All workers at some point provide care to others or require care themselves. All workers also benefit from public programs that provide care. The mobilizing power of care movements is their ability to fill the structural vacuum of care causing violence, which resonates and appeals cross-​culturally and cross-​nationally. Care workers, including nonhuman animal rights advocates, are potentially central to revitalizing social unionism. As part of a volume exploring the oppressive links between maltreatment of human and nonhuman refugees, this chapter explores the structural roots of that maltreatment and the possibilities for movements addressing those roots. Care movements challenge the structural arrangements that allow powerholders to maintain their position while abusing the planet, humans, and nonhumans. Institutionalizing care through worker empowerment and public programs is a growing care movement strategy for addressing the structural roots of intersecting social problems, like the marginalization of human and nonhuman refugees.

References

Amenta, Edwin, Neal Caren, Elizabeth Chiarello, and Yang Su. “The Political Consequences of Social Movements.” American Review of Sociology 36 (2010): 287–​307. Bettini, Giovanni. “Climates Barbarians at the Gate? A Critique of Apocalyptic Narratives on Climate Refugees.” Geoforum 45 (2013): 63–​72. Bettini, Giovanni, and Giovanna Gioli. “Waltz with Development: Insights on the Developmentalization of Climate-​Induced Migration.” Migration and Development 5 (2016): 171–​89. Bronen, Robin. “Climate-​Induced Community Relocations: Creating an Adaptive Governance Framework Based in Human Rights Doctrine.” NYU Review of Law and Social Change 35 (2011): 356–​406. 35

Jenn Hagedorn et al., “The Role of Labor Unions in Creating Working Conditions that Promote Public Health,” American Journal of Public Health 106, no. 6 (2016): 989–​95; David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

178 Evans Cassidy, Rebecca. “Lives with Others: Climate Change and Human-​Animal Relations.” Annual Review of Anthropology 41 (2012): 21–​36. Clark, Nigel, and Giovanni Bettini. “ ‘Floods’ of Migrants, Flows of Care: Between Climate Displacement and Global Care Chains.” Sociological Review 65, no. 2 (2017): 36–​54. Daly, Natasha. “Inside the Efforts to Help Nonhuman Animals Hurt by the Amazon Fires.” National Geographic, September 26, 2019 2019. https://​www.nationalgeographic.com/​nonhuman animals/​2019/​09/​inside-​the-​efforts-​to-​help-​nonhuman animals-​hurt-​by-​the-​amazon-​fires/​. Donovan, Josephine, and Carol J. Adams, eds. Beyond Animal Rights: A Feminist Caring Ethic for the Treatment of nonhuman animals. New York: Continuum, 1996. Duffy, Mignon. “Doing the Dirty Work: Gender, Race, and Reproductive Labor in Historical Perspective.” Gender & Society 21, no. 3 (2007): 313–​36. Duffy, Mignon. “Reproducing Labor Inequalities: Challenges for Feminists Conceptualizing Care at the Intersections of Gender, Race, and Class.” Gender & Society 19, no. 1 (2005): 66–​82. Duffy, Mignon. “ ‘We Are the Union’: Care Work, Unions, and Social Movements.” Humanity & Society 34, (May 2010): 125–​40. Edwards, Bob, and John D. McCarthy. “Resources and Social Movement Mobilization.” In Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, edited by David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule and Hanspeter Kriesi. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007. Ehrenreich, Barbara, and Arlie Russel Hochschild. Eds. Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy. London: Granta Books, 2003. Engels, Friedrich. The Origins of the Family: Private Property and the State. New York: International Publishers, 1884. England, Paula, Michelle Budig, and Nancy Folbre. “Wages of Virtue: The Relative Pay of Care Work.” Social Problems 49 (2002): 455–​73. Engster, Daniel. “Care Ethics and Animal Welfare.” Journal of Social Philosophy 37, 4, no. Winter (2006): 521–​36. Engster, Daniel. “Strategies for Building and Sustaining a New Care Movement.” Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy 31, no. 4 (2015): 289–​312. Engster, Daniel. “Strategies for Building and Sustaining a New Care Movement.” Journal of Women, Politics & Society 31, no. 4 (2010): 289–​312. Evans, Erin M. “Stumbling Blocks or Stepping Stones? The Problems and Promises of Policy Reform Goals for the Animal Advocacy Movement.” Sociological Perspectives 59, no. 4 (2016): 41–​59. Felli, Romain, and Noel Castree. “Neoliberalising Adaptation to Environmental Change: Foresight or Foreclosure.” Environment and Planning A 44 (2012): 1–​4. Folbre, Nancy. “Demanding Quality: Worker/​Consumer Coalitions and ‘High Road’ Strategies in the Care Sector.” Politics and Society 34, no. 1 (2006): 11–​32.

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Gaul, Gilbert M. The Geography of Risk: Epic Storms, Rising Seas, and the Cost of America’s Coasts. Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 2019. Gorski, Paul, Stacy Lopresti-​Goodman, and Dallas Rising. “ ‘Nobody’s Paying Me to Cry’: The Causes of Activist Burnout in United States Animal Rights Activists.” Social Movement Studies 18, no. 3 (2018): 364–​80. Hagedorn, Jenn, Claudia Alexandra Paras, Howard Greenwich, and Amy Hagopian. “The Role of Labor Unions in Creating Working Conditions That Promote Public Health.” American Journal of Public Health 106, no. 6 (2016): 989–​95. Harvey, David A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Herzog, Harold A. “ ‘The Movement Is My Life’: The Psychology of Animal Rights Activism.” Journal of Social Issues 49, no. 1 (1993): 103–​19. Hirsh, Sophie. “The Amazon Fires Are Destroying Indigenous People’s Homes—​We Interviewed an Amazon Watch Director to Learn More.” Green Matters. (2019). Accessed August 24 2019. https://​www.greenmatters.com/​p/​questions-​about-​the -​amazon-​rainforest-​fires. Hochschild, Arlie Russel. “Global Care Chains and Emotional Surplus Value.” In On the Edge: Living with Global Capitalism, edited by Will Hutton and Anthony Giddens, 130–​46. London: Jonathan Cape, 2000. Hochschild, Arlie Russel. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983. Holt-​Gimenez, Eric, and A. Breeze Harper. Food-​Systems-​Racism: From Mistreatment to Transformation. Institute for Food and Development Policy (2016). Hribar, Carrie. Understanding Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and Their Impact on Communities. National Association of Local Boards of Health (Bowling Green, OH: 2015). Jacobsson, Kerstin, and Jonas Lindblom. “Emotion Work in Animal Rights Activism: A Moral-​Sociological Perspective.” Acta Sociologica 56, no. 1 (2013): 55–​68. Jasper, James M. The Emotions of Protest. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018. Jasper, James M., and Dorothy Nelkin. The Animal Rights Crusade: The Growth of a Moral Protest. New York: Free Press, 1992. Kartiki, Katha. “Climate Change and Migration: A Case Study from Rural Bangladesh.” Gender and Development 19, no. 1 (2011): 23–​38. Kheel, Marti. Nature Ethics: An Ecofeminist Perspective. Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. Kitschelt, Herbert P. “Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest: Anti-​ Nuclear Movements in Four Democracies.” British Journal of Political Science 16 (1986): 57–​85. Kolb, Felix. Protest and Opportunities: The Political Outcomes of Social Movements. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Kucinskas, Jaime. The Mindful Elite: Mobilizing from the inside Out. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.

180 Evans Maldonado, Julie Koppel, Christine Shearer, Robin Bronen, Kristina Peterson, and Heather Lazrus. “The Impact of Climate Change on Tribal Communities in the US: Displacement, Relocation, and Human Rights.” Climate Change 120 (2013): 601–​14. McAdam, Doug, and Hilary Schaffer Boudet. Putting Social Movements in Their Place: Explaining Opposition to Energy Projects in the United States, 2000–​2005. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. McAdam, Doug, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald. Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings, edited by Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Mence, Victoria, and Alex Parrinder. “Environmentally Related International Migration: Policy Challenges.” In A Long Way to Go: Irregular Migration Patterns, Processes, Drivers and Decision-​Making, edited by Marie McCauliffe and Khalid Koser: anu Press, 2017. Meyer, David S. “Protest and Political Opportunities.” Annual Review of Sociology 30, no. 1 (2004): 125–​45. Morris, Patricia. Blue Juice: Euthanasia in Veterinary Medicine. Nonhuman animals, Culture, and Society. Temple University Press, 2012. Nagesh, Ashitha. “What About the nonhuman animals Caught in the Amazon Rainforest Fires?” BBC News. (29 August 2019 2019). www.bbc.com/​news/​world -​latin-​america-​49497857. Okin, Gregory S. “Environmental Impacts of Food Consumption by Dogs and Cats.” PLoS ONE 12, no. 8 (2017): e0181301. Ornelas, Lauren. Shining a Light on the Valley of Heart’s Delight: Taking a Look at Access to Healthy Foods in Santa Clara County’s Communities of Color and Low-​Income Communities. Food Empowerment Project Humane Research Council (San Jose, CA: 2010). Pachirat, Timothy. Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011. Panagiotarakou, Eleni. “Who Loves Mosquitoes? Care Ethics, Theory of Obligation and Endangered Species.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 29 (2016): 1057–​70. Parrenas, Rhacel Salazar. “The Care Crisis in the Philippines: Children and Transnational Families in the New Global Economy.” In Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy, edited by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russel Hochschild. London: Granta Books, 2003. Pearce, Tristan, James D. Ford, Frank Duerden, Barry Smit, Mark Andrachuk, Lea Berrang-​Ford, and Tanyia Smith, “Advancing Adaptation Planning for Climate Change in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region (Isr): A Review and Critique.” Reg. Environ. Change 11, no. 1 (2011): 1–​17.

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Pecl, Gretta T., Miguel B. Araujo, Johann D. Bell, Julia Blanchard, Timothy C. Bonebrake, I-​Ching Chen, and et al. “Biodiversity Redistribution under Climate Change: Impacts on Ecosystems and Human Well-​Being.” Science 355, no. 6332 (2017): eaai9214. Prno, Jason, Ben Bradshaw, Johanna Wandel, Tristan Pearce, Barry Smit, and Laura Toser. “Community Vulnerability to Climate Change in the Context of Other Exposure-​Sensitivities in Kugluktuk, Nunavut.” Polar Res. 30, no. 7363 (2011): 1–​21. Roberts, J. Timmons, and Bradley Parks. A Climate of Injustice. Cambridge, MA: mit Press, 2007. Snow, David A. “Framing Processes, Ideology, and Discursive Fields.” In The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, edited by David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule and Hanspeter Kriesi, 380–​412. London: Blackwell Publishing, 2009. Snow, David A., and Sarah A. Soule. A Primer on Social Movements. New York: W.W. Norton, 2009. Wodon, Quentin, Andrea Liverani, George Joseph, and Nathalie Bougnoux. Climate Change and Migration: Evidence from the Middle East and North Africa. The World Bank (Washington D.C.: 2014).

­c hapter 6

Global Migration Crises, Nonhuman Animals, and the Role of Law Charlotte E. Blattner Abstract Traditionally, human and nonhuman animal migration were thought to occupy distinct and separate sociopolitical spheres of knowledge. We romanticize the migration of other animals, taking an overly naturalistic view of the journey of gray whales, caribou, or deer as they follow the change of seasons across international borders. But when we theorize about human migration, we tend to do so with worry and concern about displacement, persecution, safety, and the threat of mass movements. As a consequence, human and nonhuman animal migration are considered in separate categories, with different demographics and definitions, governed by wholly separate legal documents. This chapter shows that the idea that human and nonhuman animal migration must be understood separately and in isolation from one another is rigorously put to the test by climate change. Whole populations of humans and other animals will be threatened to migrate toward the poles as their habitat is destroyed by global warming, mounting environmental disasters, and the encroaching ocean. The law—​compartmentalized, siloized, reactive, and often oppressive—​is not prepared to face these challenges. To address and begin to resolve the challenges of climate change on migration, we must resolve the deep-​seated, structural problems that plague human and nonhuman animal migration law—​including deregulation, illegalization, and securitization, and the human-​animal borderlands that connects these. Drawing on the work of human and nonhuman animal migration experts and new research on rehumanization, this chapter examines this cutting-​edge intersection from a legal perspective and sketches the policy goals and measures that can help avert a global migration crisis and build up interspecies resilience.

Keywords animal migration –​intersectional oppression –​climate change –​migration crisis –​ immigration law –​sanctuary

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004440654_008

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Introduction

Migrations are often spectacular, and sometimes world changing. The “waves of immigrants” who arrived on Ellis Island in the early 1900s, flocks of migrating birds so vast they darken the skies, antelopes and bisons crossing African and North American grasslands in herds that spanned the horizons, the arrival of 8,000 desperate Syrian Civil War refugees a day at the borders of Europe—​ these are major phenomena of such scale and power that they leave few who witness them untouched. From a linguistic point of view, a migrant is both “a person that travels to a different country or place, often in order to find work,” and “an animal that moves from one place to another at different times of the year.”1 Human and nonhuman animal migrants are often on the move for similar reasons; their migration can be voluntary or forced, proactive or reactive, legitimated or despised. Both human and nonhuman animal migration operate as powerful catalysts of demographic, social, economic, and political change,2 but we treat them as if they have nothing to do with each other. Separate policies, bodies of knowledge, and narratives place them in different worlds. Humans have long believed that their own migrations and other animal migrations must be understood separately, but the long-​term, sustained trend of change in the earth’s climate is ruthlessly testing this notion. Global warming, heat waves, rising sea levels, and mounting environmental disasters will pressure millions of humans and nonhumans to seek new homes. Communities of previously sedentary animals and humans will migrate and compete for ever scarcer habitat, food, water, and natural resources. These challenges—​whether we qualify them as wholly new challenges arising from climate change, or as pre-​existing challenges that climate change simply renders visible and magnifies—​seriously put to the test the laws governing human and nonhuman animal migration. Are these laws prepared for the new “climate migrants,” and, potentially, a global interspecies migration? Are there legal mechanisms capacious enough to cope with the challenges ahead? Few have asked these questions by looking at human and other animal migration, and almost no one has approached them from a legal standpoint. As the first in its field, this chapter considers the laws governing human and animal in common categories, brings them into contact, uncovers shared issues, and begins to sketch possible solutions to the challenges ahead. 1 Cambridge Dictionary 2019. 2 Marc R. Rosenblum and David J. Tichenor, “Introduction,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Politics of International Migration, ed. Marc R. Rosenblum and David J. Tichenor (Oxford: oup, 2012), 1.

184 Blattner In part 2, I begin by illustrating the great divide between the definitions, demographics, and legal regulation of human and animal migration. I explore definitions of migrating humans and the demographics and laws that govern human migration, focusing on principles and protections that apply to human migrants under international law, and then turn my eye to animal migration, examining its occurrence, definitions of animal migrants, and the protections the law offers to migrating animals on the international level. I compare these to the critical protections only human migrants enjoy, like the rights to departure, admission, and sojourn. In part 3, I show how this compartmentalization and siloization is rapidly losing validity thanks to climate change, which poses unprecedented challenges for all humans and animals, including loss of habitat caused by global warming of the atmosphere, sea level rise, and mounting disasters—​pressures that increase the size of mass migration, and competition for land and food. In part 4, I show that neither the law governing human migration nor the law governing animal migration are equipped to meet these challenges because they pursue single issues and takes piecemeal approaches. While it is tempting to call for sweeping reforms of human and animal migration laws for these reasons, political realities suggest this is not feasible. In Part 5, I question the purpose of the laws that now govern human/​animal migration, arguing that the lack of response to and anticipation of the climate crisis is an illustration of their broader failure to capture human/​animal migration in all its complex dimensions and to protect and provide relief to those in need. I explain how deregulation, illegalization, and securitization, which lie at the heart of modern laws that govern human migration, also underlie the laws governing animal migration. In both cases, the law excludes, disenfranchises, and oppresses migrants. In Part 6, I explain that, though these vectors are usually discussed as if they operate in isolation, dehumanization and its processes are the common points of intersection of many of the major migrant conflicts throughout history. Animals have traditionally been regarded as the lowest anchor of worthiness, and metaphorical and literal boundary work that presumes their low status is evident in public discourse, media, and politics where contempt for animals is used to de-​humanize and legitimate the oppression of all unwanted others, including unwanted humans. Without addressing these structural, operational, technological, legal, and experiential/​embodied forces that link human/​animal migration law and which are a central reason for their ongoing failure to protect migrating humans and animals, we cannot reasonably begin to tackle the problems posed by climate change, notably its effects on migration. As this chapter shows, it does not suffice anymore that we ask ourselves how we can deal with the climate

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crisis as it forces billions of individuals and communities to move. Instead, we must ask how we can deal with this crisis in the face of deep-​seated, structural problems that plague human and animal migration law—​deregulation, illegalization, and securitization—​and the human-​animal borderland that connects these. No doubt, this is an immensely complex endeavor and combinations of critical animal studies and critical animal geography with critical border/​ migration studies are largely unexplored, particularly from a legal standpoint. However, if the roots of the problems underlying human and animal migration are shared, then we must explore if solutions to those problems can be found by looking at human and animal migration in unison. Part 7 attempts to do this, by proposing policy goals and measures that may help avert a global migration crisis, including rehumanization techniques, building up interspecies resilience, setting up robust mitigation and adapation action, and offering migrants protection from the law. 2

Human Migration and Animal Migration: Two Separate Worlds

2.1 Human Migration In the past century, we have been witnessing a startling increase in migration movements. International migration was estimated at 79 million per year in the 1960s; by 2000, the number had risen to 175 million.3 In 2017, 258 million migrants were on the move—​3.4% of the world’s population, or one in every 33 persons.4 Depending on their reasons for migrating and the conditions under which they migrate, people are classified into different socio-​legal categories, and labeled e.g., “migrant,” “immigrant,” and “refugee.”5 Migrant broadly describes

3 Rosenblum and Tichenor, “Introduction,” 1. 4 International Organization for Migration, Glossary on Migration (2d ed. Geneva, Switzerland, 2019). 5 Note that I here simply restate common approaches to how people with migration backgrounds are labeled, without endorsing these specific categories and without endorsing the prior decision that they ought to be classified and labeled. For a convincing argument that it is impossible (i) to differentiate between refugees and other involuntary migrants, (ii) to distinguish between political, economic, and environmental causes for migration, and, consequently, (iii) to draw a clear line between involuntary and voluntary migration, at large, see Stefan Schlegel, “A “Basket of Goods Approach” as an Alternative to Strict Legal Distinctions between Migrants and Refugees,” in Flucht und Asyl –​Internationale und österreichische Perspektiven, ed. Rainer Bauböck, Christoph Reinprecht, and Wiebke Sievers (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2019).

186 Blattner anyone who moves across or within national borders, whether they are settlers or sojourners.6 An immigrant is a person who moves across international lines with the intent of permanently settling in a new country,7 but the term is often used to describe those who migrate for manual labor, and has negative connotations.8 These terms are standard in migration law, which focuses on voluntary migration.9 There is another vocabulary to describe involuntary migration, used mostly by those in refugee studies, including the terms “refugee,” “asylum seeker,” “displaced person,” and “trafficked” or “smuggled” people.10 A refugee, as defined by international law, is anyone who, “owing to well-​founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.”11 According to the International Organization for Migration (iom), of the 258 million migrants in 2017, 68.5 million were forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict, generalized violence, human rights violations, and other reasons.12 This contrasts to 43.3 million refugees reported in 2010, which was the highest figure since the mid-​1990s.13 Trafficked people number between

6 7 8 9

10 11 12

13

Julian Lim, Porous Borders: Multiracial Migrations and the Law in the US-​ Mexico Borderlands (Chapel Hill: University of Carolina Press, 2017), 16. Id., 16. Peter Baofu, The Future of Post-​Human Migration: A Preface to a New Theory of Sameness, Otherness, and Identity (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), 9. Dina Siegel and Veronika Nagy, “Introduction,” in The Migration Crisis? Criminalization, Security and Survival, ed. Dina Siegel and Veronika Nagy (The Hague: Eleven International Publishing, 2018), 8. In other words, international law does not use the term “migrant” in the context of forced movement: Walter Kälin and Nina Schrepfer, Protecting People Crossing Borders in the Context of Climate Change Normative Gaps and Possible Approaches, unhcr Legal and Protection Policy Research Series (2012), 29. Note that the meaning of these terms depends on the sociopolitical context in which they are used, e.g., whether they are used in media or law. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, 189 u.n.t.s. 137, July 28, 1951 (Refugee Convention), art. 1 (A)(2). International Organization for Migration, Glossary on Migration. According to the newest IOM report from 2020, the global number of migrants now is at an estimated 272 million; however, this report, unlike the one from 2017, does not provide an estimate of the global number of people forcibly displaced. Charles Watters, “Forced Migrants: From the Politics of Displacement to a Moral Economy of Reception,” in The Routledge International Handbook of Migration Studies, ed. Steven J. Gold and Stephanie J. Nawyn (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 99.

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700,000 to 2 million a year.14 These are persons taken by others regardless or against their will for the purposes of exploitation, including for sex work, sweatshop work, domestic labor, forced marriage, agricultural labor, sport and begging, or the harvesting of organs, body tissues, and cells.15 Many trafficked individuals are sold, sometimes into servitude; their personal documents are confiscated to inhibit free movement.16 Smuggling tends to be initiated by individuals who pay others to circumvent immigration controls for economic reasons (better jobs, more income, job security etc.) or safety concerns, but often leads to involuntary trafficking.17 Because it is multifaceted, the spectrum of different migration experiences and forms poses an enormous regulatory challenge for states and the international community. Migration law is broadly defined as “the set of […] rules and principles governing the movement of persons between States and the legal status of migrants within host States.”18 This rather inclusive definition is meant to cover the whole of the migration cycle, so that migration law operates across and within domestic and international law, including refugee law, human rights law, humanitarian law, labor law, trade law, maritime and air law, criminal law, the law on nationality and consular and diplomatic relations, all operating as “a giant unassembled juridical jigsaw puzzle.”19 Internationally, migrant workers are governed by the Convention Concerning Migration for Employment,20 the Convention Concerning Migrations in Abusive Conditions and the Promotion of Equal Opportunity and Treatment of Migrant Workers,21 and the International Convention on the Protection 14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21

Kathryn Farr, “Human Trafficking,” in The Routledge International Handbook of Migration Studies, ed. Steven J. Gold and Stephanie J. Nawyn (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 121. Ryszard Piotrowicz, “Smuggling and Trafficking of Human Beings,” in Research Handbook on International Law and Migration, ed. Vincent Chetail and Céline Bauloz (Cheltenham UK, Northampton MA: Edward Elgar, 2014), 139. Id., 139. Id., 132. Vincent Chetail, “The Transnational Movement of Persons under General International Law: Mapping the Customary Law Foundations of International Migration Law,” in Research Handbook on International Law and Migration, ed. Vincent Chetail and Céline Bauloz (Cheltenham UK, Northampton MA: Edward Elgar, 2014), 2. Richard B. Lillich, The Human Rights of Aliens in Contemporary International Law (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), 122. See also Chetail, “The Transnational Movement of Persons under General International Law.” Convention Concerning Migration for Employment, 20 u.n.t.s. 70 (Revised) (No. 97), July 1, 1949. Convention Concerning Migrations in Abusive Conditions and the Promotion of Equal Opportunity and Treatment of Migrant Workers, 1120 u.n.t.s. 323, June 24, 1975.

188 Blattner of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and the Members of their Families.22 Refugee relations are regulated by the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees,23 and the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees,24 removing the temporal and geographic restrictions of the Refugee Convention. Smuggled and trafficked people are governed by the Protocol Against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air,25 and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations (UN) Convention Against Transnational Crime.26 Human rights treaties also apply to migrants, irrespective of nationality, with specific provisions for non-​citizens.27 A considerable body of soft law and practice on migration was drafted by international organizations like the iom’s International Dialogue on Migration,28 the International Labor Organization’s Multilateral Framework on Labor Migration,29 the UN High Commissioner for Refugees” (unhcr) Agenda for Protection,30 and Plan for Action on Refugee Protection and Mixed Migration.31 Regional organizations like the African Union, the European Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Organization of American States, and the Council of Europe have carried out similar endeavors. On the international level, human migrants have three core rights: (i) the right to departure; (ii) the right to admission; and (iii) the right to sojourn. (i) The right to departure, also known as the right to leave a country, or freedom of emigration is a sine qua non for migration law, for without it, there would be no migration. The right to leave a country lies “at the heart of the

22

International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and the Members of their Families, 30 i.l.m. 1517, December 18, 1990. 23 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, 189 u.n.t.s. 137, July 28, 1951 (Refugee Convention). 24 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, 606 u.n.t.s. 267, January 31, 1967. 25 Protocol Against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air, Supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, November 15, 2000. 26 Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the UN Convention Against Transnational Crime, 2237 u.n.t.s. 319, November 15, 2000. 27 E.g., International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances, UN Doc. A/​61/​488, December 20, 2006, art. 16. 28 International Organization for Migration, “International Dialogue on Migration,” 2019. 29 ilo, Multilateral Framework on Labor Migration, Non-​Binding Principles and Guidelines for a Rights-​based Approach to Labour Migration, Doc. tmmflm/​2 005/​1 (Rev.). 30 unhcr, Agenda for Protection, UN Doc. A/​a c.96/​965/​Add.1, June 26, 2002. 31 unhcr, Refugee Protection and Mixed Migration: The 10-​Point Plan in Action (Geneva, Switzerland, 2007).

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theory of human rights;”32 it is the “right to ‘vote with one’s feet’—​whether to escape persecution, seek a better life, or for purely personal motives unattached to larger political or economic issues;” and it is “the ultimate means through which the individual may express his or her personal liberty.”33 This right is guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (udhr),34 and restated in a wide range of human rights treaties, like the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,35 the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,36 the Convention on the Rights of the Child,37 and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.38 (ii) The right to admission to a country is different from the freedom to leave, and the most frequent cause of controversies and disputes about migration. States are typically seen as having the competence to regulate the entry of non-​ citizens into their territory.39 The right to exclude “aliens” was not frequently exercised by states until the 19th Century. Starting in 1875, the US Congress banned the entry of non-​domestic convicts and prostitutes through the Page Act.40 A few years later, in 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act forbade entry of

32 Chetail, “The Transnational Movement of Persons under General International Law,” 10. 33 Hurst Hannum, The Right to Leave and Return in International Law and Practice (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987), 4. See also Roger Waldinger and Thomas Soehl, “The Political Sociology of International Migration: Borders, Boundaries, Rights, and Politics,” in The Routledge International Handbook of Migration Studies, ed. Steven J. Gold and Stephanie J. Nawyn (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 334; Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations or, Principles of the Law of Nature, Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns, ed. Bela Kapossy and Richard Whatmore (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund (first published 1758) 2008), c. xix, para. 225; Chetail, “The Transnational Movement of Persons under General International Law,” 12. 34 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, U.N. Doc. A/​r es/​810, December 10, 1948, art. 13. 35 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 999 u.n.t.s. 171, December 16, 1966, art. 12 (2). 36 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 660 u.n.t.s. 195, December 21, 1965, art. 5 (d)(1). 37 Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1577 u.n.t.s. 3, November 20, 1989, art. 10 (2). 38 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, A/​r es/​61/​106, January 24, 2007, art. 18 (1)(c). 39 As Oppenheim’s states: “By customary international law no state can claim the right for its nationals to enter into, and reside on, the territory of a foreign state. The reception of aliens is a matter of discretion, and every state is, by reasons of territorial supremacy, competent to exclude aliens from the whole, or any part, of its territory.” Robert Jennings and Arthur Watts eds., Oppenheim’s International Law (9th ed. New York: Longman, 1992), 897–​8. 40 US Page Act, 18 Stat. 477, 1875 (US).

190 Blattner Chinese laborers for ten years.41 Well before that time, the US blocked the entrance of persons “with loathsome diseases” or those “likely to become a public charge.”42 In 1905, also the UK began to toughen its immigration standards by passing the Alien Act to restrict the immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe.43 States’ prerogative to exclude aliens is subject only to a few, but notable exceptions. The principle of non-​refoulement, which is a customary international law norm,44 a principle of human rights law,45 humanitarian law,46 and refugee law prohibits states from removing a person from their territory if they face a real risk of persecution or serious violations of human rights.47 The quintessential claim of people exempt from refoulement is that their physical security is at risk, as through risks to life, torture, cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, all forms of human slavery, and other forms of physical violence—​whether these prompt them to flee or prevent them from safely returning home.48 The principle of non-​refoulement limits states’ freedom to decide about admissions by forcing them to abstain from sending certain individuals back. This amounts to a de facto duty of admission because states either have to grant individuals temporary asylum to assess persecution and human rights violations or send them to a country where there is no such risk.49 To be clear, the law does not protect migrating people from the aforementioned risks 41 42

US Chinese Exclusion Act, 22 Stat. 58, May 6, 1882 (US). David Reimers, “Explaining Migration Policy: Historical Perspectives,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Politics of International Migration, ed. Marc R. Rosenblum and David J. Tichenor (Oxford: oup, 2012), 280. 43 UK Alien Act, 5 Edw. 7 c. 13, August 11, 1905 (UK). 44 unhcr, The Principle of Non-​Refoulement as a Norm of Customary International Law, Response to the Questions Posed to unhcr by the Federal Constitutional Court of the Federal Republic of Germany in Cases 2 BvR 1938/​93, 2 BvR 1953/​93, 2 BvR 1954/​93, January 31, 1994. 45 E.g., American Convention on Human Rights, Pact of San Jose, Costa Rica (B-​32), January 22, 1969, art. 22 (8); Arab Charter on Human Rights, League of Arab States, September 15, 1994, art. 28; European Charter of Fundamental Rights, 2012/​C 326/​02, October 26, 2012, art. 19 (2). 46 E.g., Geneva Convention. Geneva Convention (iv) Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, 75 u.n.t.s. 287, August 12, 1949, art. 45 (4). 47 E.g., Refugee Convention, art. 33. See also Chetail, “The Transnational Movement of Persons under General International Law,” 35. 48 James C. Hathaway and Michelle Foster, The Law of Refugee Status (2d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 208. 49 Chetail, “The Transnational Movement of Persons under General International Law,” 40–​1; Guy S. Goodwin-​Gill and Jane McAdam, The Refugee in International Law (3rd ed. Oxford: oup, 2007), 384.

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tout court because its focus is on the inability or unwillingness of other states to protect.50 What differentiates refugees from migrants, legally speaking, is that refugees have reasons to migrate that are so pressing that their admission into arrival states does not depend on lawful entry. A person who otherwise meets the definition of a genuine refugee can cross frontiers covertly or disguise true motive.51 (iii) Finally, migrating humans also enjoy the right to sojourn that is governed by various international minimum standards, like non-​discrimination, the prohibition of forced labor and child labor, the right to a fair trial in civil and criminal matters, and freedom of conscience and of association.52 2.2 Animal Migration Animal migration is defined as a seasonal to-​and-​fro movement of a population of nonhuman animals between regions where conditions are alternately favorable or unfavorable, and which redistributes and spatially extends populations.53 During migration, animals relocate on a large scale, traveling much further than they do during daily resource-​directed activities like foraging.54 Many kinds of animals migrate, from tiny mites to large elephants, by swimming, flying, walking, drifting, or using other forms of locomotion. Animal migration involves large numbers of animals. About 2.1 billion birds travel from Europe to Africa each year,55 and 4–​6 billion large dragonflies engage in a multi-​generational migratory relay race up and down North America every year.56 Some animals migrate altitudinally, like the Warbler, while others are intercontinental migrants, like the Alaskan and Yukon birds.57 Migration is relatively uncommon among animals because most are sedentary. For example, of the world’s 10,000 bird species, only 1,800 migrate.58 Migratory animals prepare for the journey and orient themselves using an 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

Hathaway and Foster, 305. Hathaway and Foster, 28. Chetail, “The Transnational Movement of Persons under General International Law,” 71. Hugh Dingle, Migration: The Biology of Life on the Move (New York: oup, 2014), 13. In other words, migration is a special type of locomotion that is persistent, undistracted, and straightened out. T.P. Hahn, H.E. Watts, J.M. Cornelius, K.R., Brazeal, and S.A. MacDougall-​Shackleton, “Evolution of Environmental Cue Response Mechanisms: Adaptive Variation in Photorefractoriness,” Gen. Comp Endocrinol 163, no. 1–​2 (2009): 193. M.T. Hallworth, P.P. Marra, K.P. McFarland, S. Zahendra, and C.E. Studds, “Tracking Dragons: Stable Isotopes Reveal the Annual Cycle of a Long-​Distance Migratory Insect,” Biology Letters 14, no. 12 (2018). Dingle, 163. Baofu, 16.

192 Blattner impressive variety of tools including visual input, landmarks and topographic features (e.g., mountains or coastlines), sky light polarization and stars, acoustic signals (like ocean waves), chemical and neurophysiological techniques, odors in the atmosphere, cryptochromes to detect magnetism, or celestial maps.59 Some animals even shift their body composition in anticipation of migration. Birds, for example, increase flight muscles at the expense of leg muscles and digestive metabolic organs.60 Similar to humans, animals migrate for a variety of reasons. Variation in temperature, moisture (humidity and precipitation), salinity, elevation, storms, availability of food resources and habitat, avoidance of predators, diseases, and competition all co-​determine the move.61 Food may be a push factor in environments where resources are deteriorating or no longer available,62 or it can be a pull factor when resources are plentiful elsewhere. Hummingbirds, for example, will usually migrate, unless people put out food for them throughout the winter. By moving across space and time, migrants can maintain more stable environments, e.g., when they move southwards to avoid cold weather.63 Accordingly, migration often synchronizes with seasonal change. Security also drives migration, including freedom from predation.64 Some animals also migrate to breed and reproduce, which may be easier if, for example, they can extend the warmth of summer.65 Whether, how often, and how far animals migrate depends on the animals’ size, life history traits, powers of movement, and habitat range.66

59 Susanne Åkesson and Anders Hedenström, “How Migrants Get There: Migratory Performance and Orientation,” BioScience 57, no. 2 (2007): 123–​133; Ian Newton, The Migration Ecology of Birds (Oxford: Academic Press, 2008); Vicky J. Meretsky, Jonathan W. Atwell, and Jeffrey B. Hyman, “Migration and Conservation: Frameworks, Gaps, and Synergies in Science, Law, and Management,” Environmental Law 41, no. 2 (2011): 417. 60 This bodily shift leads to Zugunruhe among the birds, also known as “migratory restlessness”: Silke Bauer, Bart A. Nolet, Jarl Giske, Jason W. Chapman, Susanne Åkesson, Anders Hedenström, and John M. Fryxell, “Cues and Decision Rules in Animal Migration,” in Animal Migration: A Synthesis, ed. E.J. Milner-​Gulland, John M. Fryxell, and Anthony R.E. Sinclair (Oxford: oup, 2011), 78. 61 Bauer et al., “Cues and Decision Rules in Animal Migration,” 84; Meretsky, Atwell, and Hyman, “Migration and Conservation,” 8–​9. 62 Dingle, 13. 63 Baofu, 176; Dingle, ix. 64 Dingle, 161. 65 Id., 45. 66 Note that similar to human migration, animal migration requires a great deal of energy under circumstances in which it can be difficult to find and consume food, and often puts reproduction and daily routines on hold: Dingle, 4, 97.

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When we think of migrating animals, we often presume that animals migrate voluntarily and that there is something “natural” and “necessary” about their move.67 People are less likely to think of animals as subjects of displacement, say through storms, high winds, swift currents, or droughts. These involuntary migrations, however, are frequent and often deadly to animals.68 In this context, scholars speak of refuging migration,69 animal fugitives,70 and, recently, of animal refugees.71 Animals can also be subject to assisted migration, when humans take animals and relocate them, either for their own benefit or for the animals’ benefit.72 Pastoral migration may lead to cross-​border movement when domesticated animals are led by people to other countries where food is more available and the climate more suitable.73 Finally, we can think of the billions of animals traded alive across borders for food, research, entertainment, and other purposes, as trafficked or smuggled migrants. For example, in July 2019, Interpol seized thousands of free-​living animals, including 23 primates, 30 big cats, more than 4,300 birds, nearly 1,500 live reptiles, and close to 10,000 turtles and tortoises, and arrested nearly 600 suspects in a crackdown operation spanning 109 countries to halt “illegal wildlife smuggling.”74 Also legal trade in animals can be considered a form of animal trafficking because these animals are usually taken by violence and then confined and moved against their will. Over the past decades, thanks to

67 68 69 70 71

72

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It is interesting to note that in the case of human migration, migration is rarely understood as “natural” or “necessary”—​for good or for worse. Dingle, 11. Dingle, 183; Meretsky, Atwell, and Hyman, “Migration and Conservation,” 9. Dingle, 209. See esp. Tristan Derham and Freya Mathews, “Elephants as Refugees,” People and Nature 2, no. 1 (2020): 103. And further, fn 173 herein. Also Scotton speaks of some animals as “fellow refugees carrying the promise of a more-​than-​human survival of the community’s culture, lifeways and identity” (Guy Scotton, “Taming Technologies: Crowd Control, Animal Control and the Interspecies Politics of Mobiliy,” Parallax 25, no. 4 (2019): 359). Dingle, 3. Assisted migration can however be less interventionist, as when Open Migration, a conservation initiative, helped reintroduce the Whooping Cranes into Eastern North America by using puppets and costumed humans to teach young cranes migratory journeys: Meretsky, Atwell, and Hyman, “Migration and Conservation,” 16. Roy H. Behnke, Maria E. Fernandez-​Gimenez, Matthew D. Turner, and Florian Stammler, “Pastoral Migration: Mobile Systems of Animal Husbandry,” in Animal Migration: A Synthesis, ed. E.J. Milner-​Gulland, John M. Fryxell, and Anthony R.E. Sinclair (Oxford: oup, 2011), 144. Agence France-​Presse, “Thousands of Wild Animals Seized in Smuggling Crackdown,” The Guardian, July 20, 2019.

194 Blattner globalization, international trade in live animals, and animal products,75 has virtually exploded.76 Plentiful international treaties regulate animals that migrate across state, provincial, and national boundaries. The most notable ones are the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (cms),77 the Convention on Biological Diversity (cbd),78 the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (cites),79 and the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance Especially as Waterfowl Habitat.80, 81 Unlike the Refugee Convention,82 the most notable conventions covering animal migration do not guarantee animals a right to departure, admission, 75 76

77 78 79 80 81

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As an example, between 1986 and 2016, the global trade in eggs increased from 748,241 to 2,107,373 tons, the global trade in meat increased from 17,814,372 to 71,877,429 tons, and the global trade in milk increased from 6,266,492 to 18,587,866 tons: faostat 2019. Today, over 109 nations actively export live animals, worth roughly $21 billion dollars. The largest exporters are the Netherlands, France, Canada, Germany, and Denmark; the largest long-​distance exporters are Australia, Brazil, and the United States: Lewis Bollard, “Global Approaches to Regulating Farm Animal Welfare,” in International Farm Animal, Wildlife and Food Safety Law, ed. Gabriela Steier and Kiran K. Patel (Cham et al.: Springer, 2017), 250–​2. The research industry also trades in animals. Since 2004, the number of animals moved across borders for research purposes has increased three times over. See Charlotte Blattner, Protecting Animals Within and Across Borders: Extraterritorial Jurisdiction and the Challenges of Globalization (Oxford: oup, 2019), 52 ff. Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (cms), 1651 u.n.t.s. 333, November 11, 1983. Convention on Biological Diversity (cbd), 1760 u.n.t.s. 79, June 5, 1992. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (cites), 993 u.n.t.s. 243, March 3, 1973. Convention on Wetlands of International Importance Especially as Waterfowl Habitat, 996 u.n.t.s. 245, February 2, 1971. Note that migrating fish are subject to special treaties like the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (1329 u.n.t.s. 47, April 7, 1982), the International Whaling Convention (International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (iwc), 161 u.n.t.s. 72, November 10, 1948), the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (1833 u.n.t.s. 3, December 10, 1982), and its implementing agreement on highly migratory species, the UN Fish Stocks Agreement (UN Doc. a/​c onf.164/​37, September 8, 1995), the International Convention for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (673 u.n.t.s. 63, May, 14, 1966), the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (1927 u.n.t.s. 329, November 25, 1993), the Convention for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (1819 u.n.t.s. 360, May 10, 1993), the Convention on the Conservation and the Management of Highly Migratory Fish Stocks in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean (2275 u.n.t.s. 43, November 5, 2000), and others. Henceforth, I will focus on the Refugee Convention to make analogies and draw differences between how human migrants and animal migrants are protected under the law.

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or sojourn. Under cms, for example, parties “shall endeavor to provide immediate protection for migratory species”83 that are endangered, and they “shall endeavor to conclude Agreements covering the conservation and management of migratory species” that are not endangered but could profit from protection.84 The “shall” wording indicates that there are no hard-​and-​fast obligations to protect migratory animals or ensure their departure, admission, or sojourn in the territory of a member state. Indeed, insofar as wild animal species fall under cms coverage and receive some form of protection, the treaty does not specify the measures to be taken, leaving that task to the nations involved in the agreement.85 Additionally, ambiguous wording and sweeping exceptions forestall critical progress. Animals who are at the brink of extinction can be legally taken and prevented from migrating, if this is done, among others, for scientific purposes or to accommodate traditional subsistence uses.86 This exception has been used, among others, to accommodate desire for turtle meat.87 cms also covers non-​endangered migratory species that “have an unfavourable conservation status and which require international agreements for their conservation and management, as well as those which have a conservation status which would significantly benefit from the international cooperation.”88 In respect of either group—​endangered or unendangered species—there are no unequivocal duties owed to animals who could benefit from migration protection. The most animals can hope for is for these duties to be specified and implemented through regional action plans, as binding treaties (“Agreements”) or non-​binding memoranda of understanding (“mou s”). Such agreements are in place for birds, bats, turtles, mammals, and sharks.89 The unep/​e urobats Agreement on the Conservation of Populations of European Bats, for example, prohibits the deliberate capture, keeping, or killing of bats and requires identifying and protecting sites important for the bats’ survival, and their prudent

83 84 85 86 87

88 89

This is not to suggest, however, that other treaties can or should not be employed for the very same purpose, or could help to enrich the analysis. cms, Appendix i. cms, Appendix ii, art. ii (3)(b-​c). David S. Wilcove, “Animal Migration: An Endangered Phenomenon?” Issues in Science and Technology 14, no. 3 (2008): 71. cms, art. iii (5)(a-​c). Jennifer L., Shuter, Annette C. Broderick, David J. Agnew, Niclas Jonzén, Brendan J. Godley, E.J. Milner-​Gulland, and Simon Thirgood, “Conservation and Management of Migratory Species,” in Animal Migration: A Synthesis, ed. E.J. Milner-​Gulland, John M. Fryxell, and Anthony R.E. Sinclair (Oxford: oup, 2011), 203. cms, art. iv (1). Shuter et al., “Conservation and Management of Migratory Species,” 203.

196 Blattner management,90 but permits can create exceptions,91 and wording is ambiguous (parties “shall endeavour to […] protect;”92 “take appropriate measures;”93 “take such additional action as [they] consider[] necessary;”94 etc.). While these agreements are the result of an honest effort to help migrating animals navigate multiple jurisdictions along their traditional routes, animals do not enjoy a solid right to depart one country, enter another, and they do not have a right to sojourn. Human and animal migrants migrate for similar reasons and face similar challenges in their home state, during the move, and in their arrival state, but they inhabit two different worlds. Separate spheres of knowledge inform human and animal migration, which give rise to very different public narratives and separate sets of policies. This separation is especially palpable in the eyes of the law, where human migration and animal migration are governed by two different and wholly separate legal regimes. And in none of these areas—​the sociopolitical, the legal, or the economic—​has this disconnection between human and animal migrants been seriously questioned, disputed, or challenged. 3

Climate Change and the Impending Interspecies Migration

The view that human and animal migration rightly belong to different worlds is now markedly put to the test by climate change—​the long-​term, sustained trend of change in climate. Climate change poses five key challenges that we can qualify either as posing wholly new challenges arising from climate change, or as challenges that pre-​existed climate change but have been rendered visible and magnified by it. The first challenge is the increase and intensification of natural disasters like hurricanes, cyclones, tornados, floods, and droughts that threaten to destroy human and animal livelihoods and housing. Over the last 20 years alone, the number of environmental disasters has doubled from about 200 to 400 per year, and is expected to continue to increase.95 Second, 90 91 92 93 94 95

unep/​e urobats Agreement on the Conservation of Populations of European Bats, unep/​c ms/​c op11/​Inf.12.4, October 31, 1991, art. iii (1–​3). Id., art. iii (1). Id. , art. iii (2) (emphasis added). Id. , art. iii (4) (emphasis added). Id. , art. iii (6) (emphasis added). Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (cred) and UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (undrr), Economic Losses, Poverty and Disasters 1998–​2017 (2018), 7; See also unhcr, Report of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, UN Doc. a/​h rc/​7/​ 4. January 10, 2008, 2. As the joint report by cred and undrr makes plain, this meant that “[b]‌etween 1998 and 2017 climate-​related and geophysical disasters killed 1.3 million

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climate change means average temperature will be hotter and that weather will be more variable, with leads to more intense temperature extremes.96 Rising temperatures, heat waves, and droughts will disturb the seasons, disrupt agricultural production, reduce quality of life, make it harder to secure and access food and water, and facilitate the spread of existing and newly emerging diseases.97 Third, as sea levels are rising and glaciers are melting, low areas become uninhabitable.98 Fourth, and most notably, the growing need of millions of people and animals to secure safe habitats may force them to migrate, as many suggest.99 Resettling will pose major challenges, including securing humans’ and animals’ safety during and after displacement and providing enough food and nonfood goods, health care, sanitation, water, shelter, etc.100 Fifth, climate change will create and amplify competition for natural resources, which threatens to increase intra-​human and human-​animal conflict.101 These are, likely, more than short-​term challenges—​they are expected

people and left a further 4.4 billion injured, homeless, displaced or in need of emergency assistance. While the majority of fatalities were due to geophysical events, mostly earthquakes and tsunamis, 91% of all disasters were caused by floods, storms, droughts, heatwaves and other extreme weather events” (at 3). 96 “[H]‌uman-​induced warming reached approximately 1°C (likely between 0.8°C and 1.2°C) above pre-​industrial levels in 2017, increasing at 0.2°C (likely between 0.1°C and 0.3°C) per decade (high confidence)” (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5 ºC (2018), 51). See also Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 41. According to the Fourth Assessment Report of the ipcc, global warming is unequivocal and very likely due to man-​made (anthropogenic) greenhouse gas emissions; note that “very likely” translates as 90–​ 99%: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change: Synthesis Report (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 72. 97 László J. Kulcsár, “The Day After Tomorrow: Migration and Climate Change.” in The Routledge International Handbook of Migration Studies, ed. Steven J. Gold and Stephanie J. Nawyn (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 34. 98 10% of the world’s human population lives in low elevation coastal zones up to 10 meters above sea level. By 2030, in the US alone, 20 million people will experience flooding and may be displaced by rising seas: Katherine J. Curtis and Annemarie Schneider, “Understanding the Demographic Implications of Climate Change: Estimates of Localized Population Predictions under Future Scenarios of Sea-​Level Rise,” Population and Environment 33, no. 1 (2011): 28; Kulcsár, “The Day After Tomorrow,” 33. 99 Susan F. Martin, “War, Natural Disasters, and Forced Migration,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Politics of International Migration, ed. Marc R. Rosenblum and Daniel J. Tichenor (Oxford: oup, 2012), 71. 100 Martin, “War, Natural Disasters, and Forced Migration,” 68–​9. 1 01 Id., 70.

198 Blattner to shape our future for centuries to come as greenhouse gases linger in the atmosphere for thousands of years. Anticipating the precise effects of climate change on human migration is difficult. What we know today is that by the end of 2018, about 41.3 million people had been internally displaced by conflict and violence—​the highest number ever recorded. Of these, 30.9 million lived in only ten countries, including Syria, Colombia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That year, almost two-​ thirds of new internal displacement was triggered by environmental disasters, for the first time exceeding the number of those displaced by armed conflict.102 By 2050, we expect 150–​200 million people to be climate change refugees.103 As the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-​moon said, climate-​and environment-​ related displacement will be “the new normal.”104 Predictions about climate change and its effect on migration have long been available. Lester Brown coined the term “environmental refugees” in 1970s to describe those displaced by extreme weather hazards.105 By 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc) forecasted the primary effect of environmental change would be on vastly increasing “migration and settlement outside the national boundaries.”106 Today, the iom recognizes as climate migrants or environmental migrants “a person or group(s) of persons who, predominantly for reasons of sudden or progressive changes in the environment that adversely affect their lives or living conditions, are forced to leave their places of habitual residence, or choose to do so, either temporarily or permanently, and who move within or outside their country of origin or habitual residence.”107 The effects of climate change on animal migration are equally disruptive. Migrating animals are more likely to lack water, lose habitat, suffer unfavorable

1 02 Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, “Global Report on Internal Displacement 2019.” 103 Baofu, 264. 104 Barbara Lewis and Alister Doyle, “Extreme Weather Is the New Normal: UN’s Ban Tells Climate Talks,” Reuters, December 4, 2012. 105 Douglas S. Massey, William G. Axin, and Dirgha J. Ghimire, “Environmental Change and Out-​Migration: Evidence from Nepal,” Population and Environment 23, no. 2 (2010): 109. This terminology was proposed by the UN Environmental Programme in 1985 but rejected by the unhcr, arguing that the term has no basis in international refugee law and could potentially undermine this legal regime: unhcr, Climate Change, Natural Disasters and Human Displacement: A unhcr Perspective (2009), 7. 106 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change: The IPCC Scientific Assessment Final Report of Working Group i (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 107 International Organization for Migration, Glossary on Migration, 62. The iom recognizes three types of environmental migrants:

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weather conditons, and face fire, drought, and floods.108 These incidents may occur in their home environment, at their destinations, or en route, and will determine if, how, and when animals migrate. As temperatures rise, timing mechanisms for migration shift along with the burdens of travel, including availability of food.109 For example, great tit hatchlings need to eat a lot of caterpillars to survive, so hatching usually coincides with the height of the Winter Moth caterpillar season.110 Climate change can disrupt this cycle; if the birds arrive too early or too late, the hatchlings will die.111 In an effort to adapt to new climatic timings, animal migrants are increasingly acting in advance of spring migration, arriving on breeding grounds earlier, and changing their migration distance and routes.112 However, this often leads to a decline in populations as animals are exposed to new predators and their chances of remaining invisible to them are reduced.113

108 1 09 110 1 11 112

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–​ Environmental emergency migrants: those who flee temporarily due to an environmental disaster or sudden environmental event (hurricane, tsunami, earthquake, etc.); –​ Environmental forced migrants: those who have to leave permanently because environmental conditions have deteriorated (due to deforestation, coastal deterioration, etc.); and –​ Environmentally motivated migrants: those who choose to leave to avoid possible future problems (e.g., because desertification is decreasing crop productivity). Though this could be seen as voluntary migration, the conditions spur these decisions are out of the migrant’s control, so one can also see these people as having been forced to leave. International Organization for Migration (iom), “IOM Outlook On Migration, Environment And Climate Change,” 2014; Elizabeth Fussell, “Space, Time, and Volition: Dimensions of Migration Theory,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Politics of International Migration, ed. Marc R. Rosenblum and David J. Tichenor (Oxford: oup, 2012), 42. For a critique of the terminology, see Kälin and Schrepfer, Protecting People Crossing Borders in the Context of Climate Change, 28. Baofu, 175; Thomas T. Moore, “Climate Change and Animal Migration,” Environmental Law 41, no. 2 (2011): 398. Meretsky, Atwell, and Hyman, “Migration and Conservation,” 14. M.E. Visser and C. Both, “Shifts in Phenology Due to Global Climate Change: The Need for a Yardstick?” Proc. Royal Soc’y B 272 (2005): 2562. Moore, “Climate Change and Animal Migration,” 402. Dingle, 279; Katherine A., Cresswell, William H. Satterthwaite, and Gregory A. Sword, “Understanding the Evolution of Migration through Empirical Examples,” in Animal Migration: A Synthesis, ed. E.J. Milner-​Gulland, John M. Fryxell, and Anthony R.E. Sinclair (Oxford: oup, 2011), 15. Robert D. Holt and John M. Fryxell, “Theoretical Reflections on the Evolution of Migration,” in Animal Migration: A Synthesis, ed. E.J. Milner-​Gulland, John M. Fryxell, and Anthony R.E. Sinclair (Oxford: oup, 2011), 30; Meretsky, Atwell, and Hyman, “Migration and Conservation,” 9.

200 Blattner Climate change also changes animals’ odds en route. When migration is interrupted or blocked by splintered habitat and human land use, it becomes more difficult.114 For example, migratory shorebirds use coastal wetlands as stop-​over sites that allow them to recover and renew their energy for the next leg of the trip. These sites, critical to their successful migration, are decreasing and this reduces the likelihood they will successfully conclude their journey.115 Land animal migration is also more difficult as wetlands disappear and uplands become disconnected.116 Additionally, human activities threaten migratory animals through, e.g., hunting, the construction of power lines and wind farms, and the destruction of land.117 These multidimensional developments have, over the past years, greatly reduced the size of migration populations, their success at migrating, and the frequency of their move. This is especially true for large terrestrial animals like Great Plains bisons, African springboks, and Asian elephants.118 Some animals adapt by completely halting migration. The Canada Goose, for example, is now settling in the US Midwest.119 White storks once migrated from Africa to Europe, but have settled in their previous stop-​over sites in Spain and Morocco because they can feed “on ‘junk food’ from rubbish dumps.”120 Climate change has also caused genetic and physiological changes in animals, like the migratory locust.121 However, larger animals with longer life cycles and smaller population sizes, i.e., most mammals, will not be able to adapt quickly enough to climate change.122 Those “at the top of food-​webs” are likely to fare poorly because they are territorial, have complex social relations that are built 114 Stuart Harrop, “Climate Change, Conservation and the Place for Wild Animal Welfare in International Law,” Journal of Environmental Law 23, no. 3 (2011): 451. 115 H. Galbraith, R. Jones, R. Park, J. Clough, S. Herrod-​Julius, B. Harrington, and G. Page, “Global Climate Change and Sea Level Rise: Potential Losses of Intertidal Habitat for Shorebirds,” Waterbirds 25, no. 2 (2002): 177. 116 In the US, for example, only 41% of natural lands are connected well enough to allow animals to pass through. Roads, railways, and airplane routes can all become literal cages for migrating animals: Linda Poon, “See How Human Activity Is Changing Animal Migration Patterns,” Science, September 25, 2017. 117 Baofu, 178; Bauer et al., “Cues and Decision Rules in Animal Migration,” 84. Even without these literal borders for animals, human presence alone can manifestly deter animal movement: Max-​Planck-​Gesellschaft, “Humans Limit Animal Movements,” January 25, 2018. 118 Shuter et al., “Conservation and Management of Migratory Species,” 173. 119 Alice Cavanaugh, “Climate Change and Global Migration,” Trail Six 12 (2018): 62. 120 “Why Have White Storks Stopped Migrating?,” ScienceDaily, February 27, 2013. 121 William E. Bradshaw and Christina M. Holzapfel, “Evolutionary Response to Rapid Climate Change,” Science 312 (2006): 1477. 122 Cresswell, Satterthwaite, and Sword, “Understanding the Evolution of Migration,” 8.

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on these places,123 and generally have more difficulty navigating in a human-​ dominated world. Consider elephants: In 2018, Namibia faced one of the deadliest droughts, causing the death of over 63,700 animals because of deteriorating grazing conditions. In the following year, instead of learning from this tragedy and building corridors or enlarging protected areas, elephants threatened to starve were prematurely killed. In June 2019, Namibia authorized the sale of over 1,000 wild animals, including 600 buffalos, 150 springboks, 65 oryxes, 60 giraffes, 35 elands, 28 elephants, 20 impalas, and 16 kudus124 because the government feared that “if we do not reduce the number of animals, this will lead to loss of animals due to starvation.”125 The narrative is that we must thus kill animals before they are killed by climate change—​a view we would (rightly!) never adopt when it comes to humans fleeing adverse climate effects.126 Research on climate change and animal migration is on the rise but rarely asks how climate change increases migration among sedentary animals (as opposed to the “traditional migratory animals”). Since migration is usually defined as a seasonal movement to-​and-​fro,127 animals who move to adjust to climatic changes are structurally excluded from research analyses.128 But migration will increase as a strategy of all animals to successfully navigate environmental extremes, even for normally sedentary animals who generally inhabit a narrow ecological niche.129 Those animals, too, will move to escape heat, seek water and food, retreat to higher altitudes, and so on. In 2016, scientists from over 40 countries gathered in Hobart, Australia, for a four-​day conference to discuss how climate change is forcing species to move. Professor Camille Parmesan, Plymouth University UK, said, “for the species that we have really good data on where they’ve lived historically over the past 100 years, we’re seeing about half of those have actually moved where they live, which is an astonishing number given we’ve only had one degree centigrade warming.”130 Today, it is clear that most animals are moving towards the poles. “We’re talking about a redistribution of the entire planet’s species,” says Gretta Pecl, lead author of a new study in Science that examines the implications of 1 23 Holt and Fryxell, “Theoretical Reflections on the Evolution of Migration,” 30. 124 Agence France-​Presse, “Thousands of Wild Animals.” 125 Ibid. 126 A convenient side-​effect of this strategy was accessing “much needed funding for parks and wildlife management.” Agence France-​Presse, “Thousands of Wild Animals.” 127 Dingle, 13. 128 Meretsky, Atwell, and Hyman, “Migration and Conservation,” 8. 129 Dingle, 287. 130 Felicity Ogilvie, “Climate Change Driving Species to the Earth’s Poles Faster than Predicted, Scientists Say,” ABC News, February 9, 2016.

202 Blattner wildlife on the move.131 Of the more than 4,000 species tracked by her team, over half were on the move toward cooler, higher elevations (on land), or cooler, deeper waters (in the sea). On average, land species were shown to move toward the poles at 17 km per decade; in the ocean, animals are moving 78 km per decade.132 These mass migrations are happening three times faster than scientists had previously thought,133 and they put the structural elements of migration and wildlife protection to the test, including their underlying theories and rationales. As Cochrane succinctly put it, “the idea that wild animals possess a fixed ‘natural range’ is losing validity in the context of rapid climate change.”134 Together, these developments suggest that humans and animals have a shared vulnerability to climate change, including through threats to their habitat, food resources, mobility, and protections en route, as well as shared impediments to their ability to enter other countries. Climate change threatens to trigger mass movements of displaced humans and animals who arrive quickly at the borders of countries, many of which will be unable (or unwilling!) to absorb and respond to them, with asylum and border procedures that cannot or do not address their needs. Both humans and animals, individually, as groups, or moving en masse, will respond at different rates and to different degrees to climate change, some successfully but many not. New ecological and social communities will start to emerge as humans and animals move towards and concentrate around the poles. Groups and individuals that have never before interacted will intermingle, and those dependent upon each other for food, shelter, company, and other benefits will be forced apart.135 As resources like food and habitat grow scarce, competition will steeply increase.136 And given 131 Craig Welch, “Half of All Species Are on the Move and We’re Feeling It,” National Geographic, April 27, 2017. 132 Gretta Pecl, Adriana Vérges, Ekaterina Popova, and Jan McDonald, “Climate-​Driven Species on the Move are Changing (Almost) Everything,” The Conversation, April 5, 2017. Some species, like the Atlantic cod and the European purple emperor butterfly, are moving more than 125 miles a decade: Welch, “Half of All Species Are on the Move.” 133 I-​Ching Chen, Jane K. Hill, Ralf Ohlemüller, David B. Roy, and Chris D. Thomas, “Rapid Range Shifts of Species Associated with High Levels of Climate Warming,” Science 333, no. 6045 (2017): 1024–​1026. 134 Alasdair Cochrane, Sentientist Politics: A Theory of Global Inter-​Species Justice (Oxford: oup, 2018), 84. 135 Pecl et al., “Climate-​Driven Species.” 136 Ricardo M. Holdo, Robert D. Holt, Anthony R.E. Sinclair, Brendan J. Godley, and Simon Thirgood, “Migration Impacts on Communities and Ecosystems: Empirical Evidence and Theoretical Insights,” in Animal Migration: A Synthesis, ed. E.J. Milner-​Gulland, John M. Fryxell, and Anthony R.E. Sinclair (Oxford: oup, 2011), 135.

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the likely increase in population density, the likelihood of diseases spreading or new diseases forming may increase dramatically.137 The law, as a means to organize and steer socio-​political, economic, and ecological well-​being, is a key mechanism to grasp and respond to these challenges and to prevent worst cases. But how well is it prepared for the challenges ahead? Is the law sufficiently equipped to respond to the projected increase in human-​animal migrations as anticipated by climate change experts? 4

Are the Laws Governing Human/​Animal Migration Prepared for a Global Migration Crisis?

4.1 Is the Law Governing Human Migration Prepared? In the case of human migration, the central question raised by the ongoing climate crisis is whether the Refugee Convention is capacious enough to anticipate and regulate the “new normal” migrant. The unhcr might suggest it is. Mass influx of people, it argues, can withstand non-​refoulement.138 So, “no matter how debilitating a sudden influx of refugees might be on a States’ resources, economy, or political situation,”139 art. 33 of the Convention applies. These new developments could even have a positive effect on migration policy: climate change displacement will blur the boundaries between “traditional” refugees, displaced people, and international immigrants,140 which may open opportunities for more inclusive domestic and international laws on refugees, as well as less discriminatory practices. But the presumption of benefits is premature. In international law, there is no formal international legal framework to address cross-​border movements caused by natural disasters, development projects, environmental degradation, or climate change.141 Formally, people displaced by these events are not entitled to admission or stay in arrival states.142 As the drafters of the Refugee Convention recognized, the Convention “obviously did not refer to refugees 1 37 Holdo et al., “Migration Impacts on Communities and Ecosystems,” 137. 138 unhcr, Protection of Refugees in Mass Influx Situations: Overall Protection Framework, UN Doc. ec/​g c/​01/​4, February 19, 2001; unhcr Executive Committee, Conclusion on International Cooperation and Burden and Responsibility Sharing in Mass Influx Situations, No. 100 (lv), A/​AC.96/​1003, 2004, para. i. 139 Goodwin-​Gill and McAdam, 336. 140 Isabel M. Borges, Environmental Change, Forced Displacement and International Law: From Legal Protection Gaps to Protection Solutions (New York and London: Routledge, 2019), 15. 141 Martin, “War, Natural Disasters, and Forced Migration,” 54. 142 Borges, 4.

204 Blattner from natural disasters, for it was difficult to imagine that fires, flood, earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, for instance, differentiated between their victims on the grounds of race, religion or political opinion. Nor did the text cover all man-​made events.”143 Environmental or climate refugees were also not central to the talks in the Paris Climate Agreement; terms like migration and mobility are wholly absent from any of the relevant founding documents.144 The unhcr has identified this as a “legal protection gap” and called for the recognition of climate change as a driver of migration.145 In 2016 and 2017, the UN General Assembly adopted the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, and the Modalities for the Intergovernmental Negotiations of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration.146 After an intersessional panel discussion on human rights, climate change, migrants and persons displaced across international borders in 2018, the UN Human Rights Council (unhrc) emphasized the need for a rights-​based approach to climate change and migration and called for states to implement the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration and to partake in institutional arrangements and financing for the Task Force on Displacement under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (unfcc).147 As these initiatives are still underway, at present, the decision about whether to protect or admit people displaced by climate change still lies with national authorities.148 The US has enacted standards in its Immigration and Nationality Act (ina) to give protected status to people “temporarily unable to safely return to their home country because of […] an environmental disaster, or other extraordinary and temporary conditions.”149 Environmental disasters, per ina, include earthquakes, floods, drought, and epidemics,150 but they must be temporary in nature. If climate change causes repeated disasters or disasters displace people permanently, ina will not apply. Similar limitations preclude 143 Statement of Mr. Robinson of Israel, UN Doc. a/​c onf.2/​s r.22, July 16, 1951, at 6; Ward v. Canada, 1993 2 scr 689, June 30, 1993, at 732 (Can.). 144 Amy Lieberman, “Where Will the Climate Refugees Go,” Al Jazeera, December 22, 2015. 145 unhcr, The State of the World’s Refugees: In Search of Solidarity (Geneva, Switzerland, 2012), 28. 146 unga Res 71/​1, Resolution on the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, October 3, 2016; unga Res 71/​280, Resolution on the Modalities for the Intergovernmental Negotiations of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, April 17, 2017. 147 UN Human Rights Council, a/​h rc/​3 7/​35, Thirty-​Seventh Session, February 26–​March 23, 2018, Summary of the Panel Discussion on Human Rights, Climate Change, Migrants and Persons Displaced Across International Borders. 148 Martin, “War, Natural Disasters, and Forced Migration,” 62. 149 US Immigration and Nationality Act (ina), Pub.L. 101–​649. 104 Stat. 4978, 1990, §244 (US). 150 Ibid.

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effective protection of climate refugees in Europe. The EU has enacted the Temporary Protection Directive to establish temporary protection for mass influxes of displaced persons. As the term “mass influx” is subject to Council and Member State determination, only few states, like Sweden and Finland, have included environmental migrants in this definition.151 Such initiatives are essential to address climate change dilemmas faced by migrants. However, simply relying on governments to act is naïve, as we know that “governments exploit legal ambiguity to distance themselves both horizontally and vertically from refugees.”152 Climate change does not respect borders, so at least a mimimal level of multilateral action is required to regulate the causes and distributions of climate change effects. 4.2 Is the Law Governing Animal Migration Prepared? Also in relation to animal migration, the question arises whether the law is prepared to deal with an increase in migration, including, notably, the migration of previously sedentary animals. Under the cms, animal migration denotes an “entire population or any geographically separate part of the population of any species or lower taxon of wild animals, a significant proportion of whose members cyclically and predictably cross one or more national jurisdictional boundaries.”153 Interpreting the cms historically and grammatically suggests that new climate migrants will not be covered by the Convention and hence be excluded from protection. However, as more and more researchers argue, climate change can and must be seen as a predictable cycle that renders any large-​ scale movements flowing from it a form of “animal migration.” As Trouwborst argues, “liberal interpretations obviously enable the listing in cms Appendices of more species than would have been the case upon a stricter reading of the terms.”154 So “if, as it seems to be, the basic rationale of the cms regime today is to conserve ‘species which cross boundaries’ and not just migratory species proper, then a role for the regime can legitimately be envisaged also in respect of sedentary species the ranges of which are expected to shift across national boundaries under influence of climate change.”155

1 51 Swedish Aliens Act, September 29, 2015 (Sweden). 152 Thomas Gammeltoft-​Hansen, Access to Asylum: International Refugee Law and the Globalisation of Migration Control (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), x. 153 cms, art. i (1)(a) (emphasis added). 154 Arie Trouwborst, “Transboundary Wildlife Conservation in A Changing Climate: Adaptation of the Bonn Convention on Migratory Species and Its Daughter Instruments to Climate Change,” Diversity 4, no. 4 (2012): 287. 155 Trouwborst, “Transboundary Wildlife Conservation,” 288.

206 Blattner This interpretation is supported by cms practice, which is “not to adopt an unduly restrictive approach” to the issue.156 In 1997, the Fifth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to cms passed a recommendation calling for the establishment of a small working group to guide the Scientific Council’s decisions on climate change, the cms Working Group on Climate Change.157 Recommendation 5.5 provided the foundation for cms’s climate change mandate, which was further developed by subsequent Resolutions 8.13,158 9.7,159 10.19,160 and 11.26.161 The urgency and breadth of these mandates incrementally increased over the years. In 2005, parties stressed the need to “afford climate change high priority.”162 In 2008, they decided that “cms instruments need to adapt to these variations” in climate,163 and in 2011, they urged members to “employ adaptive management measures […] in addressing climate change impacts”164 to “improve the resilience of migratory species and their habitats to climate change,”165 and consider “assisted colonization, including translocation.”166 In 2017, the Conference of Parties (cop) adopted the Programme of Work on Climate Change and Migratory Species, with short, medium, and longer term actions to facilitate species adaptation in response to climate change, to assess their vulnerability, coordinate research and monitoring, and mitigate and adapt to climate change.167 At the time of writing, cop 13 is discussing options to further respond to this urgent topic. However, simple coverage by cms of migrating animals affected by climate change does not mean newly migrating animals are protected, too. Some say we can reinterpret cms obligations to this effect. For example, when Article

156 Michael Bowman, Peter Davies, and Catherine Redgwell, Lyster’s International Wildlife Law (2nd ed.. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 535–​583. 157 cms cop, “Recommendation 5.5 on Climate Change and Its Implications for the Bonn Convention,” April 16, 1997 (Geneva, Switzerland). 158 cms cop, “Resolution 8.13: Climate Change and Migratory Species,” November 20–​25, 2005 (Nairobi, Kenya). 159 cms cop, “Resolution 9.7: Climate Change Impacts on Migratory Species,” December 1–​5, 2008 (Rome, Italy). 160 cms cop, “Resolution 10.19 on Migratory Species Conservation in the Light of Climate Change,” November 25, 2011 (Bergen, Norway). 161 cms cop, “Resolution 11.26: Programme of Work on Climate Change and Migratory Species,” November, 4–​9, 2014 (Quito, Ecuador). 162 cms cop, “Resolution 8.13,” para. 1. 163 cms cop, “Resolution 9.7,” preamble. 164 cms cop, “Resolution 10.19,” para. 4. 165 Id., para. 8. 166 Id., para. 6b. 167 cms cop, “Resolution 11.26.”

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ii (2) cms asks for “action to avoid any migratory species becoming endangered,” precautionary methods are warranted that include climate action.168 Terms like “historic” or “normal” range of animals should be dynamically interpreted because climate change significantly alters habitats, and we must protect new habitats ahead of change to ensure animals will survive.169 At cms, climate change is formally recognized as a threat, research into its effects on migration is commissioned, and calls for adaptation are issued. cms action plans further provide that we should tackle the challenges of climate change “through strong political will and compliance with the existing legal commitments.”170 This approach may seem practical today but could prove to be limited and, as such, overly risky in the long run. We already have proof that progress has been stalled by the parties’ failure to amend the cms to address new climate challenges since few of its recommendations have trickled down into its “daughter regulations,”171 though this transfer is critical to implementing the cms. cms’s limited ability to anticipate challenges also is manifest as geopolitical challenges of climate change are known to be unpredictable and of unprecedented magnitude. There is little chance that we can anticipate and address unknown and potentially massive harms through dynamic, yet piecemeal interpretations. Overall, as they stand, both the cms and the Refugee Convention are ill-​ equipped to effectively address, much less solve, the challenges soon to be faced by human and animal migrants as a consequence of climate change. We are unlikely to be able to protect groups or individuals forced to migrate quickly and in unprecedented numbers by dynamically interpreting the legal documents that govern human or animal migration, especially when previously sedentary populations are on the move. In these cases, piecemeal approaches are not real solutions to the problems ahead. Given the wholly new challenges that climate change poses, some might quickly propose robust reform of the laws governing human and animal migration, including entirely new definitions of migrants, qualifying more migrants as refugees or providing novel protections for newly vulnerable animals and humans, by, e.g., drafting new agreements or revising the foundations of 1 68 Trouwborst, “Transboundary Wildlife Conservation,” 265. 169 cms cop, “Resolution 10.19,” para. 22. 170 Giovanni Bearzi, Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara, Randall R. Reeves, Ana Cañadas, and Alexandros Frantzis, Conservation Plan for Short-​Beaked Common Dolphins in the Mediterranean Sea (Monaco: accobams, 2004). 171 Trouwborst, “Transboundary Wildlife Conservation,” 270.

208 Blattner existing legal documents.172 Tempting as it is to call for broad reforms, we need to recognize that they are difficult, if not impossible, to effect politically. More importantly, however, reform is only possible if we are correct in assuming that the law’s purpose is to protect those on the move. A more critical reading of the laws governing human/​animal migration suggests that their true purpose often is a different one. In the next section, I argue that the law’s failure to respond to and anticipate the climate crisis is the result of its broader failure to capture the complex dimensions of human/​animal migration and to protect and provide relief to those in need. In what follows, I demonstrate these deep-​seated failures by showing how the law subjects both human and animal migrants to deregulation, illegalization, and securitization. 5

Emerging Parallels across Human/​Animal Migration: Deregulation, Illegalization, and Securitization

Deregulation, Illegalization, and Securitization in Human Migration Law Starting in 2015, through 2017 and after, we have been observing the rise of a modern “migration crisis.” Greece and Italy, the frontline states, were confronted with the arrival of over 1 million refugees, and called for solidarity across Europe. The news media was plastered with heartbreaking images of people trying to access safer ground. Images of huge masses of people began to stoke fears among political leaders and the public that existing security measures would not sufficiently “regulate” and “manage” newcomers, fueled by the imagination that some refugees might want to perform acts of terrorism, resulting in civil strife and terror.173 The public perception of these people who involuntarily migrated to seek succor and who hoped to be met with 5.1

172 Derham and Mathews have recently suggested that an inclusive definition of “refugee,” encompassing nonhuman animals, could lead to more appropriate responses to persecuted, traumatized, and displaced animals. The authors used the refugee definition (well-​ founded fear of persecution for reasons of group identity; unwillingness or inability of refugees to avail themselves of the protection of their country) and argued that many animals, including elephants threatened by poaching and, consequently, suffering from post-​traumatic stress disorders, meet these criteria. Derham and Mathews emphasized that their argument should be understood literally—​not rhetorically. The authors do not claim that we should simply extend human refugee policy to animals, but rather, outlined the essential requirements of an “animal refugee policy.” See further on this thought-​ provoking argument, Derham and Mathews, “Elephants as Refugees,” 103–​110. 173 Siegel and Nagy, “Introduction,” 1–​2.

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solidarity and concern, spiraled—​through misunderstandings, biased media discourse, and politically motivated rhetoric—​into a widespread belief that their arrival threatened the rule of law, financial prosperity, social order, and public health.174 The crisis led the European Commission and states to enact regressive emergency proposals and build new fences and walls,175 forcing a staggering 160,000 immigrants to resettle throughout Europe.176 Calling the period between 2015–​2019 the European “migration crisis” creates the impression that these movements are exceptional, unprecedented, and unlikely to repeat themselves. However, this is largely incorrect. The crisis has foregrounded profound, structural, long-​standing weaknesses that plague migration and refugee law and made clear that these laws are often not driven by humanitarian motivations. Instead, they provoke disagreements and instability, frequently lead to suffering, and fail to drive positive change.177 Three aspects of migration law are particularly problematic: (i) deregulation; (ii) the construction of illegality; and (iii) securitization. (i) Though migration matters are highly regulated across the world, there is a tendency to deregulate, in the sense that government responsibility is actively removed through law. More specifically, legal coverage is used to evade responsibility and to strip migrants of protection. For example, the right to asylum seems to suggest that an individual has a claim right to benefit from international law, to the effect that asylum be granted to them. Though we speak of the right to asylum, there is no such right borne by refugees. Refugees can legally be denied temporary protection, ordered to return to their homes, deported elsewhere, and their freedom severely restricted.178 The right to asylum, Simpson succinctly put it in 1938, “is a contradiction in terms. Asylum is a privilege conferred by a state, not a condition inherent in the individual.”179 At

1 74 Id., 2. 175 As did Hungary: Siegel and Nagy, “Introduction,” 3, 13. Croatian police even pushed migrants and asylum seekers back to Bosnia and Herzegovina, sometimes violently, making it impossible for them to seek asylum: Human Rights Watch, “Croatia: Migrants Pushed Back to Bosnia and Herzegovina,” December 11, 2018. 176 Siegel and Nagy, “Introduction,” 3. 177 Hanneke van Eijken, Barbara Safradin, and Linda A.J. Senden, “The ‘Refugee Crisis’: A Crisis of Law, Will or Values?” in The Migration Crisis? Criminalization, Security and Survival, ed. Dina Siegel and Veronika Nagy (The Hague: Eleven International Publishing, 2018), 27. 178 Goodwin-​Gill and McAdam, 1; Atle Grahl-​Madsen, The Status of Refugees in International Law: Volume Two (Leiden: aw Sijthoff, 1972), 80. 179 John Hope Simpson, Refugees: Preliminary Report of a Survey (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1938), 100; see also Simon Behrman, Law and Asylum: Space, Subject, Resistance (London and New York: Routledge, 2018), 127; Goodwin-​Gill and McAdam, 415.

210 Blattner best, then, we can say that the benefits incurred by asylum seekers are residual, stemming only from legal relations between states. States are known to use this discretion in order not to protect migrants. Refugee claims are often granted or denied based on political preference rather than on necessity, fear, or danger to life. The US Immigration and Naturalization Service (ins), for example, routinely dismisses refugee claims from people fleeing from countries allied with the US, and is more likely to grant admission to those arriving from communist countries.180 Key signatories, like the UK, Australia, and France, have the smallest number of refugees but maintain the tightest controls over admissions; in contrast, the top hosting states for refugees in the world—​Pakistan and Lebanon—​are not parties to the major refugee treaties, and the third—​Turkey—​is a party to the Refugee Convention but maintains an exception for non-​Europeans.181 States’ measures to regulate so as not to regulate distort our view of the purpose of the law. The obvious purpose of refugee law is protection, but states deem it an appropriate instrument to restrict asylum on the pretext of protection.182 Refugee law thus has evolved not to effectively protect people who immigrate but to serve the “preservation and strengthening of sovereign right.”183 Immigrants, consequently, often find themselves within the ambit of law but essentially bereft of it. States also strip migrants and refugees of their rights under international law by moving migration controls to destinations outside their territory. Immigration detention centers are placed on foreign territory, surveillance systems are installed abroad, and checkpoints are created on the territory of the countries from which people emigrate. Several member states of the European Union have moved migration control from the high seas into the territorial waters of African states, by contracting out migration work to private companies.184 Similarly, Boeing is tasked with surveilling the US-​Mexican border, and Israel has fully privatized border control at the major crossing points between Israel and the West Bank.185 This “external dimension” results in what Gammeltoft-​Hansen calls the “offshoring” or “outsourcing” of migration laws.186 States justify such practices by arguing that it is the more efficient strategy for migration control and saves taxpayers money,187 but their real 1 80 181 182 183 184 185 186 187

Behrman, 137–​8. unhcr, Global Food Trends: Forced Displacement in 2018; Behrman, xv. Behrman, xiv. Id., 71. Gammeltoft-​Hansen, 8. Id., 2, 161. Id., 2. Id., 2, 167.

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motive may be that “catching” people before they depart their home jurisdiction prevents the Refugee Convention from coming to application since it is premised on people having left their country of origin.188 States can also avoid legal obligations vis-​à-​vis those seeking protection when private corporations meet private individuals, neither of which can be held responsible under international refugee law.189 Overall, we are left with the impression that the law is misused to deregulate—​regardless of whether this is done on purpose or not, or whether it is done consciously or not. (ii) Migration law not only strips migrating people of rights, it also makes them illegal. Since migration movements were first documented, migrants have been pushed into two categories: the “good” and the “bad:” “Genuine” refugees, victims of war and violence, and others escaping immediate danger deserve admission, while those who migrate for economic reasons are a threat to the working population and tax payers.190 When these “scroungers” seek better jobs, “inadmissible foreigners” become illegal aliens.191 However, illegal alienage is not a natural or fixed condition; it is the product of positive law. After all, “without immigration law there is no such thing as illegal migration.”192 Moreover, when used to describe migration, the terms alienage and illegality usually take on a racial association (generally, “non-​white”). Racialized migrants do not even need to break the law to become criminalized and declared illegal because they are members of a despised group.193 They are 188 Refugee Convention, art. 1. See also Gammeltoft-​Hansen, 103; Goodwin-​Gill and McAdam, 63; Hathaway and Foster, 29. In other words, “a non-​national who fails to establish physical presence has no rights to which the State has not willingly consented to.” Moria Paz, “Between the Kingdom and the Desert Sun: Human Rights, Immigration, and Border Walls,” Berkeley Journal of International Law 34, no. 1 (2016): 39. 189 States are quick to emphasize that liaison officers do not hold direct authority and are not “an arm of the government.” Accordingly, it is not states but carriers of private airlines and transporters that can be held responsible, under domestic law, for bringing in undocumented people: Gammeltoft-​Hansen, 160, 168–​9. 190 Siegel and Nagy, “Introduction,” 1; Watters, “Forced Migrants,” 105. 191 Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004). The term alien emerged in New England in 1920 and denotes “a person hostile to this country,” “a native of an unfriendly country,” an “enemy from foreign land”; illegal is defined as “contrary to or forbidden by law.” Cambridge Dictionary 2019. 192 Catherine Dauvergne, “Irregular Migration, State Sovereignty and the Rule of Law,” in Research Handbook on International Law and Migration, ed. Vincent Chetail and Céline Bauloz (Cheltenham UK, Northampton MA: Edward Elgar, 2014), 76 (emphasis added). See also Ngai, 6. 193 Karen M. Morin, Carceral Space, Prisoners and Animals (New York and London: Routledge, 2018), 110. Even domestic-​born people, who hold citizenship qua their birth on domestic territory, are constructed as “inadmissible aliens.” Ngai, 2.

212 Blattner “subjected to laws but refused the legal means to contest those laws and ultimately, subjected to social death.”194 People experience social death when they are separated from family, kinship, and resources essential to their well-​being. They also experience civil death because many of them have no recourse to the law; they are, to put it bluntly, “dead in the law.”195 (iii) Migration law also drives securitization,196 which includes an array of mechanisms like carrier sanctions, border security systems, and migration management regimes that go hand in hand with militarization. In the 1990s, the US Congress doubled its border fences along the US-​Mexican border, ordered new and higher fences and walls, and deployed high-​tech surveillance.197 In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, countries across the world took increasingly extreme measures to secure their borders. Canada enacted the Anti-​Terrorism Act,198 and the UK amended its Terrorism Act,199​ both were designed to extend to issues of immigration and asylum and geared to facilitate deportation and detention.200 In public discourse, terrorism was explicitly linked to the “danger” that comes from “out there,” and the presence of foreigners on domestic territory. The newest technologies were deployed to control and track borders, harsher measures were taken against terrorism, and physical barriers were erected and augmented.201 In short, migration was no longer left to border patrols; it became an issue of national security policy. 1 94 Morin, 110. 195 Lisa M. Cacho, Social Death: Racialized Rightlessness and the Criminalization of the Unprotected (New York: nyu Press, 2014); Morin, 113. This does not mean that the law does not apply. People are subjected to the law’s discipline, but they are deprived of means to access the law’s protections. Because of this, there is great opposition to calling people “illegal” in the migrant advocacy community. One of the largest global networks for migrants operates under the banner “no one is illegal”—​a sentiment backed by linguists who argue that “illegal immigrant” is neither an accurate nor a neutral term. As Otto Santa Ana wrote, “We don’t call pedestrians who cross in the middle of the road illegal pedestrians.”—​“ A kid who skips school to go to Disneyland is not an illegal student. And yet that’s a sort of parallel.” See Lauren Gambino, “ ‘No Human Being is Illegal’: Linguists Argue against Mislabeling of Immigrants,” The Guardian, December 6, 2015. Accordingly, we should use more accurate terminology, e.g., irregular, undocumented, unauthorized, or forced migration: Dauvergne, “Irregular Migration,” 76. 196 An alternative view is that securitization drives migration, which, for reasons of space, I am not grappling with here. 197 Ngai, 266. 198 Canada Anti-​Terrorism Act, s.c. 2001, c. 41 (Can.). 199 UK Terrorism Act. 2006 c. 11 (UK). 200 Idil Atak and Francois Crépeau, “National Security, Terrorism and the Securitization of Migration,” in Research Handbook on International Law and Migration, ed. Vincent Chetail and Céline Bauloz (Cheltenham UK, Northampton MA: Edward Elgar, 2014), 93. 201 Atak and Crépeau, “National Security,” 93–​96.

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Acts passed to prevent terrorism have curtailed the procedural guarantees of immigrating people. Review hearings no longer required evidence; “information” became sufficient.202 Even the sacrosanct principle of non-​refoulement was watered down as people suspected of terrorism were deported and tortured in third countries, as was the case for Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who, in 2002, returned from vacation in Tunisia via the US. Arar was stopped by US border controls, detained, and deported to Saudi Arabia where he was tortured for almost a year. In Saadi v. Italy, the European Court of Human Rights in 2008 reaffirmed the absolute character of the principle of non-​refoulement and held that torture and inhuman or degrading treatment cannot be justified by national security interests.203 Despite the unanimous reaffirmation by the Court, the judgment did not impede or stop the widespread “confusion between counter-​terrorist and migratory controls.”204 Stereotyped public media representations and political discourse encouraged citizens to confuse immigrants with “criminals” and to associate them with the illegitimacy and illegality of terrorism, directly leading to their criminalization through the law. Under such conditions, nations come to justify the casual use of confinement, often under brutal conditions, as a means to deal with the migration crisis.205 Deregulation, illegalization, and securitization have all ensured the expansion of the immigration-​industrial complex,206 a vast socio-​economic and political web of people, governments, and corporations vested in building more prisons to profit from detaining growing populations of undocumented immigrants. Border control is a massive business that includes fencing, policing, vehicles, ground sensors, video surveillance equipment, drones, and much 202 International Commission of Jurists, Eminent Jurists Panel on Terrorism, Counterterrorism and Human Rights, Assessing Damage, Urging Action (Geneva, Switzerland, February 16, 2009), at 8. 203 Saadi v. Italy, ECtHR. Saadi v. Italy (Judgment), Appl. No. 37201/​06, 2008. 204 Atak and Crépeau, “National Security,” 99. 205 As Hathaway writes: “Refugee law […] is a socially acceptable way to maximise border control in the face of recurrent involuntary migration.” James C. Hathaway, “Why Refugee Law Still Matters,” Melbourne Journal of International Law 8, no. 1 (2007): 99–​100. 206 This is also known as the security-​industrial complex or the border-​industrial complex: Tanya Golash-​ Boza, “The Immigration Industrial Complex: Why We Enforce Immigration Policies Destined to Fail,” Sociology Compass 3, no. 2 (2009): 295; Karen M. Douglas and Rogelio Sáenz, “The Criminalization of Immigrants and the Immigration-​ Industrial Complex,” Daedalus 142, no. 3 (2013): 199. See further on the connections between the corporatization of mass immigration detention, the societal and political pressures for stricter immigration law and policy, and the political and societal subordination of immigrants: Mariela Olivares, “Intersectionality at the Intersection of Profiteering & Immigration Detention,” Nebraska Law Review 94 (2016): 963.

214 Blattner more. In 2017, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ice) spent close to $1.7 billion to 5,000 contractors. GoGroup and CoreCivic, which also manage private prison industry, earned a combined $985 million through private detention centers from ice contracts.207 Similarly, in the UK and Australia, immigration detention, along with prisons, are privately run and highly lucrative, such as for G4S, formerly known as Group 4 Securicor.208 No matter how much money is channeled into the immigration-​industrial-​ complex, “(t)ightened border enforcement since 1993 has not stopped nor even discouraged unauthorized migrants from entering the United States. Even if apprehended, the vast majority of people (92–​97%) keep trying until they succeed.”209 If anything, securitization and privatization have only increased the number of detentions. In the US, the number of undocumented immigrants detained each year has doubled (along with the size of the immigration prison industry) between 2,000 and 2010; it is now at 400,000.210 In 2015, vice reported that ice follows a policy requiring them to detain 34,000 people while they await their court date. That’s a quota ice has to meet and it directly benefits private prisons.211 The true purpose of these laws thus is not to keep undocumented immigrants from coming but to “keep undocumented immigrants coming into this country.”212 This suspicion is backed by the fact that the exploitation of undocumented migrants for labor is a huge business. In the US, undocumented workers make up 36.1% of agricultural workers, 26.7% of grounds maintenance workers, about a quarter of textile and food industry workers, and about 20% of construction workers. They are essential to the economy and pay about 4 billion a year in taxes, for which they can claim no 207 These companies donated 250,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee, and GeoGroup donated 225,000 to a Trump Super pac. In the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency, ice oversaw a 37.6% increase in arrests compared to the year before (arresting a total of 41,318 immigrants), geo Group’s stocks immediately rose 21%, and those of CoreCivic rocketed upwards 43%. When Trump took office in 2017, more than 600 companies lined up to help Trump build his wall: Lara Witt, “These Are the Companies Profiting from Detaining Migrants at Border Concentration Camps,” WearYourVoiceMAG, June 26, 2019; Robert A. Stribley, “What Is the “Immigration Industrial Complex”?” Huffpost, June 28, 2017. 208 Joseph Richey, “Border for Sale: Privatizing Immigration Sale,” Corpwatch, July 5, 2006. 209 Cornelius Wayne, “Impacts of Border Enforcement on Unauthorized Mexican Migration to the United States: Testimony Prepared for the House Judiciary Committee Field Hearing on Immigration,” San Diego, California, August 2, 2006. 210 Lee Fang, “How Private Prisons Game the Immigration System,” The Nation, February 27, 2013. 211 Meredith Hoffman, “How US Immigrant Detention Facilities Get Away with Being Complete Hellholes,” Vice News, October 21, 2015. 212 Stribley, “What Is the ‘Immigration Industrial Complex’?” (emphasis added).

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refunds.213 Immigration law is a boon to employers, allowing them to subvert labor laws and regulations without penalty. If workers start earning too much, they can easily be dismissed, deported, and replaced with new and equally isolated laborers.214 This is why, Stribley explains, political leaders rarely mention the corporations who hire most undocumented immigrants: “After all, if no one hired these immigrants, they wouldn’t come here.”215 Deregulation, Illegalization, and Securitization in Animal Migration Law Deregulation, illegalization, and securitization also shape the sociopolitical and legal contexts of animal migration, though their consequences are less likely to be centered in media and, consequently, they are usually less likely to be scrutinized by scholars. (i) Deregulation or using coverage by the law for the purposes of not protecting is a central pillar of animal migration law. Nationally and internationally, the law on animal migration more often than not bereaves animals of protection. Internationally, the preamble to the cms makes clear that migrating animals, their families, and migration routes are not primarily worthy of protection because they are important to affected animals. Instead, cms posits animals have “environmental, ecological, genetic, scientific, aesthetic, recreational, cultural, educational, social and economic” value and that they “must be conserved for the good of mankind;” they are “resources of the earth for future generations” that must be “conserved and, where utilized, [be] used wisely.”216 Migratory animals must thus be protected for the sake of others, rather than because life is valuable to them and migration an important element of their livelihood. This anthropocentric focus weakens the cms in four areas. First, cms deals exclusively with migrating wild animals.217 It does not cover the more numerous cases of migrating domesticated animals, pastoral migration, or trade in animals. Second, cms is only concerned with “the entire population or any geographically separate part of the population of any species or lower taxon of wild animals.”218 Individual animals have no right to be protected; instead, population dynamics data determine if there is sufficient “distribution and abundance of the migratory species.”219 Third, the few groups of animals 5.2

2 13 New American Economy, “Undocumented Immigrants,” 2019. 214 Stribley, “What Is the ‘Immigration Industrial Complex’?.” 215 Ibid. 216 cms, preamble. 217 cms, art. i (a). 218 cms, art. i (a). 219 cms, art. i (c)(4).

216 Blattner that are protected by the Convention are deprived of protection as soon as the species, as a whole, recovers,220 which means they and their migratory routes and habitat are no longer shielded from detrimental human interventions. Fourth, cms coverage is relatively weak. The Convention suffers from a lack of participation across North America and most of Asia; large economies, including the US, Russia, and China, have not even joined the convention.221 In domestic law, there is further evidence that the law on animal migration is eroding. Meretsky et al.’s comprehensive analysis of migration and conservation laws in the US shows we have reason to be concerned about the status of migrating animals and breadth of protection offered to them.222 Laws like the Endangered Species Act (esa) and the Migratory Bird Act (mba) were “enacted for a limited purpose, within a particular political context, and for particular taxonomic groups.”223 Like cms, they partially protect migration, leave gaps that force animals to enter hostile landscapes, lack standards and management practices to ensure efficient and effective protection, fail to set a suitable timeframe for implementation, and are governed by a bewildering array of agencies, many of which are not primarily concerned with protecting migrating animals.224 In addition to being lax to begin with, domestic laws dealing with animal migration are incrementally eroded through deregulation. The Trump administration, for example, has long threatened to overturn century-​old protections under the mba. The Act prohibits the “taking” of animals (i.e., pursuing, hunting, capturing, killing, and possessing them) and has long been understood to encompass “incidental takes,” i.e., unintentional but predictable and avoidable infringement of the interests of migrating animals. In the past, companies have paid enormous fines under the mba. For instance, in 2010, the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion triggered an 87-​day oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 people and hundreds of thousands of birds. bp agreed to pay $100 million

2 20 221 222 223

cms, art. iii (a). The same can be said of conventions protecting human migrants. Meretsky, Atwell, and Hyman, “Migration and Conservation.” Endangered Species Act (esa), 16 u.s.c. § 1531, 1973 (US); Migratory Bird Act, Pub. L. No. 186, ch. 128, § 9, 40 Stat. 755, 1918 (US); Meretsky, Atwell, and Hyman, “Migration and Conservation,” 19. 224 Id., 5. See also the concept of spatial emancipation within the critical animal geography framework of Richard White and Simon Springer, Richard J. White and Simon Springer, “For Spatial Emancipation in Critical Animal Studies,” in Critical Animal Studies: Toward Trans-​Species Social Justice, eds. Atsuko Matsuoka and John Sorenson (London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), 160–​183.

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for criminal violations of the mba.225 The Exxon oil spill, which killed more than 300,000 birds, resulted in $125 million in fines for Exxon, along with restitution for criminal charges, including criminal violations of the mba.226 However, in December 2017, the Trump administration announced that it will reverse this policy, declaring legal any take “when the underlying purpose of that activity is not to take birds.”227 Incidental takes, in short, would not be prohibited anymore. Catastrophic events that affect animals, like oil spills, would no longer be subject to judicial review and a simple declaration of purpose will help business evade responsibility. Since oil companies are responsible for 90% of incidental takes under the Act, they will benefit the most from the new interpretation.228 Despite a letter from 17 former Interior officials that repudiated the reinterpretation,229 the Interior Department moved ahead and issued its final opinion on April 10, 2018, confirming fears that after 100 years, efforts to protect and conserve birds would be rolled back. A few months later, on August 12, 2019, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (fws) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service (noaa)—​per instructions by the Trump administration—​ jointly announced revisions to regulations of the esa. Instead of strengthening esa protections, the agencies redirected their focus to the economic costs of protecting species, which was widely hailed by industries.230 The administration pushed for deregulation as evidenced in three revisions. First, the agencies rescinded their “blanket rule” under §4 (d) esa. Species categorized as “threatened” would no longer automatically be granted the same protections as those listed as “endangered.”231 Second, the agencies revised portions of their regulations implementing §7 esa that define the requirement for consultation. Under the new rules, consultation is only triggered by the “destruction or

225 Elizabeth Shogren, “The Trump Administration Has Thrown Out Protections for Migratory Birds,” Truthout, April 14, 2019. 226 Shogren, “The Trump Administration Has Thrown Out Protections.” 227 Department of Interior, Memorandum “The Migratory Bird Treaty Act Does Not Prohibit Incidental Take,” December 22, 2017. 228 Darryl Fears and Dino Grandoni, “The Trump Administration Has Officially Clipped the Wings of the Migratory Bird Act,” The Washington Post, April 13, 2018. 229 The letter was signed, among others, by US Fish and Wildlife (fws) directors under presidents Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama: Former Interior Officials, “Letter to Secretary Zinke,” January 10, 2018. 230 Emily Holden, “Trump Officials Weaken Protections for Animals Near Extinction,” The Guardian, August 12, 2019. 231 Department of Interior, “Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Revision of the Regulations for Prohibitions to Threatened Wildlife and Plants,” August 12, 2019.

218 Blattner adverse modification” of critical habitat “as a whole.”232 For widely distributed species, like the northern spotted owl, this would mean that a single logging project, construction, or dam could never be found to adversely modify critical habitat, so owls are no longer protected.233 Third, species should be added to the threatened or endangered list “based solely on the best available scientific and commercial information,”234 which is a much more stringent interpretation of the law than current practice. Brett Hartl, government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity summarized the problem: “It’s probably the biggest attack on endangered species and the (esa) in history. […] No species will get closer to recovery as a result of these changes.”235 At the time of writing, it seems that migrating animals will be better off under the Biden administration. In January 2021, Biden announced that he will be launching a “broad review” of the Trump’s policies, including his gutting of the mbta rules, his move to strip esa protections from gray wolves, and his failure to protect monarch butterflies. (ii) The law also illegalizes animals. In the case of human migration, white, able-​bodied humans are assumed to be worthy of protection, whereas racialized humans are presumed to be lower on the cascade of worthiness and most likely to be declared illegal. There is a parallel cascade of worthiness in the case of animals. Migrating animals threatened by extinction and considered charismatic or iconic are most likely to receive the highest degree of protection, e.g., polar bears, elephants, or humpback whales. Under cms, iconic and charismatic but technically non-​migratory species that inhabit more than one state’s territory are protected. The MoU between Argentina and Chile, for example, considers the South Andean Huemul migratory because their habitat partly spans the borders of two states.236 By contrast, truly migrating animals threatened by extinction but not considered charismatic, like many insect or rodent species, are of less (often, no) concern to the law. Migration is an immensely dangerous undertaking for undesired animals. According to environmental laws, wild animals who “do not naturally occur” in 232 Department of Interior, “Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Revision of Regulations for Interagency Cooperation,” August 12, 2019, at 37. 233 Holden, “Trump Officials Weaken Protections.” 234 Department of Interior, “Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Revision of the Regulations for Listing Species and Designating Critical Habitat,” August 12, 2019. 235 Andrew Sheeler, “ ‘We’re Ready to Fight’: Wildlife Activists Vow to Protect Endangered Species Act from Trump,” The Sacramento Bee, August 12, 2019. 236 Memorandum of Understanding between the Argentine Republic and the Republic of Chile on the Conservation of the South Andean Huemul (Hippocamelus bisulcus), Mar del Plata, Argentina, December 4, 2010.

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an environment are considered not to belong and are classified as “invasive.”237 Invasive animals are sometimes also called “pests” and contrasted with native animals.238 Animals who are, in fact, struggling to survive in a new environment or fleeing from adverse conditions—​like human refugees—​are denied to have own life experiences and portrayed as having the intent to do harm. They are labeled “ferocious” and “aggressive” “invaders”239 that need to be instantly removed. As the New York Times recently wrote about feral pigs: “Ranchers and government officials […] are keeping watch on an enemy army gathering to the north, along the border with Canada.”240 The language renders animals’ mere presence illegal, and whatever they do or however they behave, this alone justifies their annihilation. The invasive species rhetoric directly contributes to violence against other animals and “makes it easier to rationalize killing other animals rather than searching for ways to peacefully co-​exist with them.”241 The invasive species rhetoric also wrongly suggests animals move to new territories voluntarily, whereas most animals labeled as “invasive” intentionally or accidentally move to new places as the result of human action.242 The native/​ invasive dichotomy further presumes and reinforces the idea that nature cannot evolve and adapt, and is instead fixed at some arbitrary point in history, 237 Sarah Lowe, Michael Browne, Souyad Boudjelas, and Maj De Poorter, “100 of the World’s Worst Invasive Alien Species A Selection from the Global Invasive Species Database,” The Invasive Species Specialist Group (ISSG) (2000): 1–​123. 238 From a biological standpoint, any species introduced into a new environment, whether self-​chosen or introduced by humans, is considered “alien” and thus “invasive.” Deer, for example, are thought to overpopulate their “native” zones and adjacent suburban gardens in the Northeastern and Pacific Coast regions of the US, and accordingly qualify as “invasive.” From a policy standpoint, by contrast, only species that have a negative impact on their new environment are considered “invasive.” For instance, President Bill Clinton’s Executive Order 13112 of 1999 defines invasive species as “alien” species whose introduction does or is likely to harm the environment, the economy, or human health. See also EU Regulation 1143/​2014, o.j. (L 317) 28, November 4, 2014, art. 3 (2). 239 Daniel Simberloff, Invasive Species: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford: oup, 2013), 1. 240 Jim Robbins, “Feral Pigs Roam the South. Now Even Northern States Aren’t Safe,” The New York Times, December 16, 2019. 241 Marina Bolotnikova and Jeff Sebo, “Stop Treating Animals as ‘Invaders’ for Simply Trying to Exist,” Sentient Media, 2020. 242 As Crystal Fortwangler reminds us, introducing animals into new environments “would at a minimum behoove us humans to have a better sense of other species” worlds—​through their stories and from their perspectives. What does it look like from the introduced species’ perspective? What is the angle from which an invasive species ‘sees’ the world? Will looking more closely shape how we think and talk about introduced animals and populations? Might it shape what we want to do about animal introductions and invasions?” Crystal Fortwangler, “Untangling Introduced and Invasive Animals,” Environment and Society: Advances in Research 4 (2013): 52.

220 Blattner after which humans expect the natural world to remain static rather than to evolve.243 Almost every nation has an environmental protection or conservation program that declares legal the elimination of these animals. For instance, in the US, the National Invasive Species Act (nisa),244 a federal law intended to prevent invasive species from entering inland waters through ballast water carried by ships, considers any species “beyond its historic range” to “threaten[…] the diversity or abundance of native species.”245 nisa established the Aquatic Nuisance Species Task Force, which is the “coordinating body in developing and implementing the national program for prevention, research, monitoring, and control of infestations of nonindigenous aquatic species.”246 A remarkable lineup of agencies is charged with eliminating these “invaders”: fws, noaa, the Coast Guard, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the National Park Service.247 In public discourse, these agencies are charged to “battle against invasive species”248 but often, the public fails to see the brutal reality behind this idiom. In the EU, too, invasive species are said to cause “damage worth billions of Euros to the European economy every year” and thus require “early detection and rapid eradication.”249 Regulation 1143/​2014 authorizes agencies to “physically isolate” the relevant “specimens”,250 and then induce their “removal,” “disposal,” “destruction,” or “humane cull.”251 These laws make evident that 243 This is very much like the language used to describe “primitive” peoples in their “natural” state. There is a lot of literature that discusses the racist Western notion that other cultures are static (and polluted or destroyed or “civilized” by Western intrusion), and that indigenous cultures that adapt to modern Western intrusions are somehow pathological. 244 nisa reauthorized the Nonindigenous Aquatic Nuisance Prevention and Control Act (nanpca) of 1990. 245 US National Invasive Species Act (nisa), 16 u.s.c. §§ 4701–​4751, 1996 (US). 246 nisa, §4271. 247 The law’s obsession with preserving “native” species justifies the mass killing of unwanted others. This is true even of organizations ostensibly dedicated to preserving animal life. In 2004, the Nature Conservancy (an ngo) acquired some 60,000 acres of Santa Cruz Island, off the coast of California, and killed over 37,000 sheep in its effort to conserve and restore indigenous plants. Jo-​Ann Shelton, “Killing Animals That Don’t Fit In: Moral Dimensions of Habitat Restoration,” Between Species 13, no. 4 (2004): 5. 248 L. Principe, “The Battle Against Invasive Species in the U.S,” Nu Sci Mag, October 21, 2016; Seth Borenstein, “Robots, High-​Tech Tools Join Battle Against Invasive Species,” Physorg, April 28, 2017. 249 Europa, “Invasive Alien Species,” 2019. 250 EU Regulation 1143/​2014, art. 8 (3)(a). 251 Id., art. 8 (3)(c).

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animals labelled as “invasive” have no right to be present and that they must not only be moved but also killed, with humane culling being a non-​binding option among a number of possible methods to kill. In this conflicting political context, it does not seem paradoxical that the EU’s funding instrument for environmental, nature conservation, and climate action projects called life funds the killing of animals.252 On the international level, the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (scope), an arm of the International Council of Scientific Unions, was formed in 1982 to “encourage study of the causes and consequences of biological invasions and to […] solv[e]‌the myriad problems invasions cause.”253 There is also a Global Invasive Species Programme and a list of “100 of the World’s Worst Invasive Alien Species” that “illustrates the incredible variety of species that have the ability, not just to travel in ingenious ways, but also to establish, thrive and dominate in new places”254—​desires and activities that, self-​evidently, seem inadmissible. Commercially used animals, like cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens, are also made illegal. Animals that people eat are thought to belong under human control, to be housed, fenced, and used in a certain manner. Any animal that tries to evade these controlled environments, like cows escaping the slaughterhouse and choosing to live in the wild, are illegalized. For example, in January 2018, a cow made headlines around the world as she ran away from a Polish farming corporation and joined a herd of some 50 wild bison on the Belarusian border. People first thought she was a “mutated bison” until it became clear that she “chose freedom.”255 The use of parenthesis in public discourse wrongly suggests that “cows choosing freedom” is an absurd idea. However, when animals refuse to concede to the rigid spatial ordering humans impose on them, they, like the many racialized human immigrants and indigenous communities, act as “agents of erosion,” contesting borders that make no sense to them and which exclude, oppress, and illegalize them.256 Instead of according the cow the freedom to explore and decide for herself what she likes, reporters and researchers quickly assumed she wouldn’t make it through the winter or would

2 52 Europa, “Invasive Alien Species,” 2019. 253 Simberloff, x. 254 Lowe, Browne, Boudjelas, and De Poorter, “100 of the World’s Worst Invasive Alien Species,” 3. 255 “Cows Walks on Wild Side with Polish Bison,” BBC, January 24, 2018. 256 Lim, 11; Chris Philo and Chris Wilbert, “Animal Spaces, Beastly Places: An Introduction,” in Animal Spaces, Beastly Places: New Geographies of Human-​Animal Relations, ed. Chris Philo and Chris Wilbert (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 23.

222 Blattner be threatened when bison males try to mate with her.257 The central narrative underlying this view is that the cow must come under human control for her own protection, when typically all we do is to exploit her. Many commercially used animals are forced across borders and stripped of the rights accorded to their wild counterparts. And unlike smuggled, traded, and trafficked humans, who are given special protection through international treaties like the Smuggling Protocol and the Trafficking Protocol, domesticated animals traded and trafficked against their will are not accorded legal protection. They are considered “tradeable” as “goods” under the regime of the World Trade Organization (wto).258 Limitations to whether and how they are moved across the border are only admissible under exceptional circumstances, namely if it is necessary to protect public morals of a nation, animal health, or to conserve a species.259 But commercially used domesticated animals are not threatened as a species, do not matter enough to the public to motivate policy makers to care for them, and are generally not considered to be worthy of protection as they are led into a slaughterhouse.260 Similar to migrants being pulled into the legal blackhole that creates their social death, the exercise of sovereign power over animals in most cases bereaves them of legal protection and ensures they can be killed with impunity.261 (iii) Many illegalized animals, like the domesticated animals or “invasive” animals mentioned above, are subject to securitization across the border, too. They are either captured and relocated (e.g., back to home territory, back into the cafo) or erased (i.e., killed on the spot or sent to the slaughterhouse). The illegalization and erasure of “invasive” animals requires an arsenal of financial means and weapons. The EU spends an average of 15 million eur a year on invasive species control; in 2011 alone, the US Department of the Interior spent over $100 million on invasive species management.262 These are a fraction of the true costs of controlling animal migration, which include expenditures for managing animal health and “pests,” border control activities for traded and trafficked animals, costs associated with implementing the cms, cbd, and other conservation treaties, costs for research, and for developing new weaponry. As in the case of human migration, some of these tasks are outsourced to

2 57 “Cows Walks on Wild Side with Polish Bison,” BBC, January 24, 2018. 258 Blattner, 85. 259 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, 1867 u.n.t.s. 187, April 15, 1994, art. xx(a), (b), (g). 260 Blattner, 109 ff. 261 Morin, 114. 262 Principe.

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private industry and sometimes executed by deploying autonomous or semi-​ autonomous technologies.263 Migrating animals are also subject to extensive surveillance through tracking devices, tattoos, and gps data. Traditionally, “simple marking techniques” dominated the study of animal migration, which required the trapping of animals, and, in some cases, the use of invasive methods. Penguins, for example, were subjected to “flipper-​banding,” which makes it impossible for them to engage in social activities and reproduce, and can also kill them.264 Migratory animals are also tracked with techniques that require their mutilation. Researchers clip shark fins to track them.265 They take feathers, blood, and other tissues from animals.266 Mark-​and-​recapture methods that make use of trapping, transponder tags, and ringing are less intrusive,267 but still problematic because they allow for temporary capture and violate animals’ bodily integrity. New technological innovations have given rise to more sophisticated and respectful methods, like gene and isotope markers, miniaturization of devices, computers capable of analyzing large movements of animals, and gps tracking through satellite images.268 The justification for tracking methods traditionally is that they will lead to more respectful and viable policies to protect migrating animals. Data obtained through the various devices and techniques can provide us with valuable information about individual decision-​making in migrating animals, and this helps us recognize animals as agents.269 But even the least intrusive tracking devices have potential to cause harm. As Scotton argues, “the increasing virtualisation of fencing, caging, taming and tracking technologies tends nonetheless to generate new forms of materially invasive handling and surveillance.”270 263 For example, robots zap and vacuum up venomous lionfish in Bermuda, helicopters pelt Guam’s trees with poison-​baited dead mice to fight the “voracious” brown tree snake, and special boats with giant wing-​like nets stun and catch Asian carp in the US Midwest: Borenstein, “Robots, High-​Tech Tools Join Battle Against Invasive Species.” 264 C. Saraux, C. Le Bohec, J.M. Durant, V.A. Viblanc, M. Gauthier-​Clerc, D. Beaune, Y.H. Park, N.G. Yoccoz, N.C. Stenseth, and Y. Le Maho, “Reliability of Flipper-​Banded Penguins as Indicators of Climate Change,” Nature 469 (2011): 203. 265 Dingle, 61. 266 Luca Börger, Jason Matthiopoulos, Ricardo M. Holdo, Juan M. Morales, Iain Couzin, and Edward McCauley, “Migration Quantified: Constructing Models and Linking Them with Data,” in Animal Migration: A Synthesis, ed. E.J. Milner-​Gulland, John M. Fryxell, and Anthony R.E. Sinclair (Oxford: oup, 2011), 118. 267 Börger et al., “Migration Quantified,” 117. 268 Dingle, 46. 269 Bauer et al., “Cues and Decision Rules in Animal Migration,” 86. 270 Scotton, “Taming Technologies,” 360.

224 Blattner The underlying assumption of tracking is that animals belong under human supervision and, if “necessary,” under human control. Instead of letting animals organize their lives according to their own desires and preferences, we insist animals conform to a spatial order imposed by humans.271 6

Dehumanization and Animals as the Anchor of (Un)Worthiness

A central insight of the intersectional studies offered in this book is that the oppression, disenfranchisement, detention, and elimination that migrating humans and migrating animals are subjected to, do not just operate in parallel but are intricately connected through the liminal space of dehumanization and animalization.272 When humans are perceived or portrayed as “less than human” (i.e., they are dehumanized), this is often done by emphasizing their “animal-​like” projections—​a distinction that sharply separates “outgroups” from “ingroups” and establishes the outgroup’s inferiority.273 Throughout human history, immigrating minority groups confronted these boundaries that separate some people from other people and animals from people.274 In the 1890s, Catholic Irish Americans were described as having “ape like” characteristics.275 The Chinese and Japanese who first moved to the US were called vermin and rats and were likened to pigs by Americans, since Americans

271 See further on the problems that may arise from tracking animals, Lauren van Patter and Charlotte E. Blattner, “Advancing Ethical Principles for Non-​Invasive, Respectful Research with Animal Participants,” Society & Animals 28, no. 2 (2020): 171. 272 See for in-​ depth analyses of these dynamics, Garrett Bunyak, “Inferiority by Association: Animals, Migrants, and Chicana/​ Ecofeminist Possibilities,” in “Like an Animal”: Critical Animal Studies Approaches to Borders, Displacement, and Othering, ed. Natalie Khazaal and Núria Almiron (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 72; Atsuko Matsuoka and John Sorenson, “ ‘Like an Animal’: Tropes for Delegitimization,” in “Like an Animal”: Critical Animal Studies Approaches to Borders, Displacement, and Othering, ed. Natalie Khazaal and Núria Almiron (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 96; Debra Merskin, “Species Traitor? Foundations and Tensions in Human/​Animal Scholarship and Advocacy,” in “Like an Animal”: Critical Animal Studies Approaches to Borders, Displacement, and Othering, ed. Natalie Khazaal and Núria Almiron (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 119. 273 Kimberly Costello and Gordon Hodson, “Exploring the Roots of Dehumanization: The Role of Animal—​Human Similarity in Promoting Immigrant Humanization,” Group Processes and Intergroup Relations 13, no. 3 (2009): 3. 274 Arnold Arluke and Clinton Sanders, Regarding Animals (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996). 275 Lewis, P. Curtis, Apes and Angles: The Irish in Victorian Caricature (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971).

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also saw pigs as “dirty and greedy” individuals who lived “in unclean, littered, unsanitary, disease-​ridden environments” that could “infect” Americans.276 Today, refugees are still portrayed as “swarms” and “marauders” who threaten to “flood” Western countries in an attempt to “sponge off the welfare system.” They are described as “a plague of feral humans,” and as “cockroaches” and “parasites.” In May 2018, Trump shocked the world as he said during the immigration roundtable, “[w]‌e have people coming into the country, or trying to come in—​and we’re stopping a lot of them. […] You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals.”277 A year later, Trump attacked the prominent African American Congressman Elijah Cummings after Cummings criticized the harsh conditions asylum seekers face along the US-​Mexican border. Trump raged on Twitter that Cummings’ district in Baltimore is “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” and called it “the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States. […] No human being would want to live there.”278 These and innumerable other examples show how dehumanizing language is used to describe immigrants and other outgroups as animal-​like and as posing a significant threat to the public, inciting anxiety and fear.279 Immigrants and other outgroups are “racialized and dehumanized through a complicated set of associations that measure their distance from civilization and the ideals of white America,”280 and are pushed “over the human-​animal boundary into the netherworld of savagery.”281 Beyond this boundary, political scientist Claire Jean Kim argues, is the human/​ animal borderland: a space between “fully human” and “fully animal” where racialized and gendered individuals are placed and contrasted to whiteness.282 Boundary work operates as the narrative bedrock for stoking fears about immigrants. In Stephan et al.’s Integrated Threat Theory of Prejudice, four distinct types of intergroup threat form the basis of prejudicial attitudes: realistic

276 Gillian Der, “Pigs, Pestilence, and Prejudice: The Racialization of Early Chinese Settlers in Vancouver’s Chinatown,” Trail Six 12 (2018): 46. 277 “Trump Draws Rebuke for ‘Animal’ Remark at Immigration Talk,” NCB, May 17, 2018. 278 “Outrage as Trump Brands mostly Black Baltimore ‘Infested Mess,’ ” Al Jazeera, July 27, 2019. 279 Victoria M. Esses, Leah K. Hamilton, and Danielle Gaucher, “The Global Refugee Crisis: Empirical Evidence and Policy Implications for Improving Public Attitudes and Facilitating Refugee Resettlement,” Social Issues and Policy Review 11, no. 1 (2017): 78. 280 Glen Elder, Jennifer Wolch, and Jody Emel, “Race, Place, and the Bounds of Humanity,” Society and Animals 6, no. 2 (1998): 185. 281 Elder, Wolch, and Emel, “Race, Place, and the Bounds of Humanity,” 195. 282 Claire Jean Kim, Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 24 ff.

226 Blattner threats, e.g., threats to the host community’s economic/​political power; threats to one’s well-​being; symbolic threats, e.g., believing one’s values and beliefs are threatened; negative stereotypes, e.g., the belief that immigrants are aggressive or lazy; and, intergroup anxiety, e.g., feeling personally threatened by intergroup interactions, perhaps through rejection or embarrassment.283 This model has been applied to immigrants and refugees, to show that perceived competition or threat alone will result in negative attitudes and behavior toward other groups.284 An ipsos poll on immigration and refugees conducted from June to July 2016 across 22 countries found that almost 40% of respondents agreed “somewhat” or “very much” that their borders should be entirely closed to refugees.285 These views were particularly prevalent in the US (54%), Italy (52%), and France (52%). Over half of respondents agreed “somewhat” or “very much” that terrorists are pretending to be refugees and are trying to enter the country to cause violence and destruction (61%). Most foreigners, 51% thought, say they want to enter the country as refugees but are really trying to profit from welfare services.286 A poll by the Pew Research Center conducted between April and May 2016 in 10 EU nations found that 59% of respondents believed that refugees will increase the likelihood of terrorism in their country and 50% believed that refugees are a burden on the country because they take jobs and social benefits from residents.287 These narratives maintain and perpetuate racial biases in existing systems, obscure the failings of sociopolitical systems, and instead frame victims as the ones to blame.288 For example, in 283 Walter G. Stephan and C. Lausanne Renfro, “The Role of Threat In Intergroup Relations,” in From Prejudice to Intergroup Emotions: Differentiated Reactions to Social Groups, ed. Diane M. Mackie and Elliot R. Smith (New York: Psychology Press, 2002), 191; Walter S. Stephan and Cookie White Stephan, “An Integrated Threat Theory of Prejudice,” in Reducing Prejudice and Discrimination, ed. Stuart Oskamp (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2000), 23. 284 Victoria M. Esses, Scott Veenvliet, Gordon Hodson, and Ljiljana Mihic, “Justice, Morality, and the Dehumanization of Refugees,” Social Justice Research 21, no. 3 (2008): 4; Esses, Hamilton, and Gaucher, “The Global Refugee Crisis.” 285 ipsos, “Global Study Shows Many Around the World Uncomfortable with Levels of Immigration,” August 16, 2016. 286 Ibid. 287 Richard Wike, Bruce Stokes, and Katie Simmons, “Europeans Fear Wave of Refugees Will Mean More Terrorism, Fewer Jobs,” Pew Research Center, July 11, 2016. 288 R. Foels and F. Pratto, “The Hidden Dynamics of Discrimination: How Ideologies Organize Power and Influence,” in APA Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology: Vol.2, Group Processes, ed. M. Mikulincer, P.R. Shaver, J.F. Dovidio, and J.A. Simpson (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2015), 341; J.T. Jost, D. Gaucher, and C. Stern, “ ‘The World Isn’t Fair’: A System Justification Perspective on Social Stratification and Inequality,” in APA Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, ed. J. Dovidio and J. Simpson (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2015), 317.

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the US-​Mexico border conflict, the devastating effects of nafta on Mexican agriculture—​driving down wages of Mexican workers to below subsistence levels—​is rarely mentioned.289 Politics shape public responses to immigration, either by promoting inclusivity or fueling fears that the relationship between immigrants and citizens is zero-​sum.290 In 2016, Trump encouraged his supporters to “lock their doors” to Syrian refugees to protect the US.291 He also suggested that refugees are terrorists or that they are affiliated with them; his son Eric blamed American wages stagnation on migrants, including Syrian refugees.292 Media plays a critical role in shaping public attitudes, too. Bleiker et al.’s content analysis of newspaper front pages showed that 66% of all media was shot from a distance and depicted refugees in medium and large groups, which emotionally distances viewers from immigrants as subjects. Only 2% of media showed individual asylum seekers with clearly recognizable facial features.293 Journalists anonymize people by omitting their names, ages, occupations, and identity markers from news accounts,294 which creates the impression they have no voice or agency. This unwarranted anonymization is a first step in reducing people in need to statistics about displacement and casualties. As a consequence, refugees are not associated with a humanitarian challenge that requires a compassionate public response, but with threats to sovereignty and security.295 Some states have even issued explicit governmental directives ordering agencies not to “personalize” or “humanize” asylum seekers. In Australia, photo journalists are under tight governmental control to “ensure that no imagery that could conceivably garner sympathy or cause misgiving about the aggressive new border protection regime would find its way into the public domain.”296 The Department of Immigration and Citizenship had

2 89 Golash-​Boza, “The Immigration Industrial Complex.” 290 Esses, Hamilton, and Gaucher, “The Global Refugee Crisis.” 291 Pamela Engel, “Trump on Syrian Refugees: “Lock Your Doors, Folks,” Business Insider, April 25, 2016. 292 Bethania Palma, “Eric Trump Says Immigrants and Syrian Refugees Caused Wage Stagnation,” Snopes.com, August 23, 2016. 293 Roland Bleiker, David Campbell, Emma Hutchison, and Xzarina Nicholson. “The Visual Dehumanisation of Refugees,” Australian Journal of Political Science 48, no. 4 (2013): 399. 294 Yasmin Ibrahim and Anita Howarth, “Sounds of the Jungle: Rehumanizing the Migrant,” JOMEC Journal 7 (2015): 1. 295 Bleiker, Campbell, Hutchison, and Nicholson, “The Visual Dehumanization of Refugees,” 398; Ibrahim and Howarth, “Sounds of the Jungle,” 12. 296 Australian Senate, “Select Committee on a Certain Maritime Incident: Main Report,” April 17, 2002.

228 Blattner even been instructed to use one of three options to filter pictures: “pixelate/​ mute/​delete.”297 Boundary work is also maintained literally. The first border fence between Mexico and the US consisted of up to five strands of barbed wire strung across wooden fence posts. It was built by the Bureau of Animal Industry and overseen by the US Department of Agriculture with the intent of controlling the movement of cows to prevent the spread of disease.298 This light fencing “deterred migrating animals by cutting through wandering mammals’ flesh on contact.”299 Between 1942–​1964, the Bracero Program brought thousands of Mexican workers to the US, and new chain-​link border fences were built to keep unauthorized migrants out, transforming “a tool to inflict pain on and thus thwart the movement of cattle to one meant to cut through the flesh of a targeted group of human beings.”300 In the 1950s, the border was militarized to protect the US from the “Mexican invasion.”301 In the 1970s, the ins went further and built an electronic fence along a 65-​mile-​stretch of the California boundary, which resulted in innumerable false alarms because the system could not differentiate between human movement and the crossing of cattle or deer.302 Shortly after, the government made new plans for a two-​foot concrete foundation, and a five-​foot impenetrable steel wall topped with extra hard chain mesh and wire, designed expressly to maim migrants. This “man-​proof” fence was promoted as being “more economical” than “hiring a thousand more Border Patrol agents;” it would “leave [any migrant’s] toe permanently embedded in

297 Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship, “Deed of Agreement: Media Access,” 2011. 298 J.R. Mohler, “Foot-​and-​Mouth Disease: With Special Reference to the Outbreaks in California, 1924, and Texas, 1924 and 1925,” US Department of Agriculture Department Circular (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1926), 400. The US certainly is not the only country to build vast fences to keep off undesired animals. Starting in 1901, Australia began to build the (still) world’s longest fence to keep wild rabbits out of farm lands. The fence has a total length of 3,256 km and divides the entire continent into two unequal parts. Though the fence is still used to deter rabbit populations, as well as dingoes, kangaroes, and emus, rabbit populations are nowadays also “kept in check” by deliberately releasing viruses. Kaushik Patowary, “The Rabbit Proof Fence of Australia,” Amusing Planet, April 1, 2016. 299 Mary E. Mendoza, “Caging Out, Caging In: Building a Carceral State at the US-​Mexico Divide,” Pacific Historical Review 88, no. 1 (2019): 91. 300 Mendoza, “Caging Out,” 92. 301 William F. Kelly, Assistant Commissioner Border Patrol, Detention and Deportation Division, “The Wetback Issue,” The I & N Reporter, January 1954. 302 Mendoza, “Caging Out,” 94–​5.

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the fence.”303 The methods first devised deter and keep out animals were thus repurposed to deter and exclude human beings. Literal boundary work also takes place when migrants reach or have crossed the border. In parts of Europe, migrants are held in facilities formerly used as zoos. As affected people testified in 2014: “We are in a zoo. Every cage has two rooms. The cages have barriers almost 5–​6 m high. We are left there like savage beasts.”304 In the US, migrants are held without accusation, access to legal representation, or even basic provisions. Migrant women at a Customs and Border Protection facility in Texas were told to drink out of the toilet when they asked for water.305 The US literally cages people, even children, although the administration maintains that the cages we see in photos are not really cages, claiming that they are simply “built walls out of chain-​link fences.”306 The US Border Patrol later admitted that describing the metal fencing as “cages” is “not inaccurate,” but expressed that they are “uncomfortable” with the association and emphasized that they are not treating people “like animals.”307 cbs co-​ host Gayle King commented, “[t]‌hey said [the fenced areas] may be cages, but they’re not being treated like animals. A lot of people looking at that don’t entirely see the distinction.”308 To date, the human-​animal divide is the ideological bedrock that justifies questionable distinctions, discrimination, and oppression. “Animal” is a category to which we assign the bodies upon which we intend to commit violence.309 The human-​animal distinction operates as a socially constructed anchor of moral (un)worthiness, social exclusion, and injustice that is neither scientifically justifiable nor morally tenable. When people call attention to the fact that the poor treatment of humans has been justified by comparing 3 03 Id., 97, 99. 304 Borderline Europe, “At the Limen: The Implementation of the Return Directive in Italy, Cyprus and Spain,” February 9, 2014, 24. See also Nick Vaughan-​Williams, “ ‘We Are Not Animals!’ Humanitarian Border Security and Zoopolitcal Spaces in Europe,” Political Geography 45 (2015): 1; Karen M. Morin, “Wildspace: The Cage, the Supermax, and the Zoo,” in Critical Animal Geographies: Politics, Intersections, and Hierarchies in a Multispecies World, ed. Kathryn Gillespie and Rosemary-​Claire Collard (London: Routledge, 2015), 73. 305 Sarah Ruiz-​Grossman, “Alexandria Ocasio-​Cortez: Migrant Women Told To Drink Out of Toilets At CBP Facility,” Huffpost, July 1, 2019. 306 Benjamin Thomas White, “Humans and Animals in Refugee Camps,” Forced Migration Review 58 (2018): 2. 307 Ewan Palmer, “Border Patrol Objects to Detention Cages Reports: “Not Inaccurate, but They’re Not Treated like Animals,” Newsweek, May 18, 2018. 308 Palmer, “Border Patrol.” 309 Aph Ko and Syl Ko, Aphro-​Ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters (New York: Lantern Books, 2017), 45.

230 Blattner them with animals, they often refer to the process as “de-​humanization.”310 But countering the oppression of immigrants by elevating them above animals (e.g., arguing that immigrants are as different from animals as more privileged people are) seems to be a counter-​productive strategy. Costello and Hodson’s research showed that boundary work that contests the “they are like animals’ narrative still leads to dehumanization, triggers outgroup tendencies and feelings of superiority, and paves the way for violence among humans.311 The more firmly people believe that humans must be differentiated from animals, and that humans deserve preference, the more likely they are to create and foster the conditions that de-​humanize human groups that do not fit the hegemonic ideal, e.g., immigrants. So those who justify their belief that humans are superior to animals tend to justify the superiority of some humans over others.312 This rhetoric also presumes that animals can be further pushed into the subaltern sphere and that they properly belong there, which supports the general human belief that we can continue to dominate, victimize, and ignore animals who are (wrongly) relegated to the sphere of injustice.313 7

Toward Interspecies Resilience

All of this paints a dire picture of our past and present, and the challenges ahead seem enormous. It does not suffice anymore that we ask how we should deal with the coming global interspecies migration crisis when climate change threatens to force billions of individuals and communities to leave their 310 David Livingstone Smith, “Dehumanization, Essentialism, and Moral Psychology,” Philosophy Compass 9, no. 11 (2014): 814. 311 Costello and Hodson, “Exploring the Roots of Dehumanization,” 5. Representing black people as “ape-​like,” for example, leads to people accepting violence toward black crime suspects: Phillip Atiba Goff, Jennifer L. Eberhardt, Melissa J. Williams, and Matthew Christian Jackson, “No Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization, and Contemporary Consequences,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94 (2008): 292. Dehumanization is also shown to facilitate inhumane acts of discrimination and mass-​ violence like genocide and slavery: Albert Bandura, “Selective Moral Disengagement in the Exercise of Moral Agency,” Journal of Moral Education 31, no. 2 (2002): 101; Daniel Bar-​Tal, Shared Beliefs in a Society: Social Psychological Analysis (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2000). 312 Kristof Dhont, Gordon Hodson, Kimberly Costello, and Cara C. MacInnis, “Social Dominance Orientation Connects Prejudicial Human—​Human and Human—​Animal Relations,” Personality and Individual Differences 61 (2014): 105–​108; Costello and Hodson, “Exploring the Roots of Dehumanization.” 313 Costello and Hodson, “Exploring the Roots of Dehumanization,” 19.

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homes. Instead, we need to ask how we can deal with this crisis in the face of deep-​seated, structural problems that plague human and animal migration law—​deregulation, illegalization, and securitization—​and the human-​animal borderland that connects these. It will take years, decades, if not centuries to overturn the stigmas, biases, and adverse attitudes—​cast into stone through law—​toward the many migrating others. And this time is literally slipping through our fingers because climate change threatens to soon turn most of us into the “migrating others.” So not only are we facing a crisis of unprecedented scope and scale, we must solve it under enormous time pressure. For these reasons, suggesting all the legal, political, sociocultural, and economic changes needed to successfully absorb the shocks of climate change on human/​animal migration goes beyond the scope of this chapter. Nevertheless, if we dig a bit deeper, we can see that there are valuable cues given by human/​ animal migration experts that help us at least sketch the broad directionality of human/​animal migration law if it is to withstand the biggest blows of climate change. In this concluding section, I suggest embracing and working toward the fulfillment of the following four policies: (7.1) initiating a rehumanization process; (7.2) developing a shared sense of vulnerability and a commitment to working toward interspecies resilience; (7.3) developing robust mitigation and adaptation plans; and (7.4) setting up protections not only within, but also beyond and from the law. 7.1 Rehumanization Sociopolitical stressors like dehumanization, which have long been part of the migration history of animals and humans, threaten to increase stigma and create acute conflicts that lead to violent exclusions and oppression across species. Though dehumanization is a long-​observed phenomenon that is widely decried, only recently have scholars begun to explore whether and how it can be contested. New research into dehumanization shows that it can be reversed, to the benefit of human outgroups and animals. Factual information that emphasizes how much “animals are like us” triggers a process of what we could call “re-​humanization”. Emphasizing similarities between humans and animals (versus denigrating some humans as similar to animals) facilitates inclusive intergroup representations and increases immigrant empathy, leading to less prejudicial attitudes toward immigrants.314 Costello and Hodson’s research, for example, shows that once participants realized how much they shared with animals, they attributed higher levels of human traits and 314 Id., 3.

232 Blattner emotions to immigrants and reported heightened re-​categorization, greater immigrant empathy, and decreased immigrant prejudice.315 This, in turn, led to more beneficial attitudes toward animals.316 So not only must we critically study our attitudes toward animals in order to assist us in reducing dehumanization of human outgroups, we must do so also because for animals, this is, as Choubak and Safdar have argued, “an important act in its own right.”317 Learning from rehumanization techniques, the law can and should begin to anticipate the dangers of dehumanization, address its challenges more comprehensively, actively contest embedded forms of dehumanization, and prevent new ones from arising in the future. For example, host societies must cultivate favorable attitudes toward human and animal migrants by encouraging the media to depict them in a positive light (such as by creating opportunities for migrants to tell their stories and share their own images).318 Governments and those who report on them should avoid rationalizing policies on the basis of perceived threat, eschew dehumanizing, inflammatory, and coded language, and attempt to persuade citizens that they have control over their outcomes. This applies to all forms of migration but especially those shaped by a growing “climate anxiety.” Political leaders have a role to play in showing citizens how inclusivity is practiced,319 as when Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau used the hashtag #WelcomeRefugees and publicly greeted refugees at the airport with the statement, “you’re safe at home now.”320 As the unhcr reminded us for human migrants—​but which is equally true of migrating animals: “For an age of unprecedented mass displacement, we need an unprecedented

3 15 Id., 15. 316 Yon Soo Park and Benjamin Valentino found that “individuals may possess underlying, likely unconscious, views about the expansiveness of rights that influence their beliefs about both humans and animals. For people who embrace a more expansive view of rights, being human does not appear to be a critical requirement for deserving at least some rights.” Yon Soo Park and Benjamin Valentino, “Animals Are People Too: Explaining Variation in Respect for Animal Rights,” Human Rights Quarterly 41 (2019): 63. 317 Melisa Choubak and Saba Safdar, “The Elephant in the Room: The often Neglected Relevance of Speciesism in Bias Towards Ethnic Minorities and Immigrants,” in Wiser World with Multiculturalism, ed. S. Safdar, C. Kwantes, & W. Friedlmeier (Guelph: Proceedings from the 24th Congress of the International Association for Cross-​ Cultural Psychology 2020). 318 Ibrahim and Howarth, “Sounds of the Jungle,” 1; Esses, Hamilton, and Gaucher, “The Global Refugee Crisis,” 78. 319 Esses, Hamilton, and Gaucher, “The Global Refugee Crisis,” 104 ff. 320 Ian Austen, “Syrian Refugees Greeted by Justin Trudeau in Canada,” The New York Times, December 11, 2015; Omri Rolan, “Canadians Welcome Syrian Refugees with A Heartwarming Trending Hashtag,” ATTN, December 12, 2015.

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humanitarian response and a renewed global commitment to tolerance and protection for people fleeing conflict and persecution.”321 7.2 Shared Vulnerability and Interspecies Resilience Rather than stigmatizing and oppressing humans and animals driven from their homes due to climate change pressures and threats, we must accept that we are all vulnerable to these emerging stresses. The ipcc defines vulnerability as the “degree to which a system is susceptible to, or unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate change, including climate variability and extremes. Vulnerability is a function of the character, magnitude and rate of climate change and variation to which a system is exposed, its sensitivity, and its adaptive capacity.”322 Whether we are forced to move, exposed to hazards on the move, forced to integrate into a new environment, or whether we are the ones asked for help and support, climate change makes us all vulnerable. Clearly, some people and animals are more vulnerable than others, depending on the degree to which they are exposed to hazards and their ability to adapt. However, climate change won’t spare the privileged, and, at its core, we all share vulnerability in being threatened by adverse effects of climate change. Adaptation is a central mechanism to deal with this vulnerability, as “the ability of a system to adjust to climate change, including climate variability and extremes, to moderate potential damages, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope with the consequences.”323 To adapt our system, we must assess the vulnerability of animal and human groups to climate change and then actively work to address it.324 Community networks, improving sociocultural conditions, engaging in constructive political discourse strategies, and creating a legal environment that protects the vulnerable are all initiatives that will increase our resilience and help us secure the survival and flourishing of human and animal life on earth.325 Working toward the shared goal of increasing our capacity and resilience should thus be the motivation that drives political and legal discourse going forward.

321 unhcr, Worldwide Displacement Hits All-​Time High as War and Persecution Increase, June 18, 2015. 322 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2007, 21. 323 Ibid. 324 As is done under Appendix i, cms, for example: Zoological Society of London, Climate Change Vulnerability of Migratory Species; Species Assessments—​Preliminary Review, unep/​c ms/​ScC17/​Inf.9, final version (London UK: zsl, 2011). See also Borges, 25. 325 Esses, Hamilton, and Gaucher, “The Global Refugee Crisis,” 111.

234 Blattner 7.3 Mitigation and Adaptation Action Early policy proposals to address climate change focused mainly on adaptation, but today a dual approach centered on mitigating the effects of climate change and taking actions that help us adapt is more common. In the context of animal migration, experts lament that efforts to help animals in the context of migration “have been reactive, responding to rather than anticipating problems” and that once migration is accepted as a widespread phenomenon, decision makers will have “to adopt a much more proactive approach,”326 to protect animals while they’re still alive. Adaptation is now considered effective only in combination with efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change.327 In the context of human migration, one of the best-​known initiatives designed to help migrating humans is the Nansen Initiative, which was launched in 2012 by the Swiss and Norwegian governments to offer assistance and assurance to those displaced by disaster.328 Experts seem to agree that human migration initiatives must also become more proactive in protecting the displaced,329 both aiding them and actively reducing and preventing the factors responsible for displacement, like war, violence, persecution, and environmental disasters.330 And in the case of animal migration, cbd cop clearly expressed that they are resolved to “take measures […] to maintain [the animals’] resilience to extreme climate events and to help mitigate and adapt to climate change.”331 What, specifically, does it meant to facilitate mitigation and adaptation action in the context climate change and migration, though? The following list seeks to exemplify such actions by drawing on valuable insights from human and animal migration experts: –​ Reduce stresses and interferences: In line with mitigation, we must reduce stresses and interferences, including pollution, over-​exploitation,

326 David S. Wilcove and Martin C. Wikelski, “Going, Going, Gone: Is Animal Migration Disappearing?” PLoS Biology 6, no. 7 (2008): 1363. 327 Trouwborst, “Transboundary Wildlife Conservation,” 262. The Zoological Society of London (2011) writes: “the threat of climate change is so severe and the potential for conservation to effectively increase their resilience and ability to adapt so limited that the only available option for their future survival is to mitigate climate change.” 328 Walter Kälin, “The Global Compact on Migration: A Ray of Hope for Disaster-​Displaced Persons,” International Journal of Refugee Law 30, no. 4 (2018): 664–​667. 329 Borges, 4. 330 Esses, Hamilton, and Gaucher, “The Global Refugee Crisis,” 103. 331 cbd cop, Decision vii/​15 on Biodiversity and Climate Change, February 20, 2004 (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), para. 12 (emphasis added).

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habitat loss and fragmentation, logging, hunting, and careless project development.332 Protect and restore habitats: We must protect existing habitats for humans and animals and, in case of past or ongoing threats, restore them to re-​establish habitability.333 Protecting habitat helps affected groups and individuals maintain their livelihoods and can be used to exclude and reduce threatening processes.334 The relevant areas must be large enough for people and animals to behave normally and include their preferred migratory paths; areas that are too small can give rise to human-​animal conflict, particularly when humans have to share space with large mammals.335 Protecting and restoring habitat can be done by designating existing federal or state land, governmental acquisition of private lands, or giving private landowners financial incentives to protect habitat.336 Identify and protect key stop-​over sites: Stop-​over areas are critical for migrants to rest safely during migration and maintain their resilience.337 We commonly think of stop-​over sites as a useful strategy for migrating animals, but they may also be helpful to think about ways to alleviate the stresses experienced by human migrants on the move. Help relocate and reroute: When habitat areas and key stop-​over sites can no longer be protected or reestablished, we need initiates to identify and secure new areas for habitat for affected human and animal groups.338 Provide key resources: We must increase the availability and suitability of food and water resources for migrating humans and animals.339 We must support people and animals before and upon arrival with necessary items

332 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2007; cbd cop, Decision x/​ 33 on Biodiversity and Climate Change, October 29, 2010 (Nagoya, Japan), paras. (c)-​(e) and (g); Meretsky, Atwell, and Hyman, “Migration and Conservation.” 333 cbd cop, Decision x/​33, paras. (c)-​(e) and (g). 334 Shuter et al., “Conservation and Management of Migratory Species,” 191; Wilcove and Wikelski, “Going, Going, Gone,” 1364. 335 Harrop, “Climate Change,” 452; Shuter et al., “Conservation and Management of Migratory Species,” 192. 336 Meretsky, Atwell, and Hyman, “Migration and Conservation,” 23; Wilcove and Wikelski, “Going, Going, Gone,” 1364. 337 Shuter et al., “Conservation and Management of Migratory Species,” 192; Wilcove and Wikelski, “Going, Going, Gone,” 1364. 338 Shuter et al., “Conservation and Management of Migratory Species,” 196. 339 cbd cop, Decision x/​33, paras. (c)-​(e) and (g); Harry P. Andreassen, Hege Gundersen, and Torstein Storaas, “The Effect of Scent-​Marking, Forest-​Clearing and Supplemental Feeding on Moose-​Train Collisions,” Journal of Wildlife Management 69, no.3 (2005): 1125; Shuter et al., “Conservation and Management of Migratory Species,” 194.

236 Blattner and services, psycho-​social assistance, and help them integrate into the culture and economy of their new habitat. –​ Remove or surmount barriers: At the border, human and animal migrants face a number of auditory, visual, chemical, and psychological deterrents (e.g., actions that terrify migrants in the interest of protecting domestic markets or crops).340 Barriers like dams, expressways, border walls, etc. that curtail the movement of migrants must be removed or bypassed by building passages and corridors.341 We already know how to develop ecological networks and corridors, wildlife crossing structures, fish passages, etc. for migrating animals,342 but they require improvements. For example, railway underpasses work well for Tibetan antelopes in China,343 but they do not reduce mortality of moose in Sweden.344 We must also learn how to protect previously sedentary animals who are now on the move, and we need to rethink the barriers commonly used to deter human migrants. The necessity and proportionality of physical barriers as a means to exclude must be critically analyzed, seriously questioned, and publicly debated. Finally, we must abolish any and all economic incentives for dominant groups to exploit human or animal migrants (esp. for profit-​making as is the case, for example, in the immigrant-​industrial complex, or by programs that pay bounties for killing members of “invasive” species). –​ Increase knowledge and data: We must collect more data and use it responsibly to strengthen and improve monitoring and evaluation systems.345 More monitoring means greater control,346 and this knowledge can easily be weaponized against migrants. We must thus ensure data is collected for proper regulatory purposes and cannot, e.g., be used to produce or fuel adverse migration policies. If used constructively, data can help us demonstrate that

3 40 Shuter et al., “Conservation and Management of Migratory Species,” 194. 341 Meretsky, Atwell, and Hyman, “Migration and Conservation,” 5, 48. 342 cbd cop, Decision x/​ 33, paras. (c)-​ (e) and (g); Shuter et al., “Conservation and Management of Migratory Species,” 193. 343 Lin Xia, Qisen Yang, Zengchao Li, Yonghua Wu, and Zuojian Feng, “The Effect of the Qinghai-​Tibet Railway on the Migration of Tibetan Antelope (Pantholops hodgsonii) in Hoh-​xil National Nature Reserve China,” Oryx 41 no. 3 (2007): 352. 344 A. Seiler, G. Cedarlund, H. Jernelid, P. Grängstedt, and E. Ringaby, “The Barrier Effect of Highway E4 on Migratory Moose (Alces alces) in the High Coast Area, Sweden,” Proceedings of the IENE Conference on Habitat Fragmentation Due to Transport Infrastructure, Brussels, 2003. 345 cbd cop, Decision x/​33, paras. (c)-​(e) and (g). 346 Harrop, “Climate Change,” 452.

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migrating people are individuals with complex existences and foreground their intentions, fears, and desires. As Jan Boon of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research explained: “We can see that birds such as the red knot can act like humans. Their migrations may depend on their personalities. Some go to the Arctic; other are ‘stick in the muds’ and stay at home.”347 Data can also support media discourse that re-​humanizes migrating people and help the public understand and respect migrating animals. In July 2019, for example, a female arctic fox rocked headlines worldwide as she moved faster than any other fox in recorded history. She walked more than 3,500km (2,000 miles) over sea ice from Norway to Canada in just 76 days as millions cheered.348 7.4 Protection beyond and from Law? Because the law often not only fails to protect migrating humans and animals but actively makes them vulnerable to the stresses experienced prior to, during, and after their move, this raises the question whether human/​animal migrants and refugees deserve protection from law, in addition to protection through the law. Critical scholars increasingly urge us to “orientate ourselves away from the persistent reliance on law, specifically refugee law, as a means to overcome the crisis facing refugees.”349 Behrman suggests returning to our historical understanding of asylum or sanctuary as a space beyond the law where people are granted protection and can escape the grasp of the sovereign order.350 Granting asylum dates back to the Old Testament and Romulus; similar principles were followed by sanctuary towns in England in the 1540s.351 In the 1660s, after the English monarchy was restored, refugees found sanctuary with colonists in New England.352 During World War ii, the entire village Le Chambon in France offered protection to people threatened by Nazi occupiers.353 In the US, former slaves escaping from the South were protected by a network of houses and 347 John Vidal, “How the “Animal Internet” Sheds Light on the Secrets of Migration,” The Guardian, June 11, 2016. 348 Alison Rourke, “Fantastic Arctic Fox: Animal Walks 3,500km from Norway to Canada,” The Guardian, July 1, 2019. 349 Behrman, xiv. 350 Id., xiv. 351 Teresa Field, “Biblical Influences on the Medieval and Early Modern English Law of Sanctuary,” Ecclesiastical Law Journal 2 (1991): 222. 352 Rollin G. Osterweis, Three Centuries of New Haven (New Haven: Yale University, 1964), 55–​62. 353 Philip P. Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon, and How Goodness Happened There (New York: Harper and Row, 1979).

238 Blattner farms, such as by Underground Railroad.354 Later, in the 1960s, some churches gave sanctuary to draft-​resisters.355 In the 1980s, 1.5 million people fled from oppressive regimes in Guatemala and El Salvador with no chance of being granted asylum in the US but were aided by a popular movement made up of individuals, churches, and select cities that declared themselves sanctuaries in defiance of federal law.356 Today, hundreds of cities in the US and Canada operate as sanctuary cities that seek to protect documented and undocumented immigrants from federal enforcement of immigration laws. Asylum stems from the Greek work asulon, which means “without right of seizure,” i.e., freedom from seizure by the secular authorities and/​or exemption from the law.357 It is precisely this sphere and these forms of grassroots asylum—​bottom up actions that are by nature collective and rely on engagement on the sociopolitical plane to reach beyond and resist the law—​that we must help create, sustain, and expand.358 Sanctuaries also operate as safe places where endangered, injured, prosecuted, or otherwise threatened animals can find refuge and peace. Over the last three decades, activists have established hundreds of sanctuaries across the US in an attempt to save “tens of thousands of animals from factory farms, roadside zoos, and other sites of contested animal treatment.”359 These spaces are a place of recognition and empathy where individuals who sustained trauma are shieled from further physical and verbal attack and can find a home, temporarily or long-​term.360 In an optimal sanctuary setting, animals can live autonomously, pursue their interests, be treated with consideration, respect and trust by others, and build reliable relationships across species. Sanctuaries can be a site of political contestation, for animals, as well, and enable us to learn more about the possibilities to create and co-​author an interspecies society.361 Sanctuaries are models for a “multispecies polity composed of human and 354 Wilbur H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad: From Slavery to Freedom: A Comprehensive History (Mineola NY: Dover Publications, 2006). 355 Michael S. Foley, “Sanctuary! A Bridge between Civilian and GI Protest Against the Vietnam War,” in A Companion to the Vietnam War, ed. Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buzzanco (London: Blackwell Publishers, 2018), 416. 356 Behrman, 137. 357 Id., xvi. 358 Id., 245. 359 Elan L. Abrell, Saving Animals: Everyday Practices of Care and Rescue in the US Animal Sanctuary Movement (Doctoral dissertation, City University of New York, 2016), iv. 360 pattrice jones, After Shock: Confronting Trauma in a Violent World (New York: Lantern Books, 2007), 96–​8. 361 Abrell; Charlotte Blattner, Sue Donaldson, and Ryan Wilcox, “Animal Agency in Community: A Political Multispecies Ethnography of VINE Sanctuary,” Politics and

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animal citizens,”362 and a form of resistance against the ubiquitous exploitation of animals. They insist that an alternative, more caring world is possible and can serve as a “frontier of interspecies justice” that deserve our political, social, and economic support.363

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Maneesha Deckha, Stefan Schlegel, Kathrine Bones, Pablo Pérez Castelló, and Lukas Schaub for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article and for their openness to grapple with the topic. A great thank you is owed to all participants of a meeting organized by the Animals & Society Research Initiative, University of Victoria, Victoria bc, on November 14, 2019, where I presented this topic, slightly amended, as Climate Emergency, Migration Crisis, and Interspecies Resilience. This paper has also greatly benefitted from the thoughtful input by the colloquium series participants at the Institute of Public Law, University of Bern, Switzerland, held on June 25, 2020, to whom I owe my gratitude. Special thanks go to Maneesha Deckha, Holly Cecil, Natalie Khazaal, and Núria Almiron for their interest in the topic.

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Chapter 7

The Costs of a Wall

The Impact of Pseudo-​Security Policies on Communities, Wildlife, and Ecosystems on the US-​Mexico Border Steven Best Abstract Steven Best’s essay examines how a flawed security model and immigration policies in the US, from Clinton to Trump, exacerbated the “migrant crisis” in the US and has catastrophic effects on numerous human communities, nonhuman animals and biodiversity, and the environment. Contextualizing Trump’s racist and xenophobic policies within this history and the rise of far-​right ideologies and movements in the US, it analyzes the aggressive building of barriers along the US-​Mexico boundary in terms of its real effects and symbolic status. The essay analyzes the emergence of a new “migrant-​ detention-​industrial complex” and interprets the building of the border wall as a new front in the war on wildlife.

Keywords US-​Mexico border wall –​security studies –​immigration –​habitat destruction –​war on wildlife –​speciesism –​migration industrial complex

As the world moves into the third decade of the twenty-​first century, some of the most contentious global politics involve the issues of migration, refugees, borders, nationalism, racism, and xenophobia. These issues deeply affect Europe, for instance, and threaten to divide nations, pull apart the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (nato), and facilitate the rise of toxic nationalism and neo-​fascism. There are also intense ideological and political struggles over these issues in the US, which is now possibly more divided than any time since the days of slavery and the civil war. The question of whether to seal US borders from the flow of immigrants both illegal and legal has polarized the country, sharply splitting conservatives and liberals into warring camps. It was decisive in electing a notoriously racist and xenophobic president, Donald

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004440654_009

256 Best Trump, who has in turn inflamed and exploited fear of the Other for his own political agenda and to appeal to a white nationalist and Republican base. A shocking mass murder targeting Latinx in El Paso Texas, in August 2019, put the issues of migration, borders, and race into stark relief. The desperate and tragic migration of oppressed people throughout the world, involves not only a humanitarian crisis testing the moral resolve of developed nations, but also a calamity for wildlife and ecological systems. The most simplistic response to immigration is to seal borders, while never addressing the root causes of human movement. But barriers, fences, and walls not only thwart human traffic, they impede the natural flow of nonhuman animals and plants and directly affect their migration routes and reproduction. This threatens the survival of nonhuman communities and contributes to the growing problems of habitat destruction and species extinction. This in turn affects human interests in crucial ways, and the erection of barriers along borders has a systemic impact on all communities of life—​humans, other animals, and ecosystems. To a large degree, under the all-​absolving rubric of “national security,” the US-​Mexico border wall is being erected for the purpose of stopping our neighbors from seeking a better way of life, but it doesn’t even accomplish that.1 While no deterrent to desperate people, the wall does impede animal migration and degrade the environment, becoming a contributing factor to the sixth great extinction crisis unfolding on the planet.2 Already, the southern border wall has had a severe impact on wildlife and ecosystems and its proposed completion will be a death blow to numerous animal and plant species. While real in its effects, the wall also stands as a symbol of division and a totem to appease racism, white supremacism, and xenophobia, as draconian security policies, intensive surveillance, and policing of the borders create a vast migrant detention-​industrial complex that commodifies human suffering.3 The wall is 1 I often use the term “wall” in the singular, understanding that along the US-​Mexico border the government deploys multiple kinds of barriers for different purposes and types of terrain. Moreover, barriers are created and policed not only with physical boundaries, but also with cameras, heat sensors, movement detectors, helicopters, drones, patrol personnel, dogs, and robots. 2 Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (New York: Picador, 2014). 3 Hereafter, I shorten this phrase to “migrant-​industrial complex.” On the concept of “industrial complex,” and its numerous institutional embodiments, see my introduction to Steven Best et. al. (eds.), The Global Industrial Complex: Systems of Domination (New York: Lexington Books, 2011). For an overview of the sundry components of the migrant-​industrial complex, see David Dayen, “Below the Surface of ICE: The Corporations Profiting from Immigrant Detention,” In These Times, September/​October 2017, https://​inthesetimes.com/​features/​ice-​ abolish-​immigration-​child-​detention-​private-​prison-​profiting.html and Dana Nickel, “Who

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a pseudo-​solution to much bigger problems than migration and security fears. US border policy for the last few decades—​from Clinton to Trump—​has been an unmitigated disaster for human beings, nonhuman animals, and the environment alike. Yet the border crisis usefully underscores the interconnectedness of interests among humans, other animals, and the earth, in ways to which people and disciplines such as border/​refugee studies are normally oblivious. 1

The Enlightenment in Ruins

Over two centuries ago, the Age of Enlightenment came into the Western world with a burst of optimism, confidence, and enthusiasm. On the heels of the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution, the liberating influences of humanism and critical reason spread throughout the European continent with tremendous force. Skepticism of religious dogmas, criticism of oppressive institutions, experimentalism, and free inquiry all led to the dismantling of the old and inauguration of the new. The proponents of an emerging “Age of Reason” attacked the stifling restrictions of religious dogma and oppressive monarchical regimes and championed freedom of thought and inquiry. Demands for freedom in the realm of thought inevitably led to demands for greater freedoms in trade and production, as Enlightenment ideas spurred not only a philosophical revolution, but also a political and economic revolution, a shift in modes of production from feudalism to capitalism. The classical liberal theories of political economy that emerged with John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and others provided a theoretical basis for emerging capitalist societies rooted in individualism, competition, the separation between public and private sectors, and the pursuit of wealth and personal gain in “free markets.” In the late-​twentieth century, during the 1980s and 1990s, after Keynesian-​ inspired state interventions emerged to correct anarchic market tendencies, classic liberal emphases on free markets resurfaced as “neo-​liberalism” and advanced globally, dismantling regulatory and social welfare systems. In the midst of dramatic innovations and turbulent change, Enlightenment theorists believed that human beings were making steady advances in the improvement of life, with exciting possibilities on the horizon. Accordingly, many advanced the unprecedented idea that history proceeds along an inexorable continuum of progress in knowledge, freedom, and prosperity. The novel concept of progress marks a pronounced utopian strain to much Enlightenment Profits From Migrant Detention in the US?,” The Globe Post, August 19, 2019, https://​theglobepost.com/​2019/​08/​19/​profit-​migrant-​detention/​.

258 Best thinking. A key motif among Enlightenment philosophers of the 18th century was the exalted ideal of a world Cosmopolis—​an ordered, porous globe bound to rational global norms of justice, equality, “perpetual peace” (Kant), open borders, stability, security, and progress for all. As shown by later critical theorists of the Frankfurt school, and sundry postmodernists as well, the liberal dream of a peaceful and prosperous planet without borders has morphed, throughout the twentieth century, into a nightmare world of global capitalism, fascism, bureaucratic communism, totalitarian governments, concentration camps, genocide, world wars, bloated militarism, degraded social and natural environments, and now the all-​consuming threat of climate crisis and the unimaginable social chaos this portends.4 These are the inevitable results of a Western worldview based on human supremacist values (anthropocentrism and speciesism), and the logics of alienation and predation at their core. Rapidly advancing in the 1980s, neoliberalism swept the globe, as “free trade” agreements restructured economies and social relations, prioritizing economic growth above all else. These new treaties had devastating impacts on undeveloped nations. They created poverty, insecurity, conflicts, mass migration, and terrorism, while overriding constraints on the negative effects of frenzied development on people, biodiversity, and ecosystems. We can see this clearly in the imperial relation between the United States and its neighbor, Mexico, as the consequences of neoliberalism manifest in numerous ways including migration and the building of a border wall. The tragedy unfolding along the US-​Mexico border is not unique, however, given the global scope of capitalism and the human predilection—​especially after World War ii—​to control movement near borders by building barriers (see below). The impact of walls and flawed border security policies on nonhuman animals and the environment is still a much-​understudied problem, but the disastrous consequences are already evident, rapidly worsening, and can no longer be ignored. 2

Movement, Migration, and Marginality

The driving force of life is speciation—​the production of biological diversity. As Darwin wrote in the nineteenth century, the dynamics of natural and sexual selection propel speciation. As evident in his youthful study of the Galapagos Islands, and copious examples provided in his Origin of Species (1857), different environments require different types of adaptation, and thus select for different 4 Steven Best, The Politics of Historical Vision: Marx, Foucault, and Habermas (New York: Guilford Press, 1995).

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traits. Natural boundaries such as formed by rivers and mountains that isolate members of a species can yield different traits and species diversity. But dynamic evolution requires not only separation and barriers, but also connections and bridges, such exist along the pathways of migratory routes and wildlife corridors. In the evolution of human and nonhuman life forms, migration and free movement are critical to survival and change, and thus blocking or restricting mobility with impassible anthropogenic barriers can have deleterious effects on species survival and biodiversity. Animals have to move, genes have to flow. Earth’s physical boundaries know no artificial political divisions, and their shape and flow stem from changing natural forces (and human impacts as well). Not all migrations are alike, and we can draw a salient distinction among three different types of population movement. First, in the case of free migration, populations—​humans, other animals, or plants—​move in ways conducive to their survival, adaptation, and reproduction needs. This mobility is not free from boundaries or obstacles, but it is free to change and adapt for survival and reproduction purposes, although of course survival is not guaranteed. Second, due to natural forces like changing climate, populations may encounter forced migration, which drives them to move toward more suitable environments, as drought and hunger compel people from Guatemala to migrate to the US, or as climate change impels fish to travel northward in search of colder waters. In some instances, due to factors such as political violence, human or other animal populations are forced to flee their homes and native environments. Finally, in the case of blocked migration, populations of all types encounter human-​constructed barriers—​in the form of walls, fences, and security boundaries—​that obstruct free passage and thwart the movements necessary for survival. Such is the case with the ongoing efforts to build sundry types of barriers along the 1,954-​mile US-​Mexico border. In discussing issues of refugees, migration, borders, and state violence, it is imperative to overcome the speciesist biases of traditional border/​refugee studies. A more holistic and comprehensive view will expand the theoretical and political focus to address the grave impact of oppressive security policies on nonhuman animals, to validate their suffering, and to analyze the complex web of interconnections that form the biocommunity. It is thus vital to grasp that nonhuman animals are not only sentient beings, but have emotionally and intellectually complex lives.5 Often, their systems of communication can be considered as languages, and their communities as cultures, bound by norms and intergenerational learning. Nonhuman animals too live in families and 5 See Steven Best, “Minding the Animals: Ethology and the Obsolescence of Left Humanism,” The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, 5, no. 2 (Spring 2009), https://​www.inclusivedemocracy.org/​journal/​vol5/​vol5_​no2_​best_​minding_​animals.htm.

260 Best communities—​including “border communities”—​and when various species cohabitate, we can consider this multicultural. Without question, their capacity to experience pleasure or pain, and to prefer the former over the latter, makes compelling moral demands on humans and creates a fundamental equality among human and nonhuman animals in the community of sentient beings. Like human animals, nonhuman animals have basic rights to the necessities of life and a viable habitat and from (human) exploitation. When expelled from their natural habitat, from their homeland and territory, nonhuman animals can rightfully be seen as victims of forced migration—​as refugees. Humanist border/​ refugee studies approaches that neglect this animal standpoint are short-​sighted, provincial, and incomplete, deficient both theoretically and politically. To richly comprehend many of the power dynamics and crises today, we must move nonhuman animals from the margins of study to a more central role. If we want to understand the underlying logic of social hierarchies and power relations, we must grasp the long history of human domination over nonhuman animals and how speciesism informs other modes of power. As I wrote elsewhere: Speciesism provided both the prototype for hierarchical domination and a battery of tactics and technologies of control. Humans defined their “nature,” “essence,” and identity as “rational beings” in direct opposition to nonhuman animals whom they erroneously defined as “irrational”—​ that is, as entirely devoid of the qualities that allegedly defined humans as unique, separate, and special. Humans prized rationality as a trait and an endowment important enough to make all other species and the natural world as a whole a mere means to their ends. Once animals became the measure of alterity and the “irrational” foil to the human “rational essence,” it was a short step to begin viewing different, exotic, and dark-​skinned peoples as brutes, beasts, and savages, wholly deficient in rationality, and thus sub or nonhuman. The criterion created to exclude animals from the human community was also used to ostracize blacks, women, the mentally ill, the disabled, and numerous other stigmatized groups. The domination of human over human and its exercise through slavery, warfare, and genocide typically begins with the denigration of victims as “savages,” “primitives,” and “mere” animals who lack the essence and sine qua non of human nature—​rationality.6

6 Steven Best, The Politics of Total Liberation: Revolution for the 21st Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 9–​10.

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The discourse, logic, and methods of dehumanization were thereby derived from the human domination over nonhuman animals, as speciesism, in turn, provided the conceptual paradigm that encouraged, sustained, and justified the domination and slaughter of numerous human groups that did not fit the rationalist, patriarchal model. “Throughout the history of our ascent to dominance as the master species,” Charles Patterson notes, “our victimization of animals has served as the model and foundation for our victimization of each other. The study of human history reveals the pattern: first, humans exploit and slaughter animals; then, they treat other people like animals and do the same to them.”7 Thus, when we speak of hierarchy, domination, discrimination, and subjugation, we have to dig deep into history—​perhaps as far back as 70,000 years ago when humans invented spears and began organized hunting of large nonhuman animals—​to discover the roots of violence, war, and key power dynamics—​the dark legacies that precede the origins of the state and social classes.8 We have to address the roots of the human-​nonhuman animal divide which led to estrangement from the natural world and shaped mentalities and institutions of hierarchy and domination. And we need to understand that what we do to (other) animals, we ultimately do to ourselves. 3

Genealogy of a Wall: 1994–​2020

Human and nonhuman animal populations naturally cross borders; they live on both sides, straddle boundaries, and move back and forth. Walls impose artificial barriers, fragment contiguous ecosystems, and invite transgression and resistance. This has been the case historically, and is true with the US-​ Mexico border—​a boundary created between a wealthy and developed northern nation and a poor and undeveloped southern nation, a demarcation that moved further north and west with the territorial booty gained through the US imperialist war with Mexico (1846–​48). It is natural, moreover, along the lines that divide the “first world” and the “third world,” for disadvantaged people in the south to seek greater prosperity through working in the more advantaged northern country, to pursue the dream of opportunities glittering on the “shining city on the hill,” as Ronald Reagan once characterized the US. It is 7 Charles Patterson, Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust (New York: Lantern Books, 2002), 109. 8 See Kirkpatrick Sale, After Eden: The Evolution of Human Domination (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).

262 Best perhaps also understandable, especially during times of economic or political insecurities, for nations—​or, their elite classes, at least—​to patrol and control their borders, although this by no means guarantees rational, humane, just, and ecologically sound security and immigration policies sensitive to human and animal rights and the integrity of the natural world. The history of the US-​Mexico border is a history of these conflicting dynamics—​the desire for freedom of movement and life improvement and the perceived need for border security.9 At times, such as during the Bracero program (1942–​1964)—​created to fill labor shortages caused by US entry into World War ii—​there was a relative harmonization between the workers’ need for employment and the capitalist requirement for cheap labor. Mexican workers crossed into the United States seasonally or daily to obtain work and wages, and industries in return reaped the benefits of cheap labor to maximize profits. But various political, ideological, and cultural forces disrupted this short-​lived, smooth functioning of the capitalist supply and demand model, and led to sharp conflicts and contradictions, multiple unintended consequences, and disastrous results for humans, other animals, and the environment alike. Trump’s anti-​immigration platform builds on a long, disastrous history of failed immigration policies in the US, with modern roots in the opportunistic policies of President Bill Clinton. In order to create a neoliberal “free trade” zone that opened the flow of trade across US borders to the north and south, Clinton passed the North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta) on January 1, 1994—​not coincidentally, the same day the Zapatista uprising against capitalist globalization began in central Mexico. At the same time as the US flooded Mexican markets with surplus corn, Mexican President Salinas ended long-​standing protections for farmers in rural areas. With corn prices dropping and incomes falling, Mexican farmers and workers migrated into the US, looking for work.10 The unintended consequence of nafta was to increase immigration, and the response ever since has been to jettison sensible approaches, such as existed with the Bracero program, in favor of draconian and increasingly militarized systems of border control. In response to the new influx of migrant workers into the US, and against the backdrop of increasing concerns about the rise of undocumented immigrants (especially pronounced in California), the Clinton administration launched Operation Hold the Line and Operation Gatekeeper, ramping up security at the 9 10

See Edward Alden, The Closing of the American Border: Terrorism, Immigration, and Security Since 9/​11 (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2018). Krista Schlyer, Continental Divide: Wildlife, People and the Border Wall (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2012).

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major ports of entry in El Paso and San Diego. “No longer would a compassionate view of immigrants lead the debate … fear and rhetoric has grown so loud and strong that is now politically expedient to target them” and use them as scapegoats for various social ills, including unemployment, decreased wages, and crime.11 An integral aspect of Clinton’s policy was the punishing strategy of “prevention through deterrence” which intentionally inflicted heavy penalties and suffering on migrants. Adding insult to injury, capitalizing on a “tough on crime” stance that perennially suits political ambitions, Clinton demonized immigrants as criminals rather than victims of his own neoliberal economic policies, making their misfortune and death easier to ignore. The ruthless deterrence strategy did not stop desperate migrants from coming, it simply made their journey more perilous and deadly by forcing them into previously untraveled and inhospitable desert and mountain terrain. Indeed, in the last 20 years, over 7,000 migrants have died trying to cross the border.12 In pursuit, border security and its damaging infrastructure of roads and vehicles barreled into pristine and protected areas of federal, state, or private land, trampling on the fragile habitats of endangered and threatened species. After 9/​11, a shocked and paranoid nation grew obsessed with border security, making the illogical choices of invading Afghanistan and Iraq and policing the southern border. For the first time, “economic migrants, the vast majority of undocumented immigrants, were now considered a national security threat alongside hardened criminals and terrorists … [9/​11] placed all those who wished to enter the country without proper documentation on equal footing.”13 Along with the usa patriot Act, the Bush administration launched a series of new security laws and agencies, effectively creating a garrison and surveillance state. Crucially, these included the “Real id Act, passed in 2005,” which gave the new Department of Homeland Security (dhs) uncontested authority over border policy, including the ability to “waive in their entirety” any and all federal, state, or local protections for human health, animals, and the environment.14 Decades of binational conservation work on the protection of habitat and species were, and continue to be, nullified. The absolute 11 12 13 14

John Carlos Frey, Sand and Blood: America’s Stealth War on the Mexico Border (New York: Bold Type Books, 2019), 24. Noah Greenwald et al., “A Wall in the Wild: The Disastrous Impacts of Trump’s Border Wall on Wildlife,” The Center for Biological Diversity, May 2017. Frey, Sand and Blood, 75. See Lindsay Erikson and Melinda Taylor, “The Environmental Impacts of the Border Wall Between Texas and Mexico,” https://​law.utexas.edu/​humanrights/​borderwall/​analysis/​ briefing-​The-​Environmental-​Impacts-​of-​the-​Border-​Wall.pdf; Noah Greenwald et al., “A Wall in the Wild: The Disastrous Impacts of Trump’s Border Wall on Wildlife,” The Center

264 Best authority commandeered by the Executive Office and the Secretary of the dhs over Congress, citizens, and science speaks volumes about US pseudo-​ democracy and the social origins of natural crises afflicting biodiversity and the natural world. And just one year after passing the Real id Act, Congress passed the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which authorized and partially funded the fencing of 700 miles of border barriers—​regardless of its impact on humans, other animals, and the environment—​and doubled the size of the US border patrol. Increasingly, the US-​Mexico border has become militarized as the state mobilized ever-​more security forces and military personnel. Customs and Border Protection (cbp) became the largest police force in the country, currently staffed by 60,000 people.15 Authorization of the military mobilization along the border—​a tactic used since 1989 in the “war on drugs”—​added increasing numbers of soldiers to the mass of border police, defying the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 which limited the powers of the federal government to deploy military personnel for law enforcement and civilian affairs. But with increasing militarization, these boundaries erode to conflate immigration policy with national security, transforming the US border with Mexico into a war zone—​as people along the borderland witness the transformation of their communities “from cross-​border exchanges to citadels.”16 Indeed, regions once teeming with wildlife have become increasingly saturated with checkpoints, roads and highways, all-​terrain vehicles, helicopters, drones, surveillance towers, and night lights. “What was once a weak show of force and anemic attempt to stop illegal immigration became a more heavy-​ handed and militaristic approach to catch migrants. A warlike stance began to take shape against a population that was poor and mostly unarmed … We are using the tactics and machinery of war against all who dare to cross the US-​ Mexico border.”17 With increased military presence and authority came a pervasive “culture of cruelty” whereby Border Patrol agents systematically abused detained migrants and housed them in prison-​like conditions without basic care and sanitation. Abuse was just another form of deterrence. for Biological Diversity, May 2017 https://​www.biologicaldiversity.org/​programs/​international/​borderlands_​and_​boundary_​waters/​pdfs/​A_​Wall_​in_​the_​Wild.pdf; Stephanie Herwick and Nicol, Scott, “Death, Damage, and Failure: Past, Present, and Future Impacts of Walls on the US-​Mexico Border,” American Civil Liberties Union https://​www.aclu.org/​ sites/​default/​files/​field_​document/​aclu-​report-​updates_​0.pdf. 15 Frey, Sand and Blood, 131. 16 Dara Lind, “State of the Union 2019: The Facts About the US-​Mexico Border,” Vox, February 5, 2019, https://​www.vox.com/​policy-​and-​politics/​2019/​2/​5/​18212729/​state-​of -​the-​union-​2019-​border-​facts. 17 Frey, Sand and Blood, 5,8.

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The militarization of the border goes hand in hand with the ever-​larger role of military institutions such as the Defense Department and the Pentagon; large defense industries including Boeing, Lockheed, and Raytheon; private detention center and for-​profit prison industries like CoreCivic and GeoGroup and their many suppliers; large banks such as Wells Fargo and jp Morgan; and close partnerships with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ice). All these nefarious forces work together in the highly profitable business of border fortification and apprehending and detaining migrants, thus creating what I term a vast migrant industrial complex. 4

Trump Tower South: The Wall as Xenophobic Totem

Currently, the Trump administration is literally bulldozing ahead with its plan to construct barriers across the entire US-​Mexico boundary, from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Ending legal and illegal immigration and building a wall across the southern border were key promises of Trump’s presidential campaign, and form the Ariadne’s thread running through his first term in office. When Trump took his oath of office on January 20, 2017, he gained control over a thoroughly militarized border and bloated dhs budget of over $70 billion. Walls and fences already covered 654 miles of the border (roughly one-​third), serviced by 5,000 miles of roads (not counting the undesignated routes for off-​road patrol vehicles), and Trump promised to build an additional 500 miles of wall by election day 2020. To build his “big, beautiful,” “impenetrable,” and “powerful” wall, a Trump Tower thousands of miles long, Trump stopped at nothing. He declared the “migration crisis” to be a “national emergency,” he diverted over $6 billion in funds from the Defense Department budget and shut down the government for 35 days (the longest period in history) to demand additional funding. If the urgent national “crisis” was immigration, and the dangerous security threat was unarmed poor people, then the answer was sealing the border with a wall. But simplistic solutions attract superficial minds, and a massive wall—​ the largest US infrastructure project since building the highway system and the most expensive wall in history—​appealed to the egomaniacal builder in Trump, who boasted, “Who can build better than Trump? I build, it’s what I do … Fences are easy—​believe me.”18

18

Cited in Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael Shear, Border Wars: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019), 24.

266 Best Moreover, the concept of a wall pandered to his base of disaffected, uneducated, xenophobic white workers facing diminishing prospects amidst a changing economy and demography. They took their frustration out on the convenient scapegoat of immigrants allegedly flooding into the country and taking jobs, driving down wages, eroding (white conservative) “American” culture, even posing a security risk. Time and time again, especially evident in his mega-​rallies, Trump exploited fear of the Other and mobilized anger and hatred to advance his agendas. Trump demonized migrant families fleeing misery and seeking a better life in the US as criminals, rapists, and drug pushers. He depicted the “migrant caravan” of people fleeing from Central America as a hostile invasion and dire threat to national security, rather than desperate people seeking to survive the ravages of climate change, drought, hunger, poverty, political violence, and neoliberalism. He frequently portrayed immigrants as invaders, suggesting they were “insects” and “animals.” Humanist liberals were quick to rail against this “dehumanizing” language that “treats people like animals,” without ever considering the speciesist biases that assume it’s acceptable to treat nonhuman animals “like animals.” In the moral myopia and hypocrisy of “progressive” humanism, abuse, exploitation, and devaluation are morally repugnant—​unless applied to nonhuman animals. Such biases police and fortify the repressive moral boundaries that divide human and nonhuman animals. Repeatedly, in speeches broadcast to the nation, Trump stigmatized El Paso as a capital of crime and murder, when in fact it is one of the safest cities in the nation.19 The repressive structures of the national security state are antithetical to this borderland, a huge urban area of Juarez and El Paso populations of over 2.7 million people, a seamless binational and multicultural community accustomed to reciprocity and interchange. El Pasoans were deeply offended by Trump’s numerous aspersions that stigmatized their city as a dangerous denizen for drugs and crime. They were shocked by the ignorance and scapegoating of their city as an excuse for political ambitions and rationale to blockade the border. They were appalled at the mini-​concentration camps built under their downtown bridges—​crudely fenced compounds holding thousands of migrant adults and children in sweltering heat and unsanitary conditions. Trump’s hateful, racist rhetoric was sure to have consequences, and tragically it did—​in the neo-​Nazi marches through Charlottesville, Virginia and in El Paso, where, on August 3, 2019, a white shooter came to gun down as

19

Rebecca Edwards, “The 10 Safest and Most Dangerous Metro Cities in America for 2019,” Safewise.com, April 22, 2019, https://​www.safewise.com/​blog/​safest-​metro-​cities/​.

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many as possible who were faces of the “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” This attack was not arbitrary. Trump’s constant demonization of the city made it a prime target for the shooter who put it in his crosshairs. Not coincidentally, his “manifesto” reflected and was inspired by Trump’s racist rhetoric. The El Paso Latinx population began to live in fear, feeling they have a target on their backs. Generally, with his hateful and violent rhetorical attacks against people of color, immigrants, and journalists, Trump has legitimated and emboldened white supremacists, neo-​Nazis, and a pervasive culture of violence. Indeed, white supremacy, not international terrorism or migrant criminality, has become the greatest security threat in the US.20 In August 2019, it surely paid a bloody visit to El Paso. It’s important to appreciate that Trump’s border policies innovated little and built on the provisions of Clinton, Bush, and Obama. Before Trump even took office, federal law mandated that the border wall be extended nearly 50 additional miles. What Trump did was to ramp up the rhetoric, increase the fear and hate, make implicit racist biases explicit, attack immigration and push deportation with unparalleled zeal, and call for completing an already expansive wall across the entire southern border. Thus, the commandeering authority of presidential power and the military-​industrial complex, the demonization and criminalization of immigrants, the walling and militarization of the border, the political exploitation of xenophobia, the scapegoating of undocumented workers, and the sadistic deterrence policies that led to confinement, abuse, and separation of families—​all this began with Trump’s predecessors and had consistent bipartisan support. 5

A Wall to Oblivion: The New Front in the War on Wildlife and Wilderness

For two centuries, farmers, ranchers, miners, hunters, and trappers have waged war on wildlife and habitat in the US, with deadly consequences -​ -​wiping out numerous species and leaving others barely intact.21 Where

20 21

Morgan Chalfant, “FBI’s Wray Says Most Domestic Terrorism Arrests this Year Involve White Supremacy,” The Hill, July 23, 2019, https://​thehill.com/​homenews/​administration/​ 454338-​fbis-​wray-​says-​majority-​of-​domestic-​terrorism-​arrests-​this-​year. See Lynn Jacobs, Waste of the West: Public Lands Ranching (Lynn Jacobs: 1992); Jeremy Rifkin, Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture (New York: Plume, 1993); Christopher Ketcham, This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption Are Ruining the American West (New York: Viking, 2019).

268 Best ethics, science, and compassion require protection of biodiversity and the environment, politics, profits, and idiocy are destroying what fragments remain. Instead of peaceful co-​existence with the natural world, US power elites have opened up a new front in the war on wildlife and wilderness. Border walls, fences, barriers, roads, and traffic are ripping apart national parks, wildlife preserves and refuges, conservation areas, and sundry ecosystems, already strained by centuries of frenzied development and decades of “border security.” The US-​Mexico borderlands are as rich in biodiversity as they are unique, beautiful, and sensitive to human stampeding. There is a widespread misconception that the southern border is a monotonous expanse of lifeless deserts and wastelands, but in fact it is teeming with life, flush with biodiversity, and resplendent with beauty. Stretching nearly two thousand miles, from western California across Arizona and New Mexico to south Texas, the borderlands “traverse six ecoregions containing vegetation types that include desert scrub, temperate forests and woodlands, semi-​desert and plain grasslands, subtropical scrublands, freshwater wetlands, and salt marshes … and support extraordinary biological diversity.”22 The southern border “bisects the geographical ranges of 1506 native terrestrial and freshwater animal (n = 1077) and plant (n = 429) species, including 62 species listed as Critically Endangered, Endangered, or Vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (iucn) Red List … Five Borderlands Conservation Hotspots identified by Defenders of Wildlife represent top-​priority areas of high biological diversity and binational investment in conservation that are threatened by border wall construction.”23 The El Paso area is home to five endangered species, including the Northern aplomado falcon, Southwestern willow flycatcher, and Mexican wolf. The Sky Islands mountains regions in southeastern Arizona and northern Mexico are host to over 7,000 plant and animal species including cacti, juniper, pine, spotted owls, black bears, mountain lions, bighorn sheep, red squirrels, and over half of the continent’s bird species, but all are imperiled.24 On or near the border are numerous wildlife refuges, national parks, tribal lands, wilderness

22

Robert Peters, et.al. “Nature Divided, Scientists United: US-​Mexico Border Wall Threatens Biodiversity and Binational Conservation,” Bioscience 68, no. 10 (2018): 740. 23 Ibid. 24 Cally Carswell, “Trump’s Wall May Threaten Thousands of Plant and Animal Species on the US–​Mexico Border,” Scientific American, May 10, 2017, https://​www.scientificamerican.com/​article/​trump-​rsquo- ​s -​wall-​may-​threaten-​thousands- ​of-​plant-​and-​animal-​ species-​on-​the-​u-​s-​mexico-​border/​.

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areas, and conservation areas, many of which overlap national boundaries.25 This vast borderland, says Stanford biologist, Rodolfo Dirzo, “is an ecological theater where evolution has engendered a plethora of plays. A multitude of factors—​ climate conditions, topography, geological history, soil types—​ converge to array an amazing mosaic of ecosystems. A constellation of Northern temperate and Southern tropic lifeforms and lineages coincide with endemic species, as in few areas of the globe. This means these borderlands are a global responsibility.”26 Thus, border areas stretching across four US states and two nations are among the most fragile, diverse, rare, threatened, and critically important habitats on the continent, and many species exist in these regions and nowhere else. A barrier stretching from San Diego, California to Brownsville, Texas would cut through deserts and grasslands, rivers and wetlands, mountains and valleys, glistening sand hills and white waves. It would further fragment and divide the habitats of bison, bobcats, jaguars, jaguarundi, prairie dogs, great horned owls, mud turtles, desert tortoises, roadrunners, sandhill cranes, deer, low-​flying birds, insects, and sundry other species. Because of long stretches of border wall that bisect habitat range, the survival of imperiled species—​such as black bears, ocelots, pygmy owls, Sonoran pronghorn, and numerous types of butterflies and cacti—​is already severely stressed and continuing the wall would consign them to oblivion. A completed wall that seals off remaining migration pathways would be a “deathblow to already endangered animals on both sides of the border.” It would affect “93 threatened, endangered, and candidate species” and “degrade and destroy critical habitat for 25 species, including a total of 2,134,792 acres that occurs within 50 miles of the border.”27 The wall discourages or impedes nonhuman animals from accessing food and water resources. It disrupts natural breeding patterns and gene flows, leading to inbreeding and genetic disorders. It fragments already disjointed areas of land, severs critical wildlife corridors, and blocks seasonal migration routes. Barriers impede travel necessary for the survival of endangered and threatened species like the Mexican Gray Wolf, the most endangered mammal in North America, and the jaguar, which lives not only in the jungles of the amazon, but also in southern Arizona and New Mexico. Moreover, the 25 26 27

Eliza Barclay and Sarah Frostenson, “The Ecological Disaster That Is Trump’s Border Wall: A Visual Guide,” Vox, February 5, 2019, https://​www.vox.com/​energy-​and-​environment/​ 2017/​4/​10/​14471304/​trump-​border-​wall-​animals. Cited in Rob Jordan, “How would a border wall affect wildlife?” Stanford Earth, July 24, 2018, https://​earth.stanford.edu/​news/​how-​would-​border-​wall-​affect-​wildlife#gs.fx7l1k. Greenwald, et al. “A Wall in the Wild.”

270 Best wall prevents numerous species from migrating northward in response to the drought and heat brought on by climate change, literally entrapping them in the dystopian prisonhouse of anthropogenic warming that marks the new age of the Anthropocene. In too many cases, these imperiled nonhuman animals are what Rodolfo Dirzo calls “zombie species”—​the walking dead on the brink of extinction.28 The problem is not only the wall itself, which restricts free movement and bisects continuous ecological zones, but also the infrastructure development around it: checkpoint areas and bases, thousands of miles of patrol roads and highways on formerly wild landscapes, frenzied movement of personnel and traffic, the roar of helicopters, blazing and disorienting night lights—​the total imposition of the human boot on imperiled species and fragile ecosystems. Building the wall not only overrides crucial environmental protection laws, it also impedes binational scientific research and undermines decades of conservation work in numerous areas.29 Biodiversity is extremely important to the health of ecosystems. There is a cascading effect with the loss of large predators that ramifies throughout ecosystems. According to Dr. James McCallum, who co-​authored a report on impact of fencing on wildlife and ecosystems: “Once there is a disruption of the complex ecosystems in this way, there is a risk of triggering a cascade of secondary effects … Simply put, less apex predators leads to more deer, which leads to great vegetation predation, which leads to less pollination with a further effect on bird species and insects.”30 Furthermore, the digestive systems of animals are important means of seed dispersal and their ability to travel is critical for the dissemination of plant diversity. To underscore just how flawed, cynical, and destructive political ideologies and security policies can be, consider the case of “one the most biologically and culturally regions of the continental United States”—​the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, an International Biosphere Reserve on the Arizona-​ Mexico boundary.31 This area, ironically, was created in 1976 specifically to 28 29 30 31

See Rob Jordan, “How would a border wall affect wildlife?” Peters, “Nature Divided.” Cited in David Freeman, “Donald Trump’s Border Wall Could Have ‘Yuge’ Environmental Costs,” Huff Post, January 12, 2017, https://​www.huffpost.com/​entry/​donald-​trumps-​ border-​wall-​could-​have-​yuge-​environmental-​costs_​n_​57b36eaee4b0b42c38aedf21. John Burnett, “Border Wall Rising In Arizona, Raises Concerns Among Conservationists, Native Tribes’, National Public Radio, October 13, 2019, https://​www.npr.org/​2019/​10/​ 13/​769444262/​border-​wall-​rising-​in-​arizona-​raises-​concerns-​among-​conservationists-​ native-​trib?ft=nprml&f=1001.

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conserve biodiversity and to test how humans can possibly live in balance with nature. In October 2019, construction of a border wall along the Arizona-​ Mexico boundary in this region began. Despite the warnings of the US Fish & Wildlife Service that the wall could imperil 23 endangered and at-​risk species, and of the National Park Service that construction could destroy 22 archaeological sites, the government waived sundry environmental laws to further realize Trump’s campaign promise to build more walls. In addition to numerous endangered species, construction in this area also affects native peoples, such as the Tohono O’odham Nation, which straddles both sides of the US-​Mexico border and whose tradition of moving freely back and forth abruptly ended with Operation Gatekeeper. “The vast Tohono O’odham Nation—​nearly as big as Connecticut—​shares 62 miles with Mexico. The tribe vehemently opposes the border wall. Several thousand tribal members live south of the border, and are permitted to pass back and forth using tribal id s … a full-​blown 30-​foot wall would make it that much difficult for our tribal citizens in Mexico and in the US to be able to actively participate with family gatherings, with ceremonial gatherings.”32 To give another example, the Texas Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, near McAllen Texas, preserves 90,000 acres of habitat for a rich abundance of wildlife and plant diversity including many threatened and endangered species on both sides of the border.33 It provides a vital corridor for migrating plants and nonhuman animals, one of the countries’ largest remaining population of ocelots and perhaps the only place that jaguarundi still exist (Barclay and Frosterson 2019). The Lower Rio Grande Valley, the final stretch of the river, contains 11 different ecological regions and hosts one of the most spectacular convergences of two major skyways for migratory birds, and people worldwide come to view some of the 500 bird species. None of this deterred dhs, however, for a line of 18-​foot-​tall steel posts four inches apart cuts right through this ecological wonderland, affecting “as much as 70 percent of the valley’s three national wildlife refuges” and threatening rare ocelots and sabal palms.34 Extending the wall would block access to large areas of federal, 32 33 34

Ibid; also see Debbie Weingarten, “We Already Have a Border Wall. It’s an Environmental Disaster,” TalkPoverty, January 3, 2019, https://​talkpoverty.org/​2019/​01/​03/​already-​border-​ wall-​environmental-​disaster/​. Melissa Gaskill, “How More Border Barriers Could Harm the Biodiverse Texas Rio Grande Valley,” The Revelator, May 29, 2018, https://​therevelator.org/​border-​wall-​rio-​grande/​. Melissa Gaskill, “The Environmental Impact of the US-​Mexico Border Wall,” Newsweek, February 14, 2016, https://​www.newsweek.com/​environmental-​impact-​us-​mexico-​border -​wall-​426310#slideshow/​426290.

272 Best state, and private lands and historic sites across three counties.35 Defenders of Wildlife found that a wall would fragment and sever over 2,750 acres of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge in Hidalgo County.36 It would also barge through the National Butterfly Center, a 100-​acre wildlife preserve in Mission, Texas, an area with some of the highest concentration of butterflies (in volume and number of species) in North America. The towering height of the border wall poses a serious obstacle to the movement of low-​ flying insects such as butterflies. Like many areas affected by the building of a southern border, biodiversity and beautiful habitats are a vital economic resource for local communities in this region. “Nature tourism in the Valley generates upwards of $463 million annually in sustainable economic activity for Hidalgo, Starr, Willacy and Cameron counties, supporting more than 6,600 jobs.”37 According to a Washington Post expose, the Trump administration blocked the US Fish and Wildlife Service from making public numerous concerns it had about the impact of additional wall in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, as it pushed ahead with construction efforts.38 To date, roughly two-​thirds, or 1,350 miles, of the border remains unfenced, while republicans and diverted military budgets continue to supply Trump with billions of additional dollars in wall funding (for a total of nearly $10 billion since January 2017). Trump has replaced 100 miles of existing fence and has pledged to build 500 miles of new barrier before the 2020 presidential election. Ominously, the same private contractor who erected a border wall segment outside of El Paso, and who is endorsed by dhs, moved into Mission, Texas to declare war against the “butterfly freaks” and begin clearing land he claims is “under siege by cartels, criminals, and illegal aliens” to start a new six-​ mile stretch of steel and concrete wall.39 After construction was temporarily

35 36

37 38 39

Jamie Rappaport Clark, “The Enormous and Irreparable Impact Trump’s Wall Will Have on Wildlife,” The Hill, December 30, 2018, https://​thehill.com/​opinion/​energy-​environment/​ 423237-​congress-​must-​stand-​against-​border-​funding. Dino Grandoni and Juliet Eilperin, “Interior Dept. Officials Downplayed Federal Wildlife Experts’ Concerns about Trump’s Border Wall, Documents Show,” The Washington Post, December 11, 2018, https://​www.washingtonpost.com/​energy-​environment/​2018/​12/​11/​ interior-​officials-​downplayed-​federal-​wildlife-​experts-​concerns-​about-​trumps-​border-​ wall-​documents-​show/​. Clark, “The Enormous and Irreparable Impact.” Grandoni and Eilperin, “Interior Dept: Officials Downplayed.” Will Sommer, “Border Wall GoFundMe Declares War on Butterfly ‘Freaks’ and Local Priest,” The Daily Beast, November 23, 2019, https://​www.thedailybeast.com/​border-​wall-​ gofundme-​declares-​war-​on-​butterfly-​freaks-​and-​local-​priest; Nick Miroff (b), “Right-​wing

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halted due to a lawsuit filed by federal prosecutors and the National Butterfly Center, in January 2020 a Texas federal judge ruled that the private border wall could move forward. Whether by buying up private property or seizing land through eminent domain powers, bulldozers are winning over butterflies and biodiversity. 6

Walling Off the World

From the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge to the Tijuana Estuary, everywhere along the 2,000 miles-​long boundary one sees the same dynamics playing out—​politically-​motivated, irrational border “security” policies are degrading sensitive ecosystems, violating the rights of humans and other animals, harming local communities, defying science and citizen will, and suffocating life and beauty. Few things show naked state power as dramatically as the construction of the US border wall. As Catherine Slessor notes, “Walls are merely the most visible manifestation of a larger apparatus of militarised surveillance and technology employed to defend territory and keep people in their place.”40 A key purpose of the wall is to prevent suffering peoples from migrating into the US, but much more it impedes travelers, academics, students, scientists, conservationists, and the free exchange of ideas and culture—​an odd consequence for neoliberalism. Often the plight of immigrants receives sympathetic coverage, but—​given the speciesist biases of mass media and the dominant ideologies—​precious little national attention has been given to the effects of the border wall on biodiversity and ecosystems. It is as if misguided immigration and security policies only have social implications and not systemically catastrophic effects throughout the life community. The wall stops nonhuman animals from accessing food, water, and breeding mates; it traps them to drown in floods; and it prevents them from escaping the effects of climate change. The wall and sadistic deterrence policies shift migration and its impact onto sensitive habitats, where the state security complex kills desperate and determined people, as it devastates animal populations, fragments their territory, and degrades the environment. The wall divides

40

Group Continues to Build Private Border Wall: It Lacks Permits, But Not Official Praise,” The Washington Post, November 22, 2019. Catherine Slessor, “A World of Walls: The Brutish Power of Man-​Made Barriers,” The Guardian, August 11, 2019, https://​amp.theguardian.com/​artanddesign/​2019/​aug/​11/​ us-​mexico-​border-​wall-​funding-​walls-​of-​power-​arles-​calais-​hungary-​spain.

274 Best families, towns, and tribes; it hurts local communities and small businesses; and it creates flash flooding dangers that kill humans and destroy property.41 Construction of the wall devours public lands and threatens private lands as well through the force of eminent domain. The wall is a $25–​70 billion-​ dollar boondoggle, a prodigious waste of resources and taxpayer money. It is a cynical and opportunistic political tool used for demagoguery, scapegoating, and pandering to irrational fears to win elections and resist multiculturalism. It is part of a vast infrastructure and security paradigm deployed to enrich banks, corporations, contractors, the military, and the private prison industry, at the expense of civil liberties. It is a mirage of actual security, a manufactured pseudo-​crisis masking real social and environmental crises, such as corporate power, economic inequality, dysfunctional political systems, and climate change. The border wall is a gigantic symbol of bureaucratic sclerosis and idiocy and a monument to racism, xenophobia, and speciesism. The wall is not only physical—​brick, mortar, or steel—​it is also psychological and cultural. It is a towering totemic sign of the Us Vs. Them mentality that informs every hierarchical society and pervades US culture. The wall refutes progressive principles of unity, community, ecology, and the rights of nonhuman animals and the earth. The wall is the dream of the Enlightenment strangled with concertina wire, a postmodern coda for faded empires and dying civilizations. Fascists and terrorists hate diversity, whether human or nonhuman, cultural or biological, and yearn for the monotony that is death. The wall epitomizes this. The southern border wall standing for decades is already a disaster, and plans to build a continuous barrier from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific coast would damage countless communities and consign innumerable plant and animal species to oblivion. If Trump’s wall is completed (as it well could be if Trump is re-​elected in 2020), Mexican conservation biologist Rurik List observes, it “will rewrite the biological history of North America. A history that for millennia allowed animals to travel along the grasslands and forests from Mexico to Canada.”42 Whatever legitimate security concerns exist on the US-​ Mexico border, sensible policies were abandoned decades ago. Walls solve nothing, they never have. They don’t stop desperate people, address the causes of migration, provide impenetrable defense, or blot out the promise of a better life. They are a feeble technofix for deep-​rooted social, political, and economic problems. On the US-​Mexico border, they benefit no 41 42

Eliza Barclay and Sarah Frostenson, “The Ecological Disaster That Is Trump’s Border Wall.” Cited in Kessler, “Rewriting Biological History: Trump Border Wall Puts Wildlife at Risk,” Mongabay, February 12, 2018, https://​news.mongabay.com/​2018/​02/​rewriting-​biological-​ history-​trump-​border-​wall-​puts-​wildlife-​at-​risk/​.

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one but the nefarious agents, agencies, and corporations behind the migrant-​ industrial complex. Any serious policy approach to immigration would address the systemic causes of migration—​such as global capitalism and climate change—​and not merely tinker with its effects. Walls are as old as civilization itself, and began to rise around cities throughout Mesopotamia after urbanization began in the region around 4500 bce. These walls served to define territorial boundaries and to defend against invaders. Like modern walls, ancient walls erected literal and metaphorical boundaries between the natural and artificial, city and countryside, civilization and barbarism. From a contemporary global perspective, one finds that dozens of countries (India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Baltics, and so on) are aggressively trying to control nonhuman border crossings with walls and barriers, often with harmful consequences to nonhuman animals and habitat. These barriers are erected not only due to territorial disputes or conflict, or as bulwarks against runaway climate change, but also because of instabilities created by economic inequalities and different levels of development between adjoining nations, which engenders unwanted immigration.43 These factors certainly are the case on the US-​Mexico border, and currently there are about 70 sizable border barriers worldwide. These walls are “symptoms of a rift in the world order, as manifestations of the failings of international cooperation … At the end of the Cold War there were just 15 walls delimiting national borders; today, with 70 of them in existence around the world, the wall has become the new standard for international relations” (Vallet 2017), the new way of shutting out the world’s “untouchables.” Thus, the momentary return (in the Western imagination) to an Enlightenment utopia of an open, transparent, and fluid global community after the fall of the Berlin Wall—​signaling the end of the Cold War and the birth of the “New World Order” to be led by the US -​-​was an ephemeral dream that ended with the moral and political decline of the US and the increase in sealing off nation states into separate security compounds. Whether it is the influx of refugees and migrants from Africa to Italy or from Syria to Turkey and Greece, Europe as well is rushing to consolidate its border infrastructure, while bracing for even greater floods of desperate humanity fleeing the ravages of war and climate change. Indeed, by 2050 there could be up to a billion climate refugees seeking shelter from the wrath of nature awoken by anthropogenic 43

David B. Carter and Paul Poast, “Why Do States Build Walls? Political Economy, Security, and Border Stability,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 61, no. 2 (September, 2015): 239–​270. https://​pdfs.semanticscholar.org/​3801/​7b9d352f1a7f8c0ceae740187ab8e5ec1a67.pdf?_​ga= 2.207410899.1350996188.1572533394-​554913321.1572533394.

276 Best warming of the globe.44 Rather than urgently respond to climate change, the developed world instead erects formidable walls to try to shut out the chaos and mass casualties they have created. These walls come at a huge price, the economic expense—​which is enormous—​being the least of it.45 The greatest cost of walls and barriers are the toll they take on communities—​human, animal, and plant. On a planet increasingly threatened by climate change, walls, borders, nationalism, isolationism, nativism, xenophobia, and right-​wing populism can be seen as malignancies the global biocommunity can no longer afford. Instead, nations must foster strong ties of international cooperation to avert the worst effects of climate change. Or perish. Enlightenment dreams and modern utopias continue to crash and burn, as postmodern walls arise from the ashes. The problems afflicting the natural world stem from crises haunting the social world and cannot be overcome until their root social causes are engaged and resolved. Moreover, the accelerating climate emergency is aggravating all social and environmental problems and dramatizes the urgency for addressing the underlying social and political causes affecting all life. The construction of the southern border wall and its systemic impacts provides an excellent example of how deeply intertwined are the fates of humans, other animals, and the environment, and how all interests must be fought for as one in a movement for total, planetary liberation.46 Moreover, it is vital that nations worldwide rethink their definitions of security, understanding that there is no human, social, or political stability without a stable and flourishing natural world. The current climate emergency is dramatic proof that a wounded and destabilized planet has drastic consequences for human security, as heat, drought, floods, superstorms, melting ice sheets, and rising sea levels pose severe dangers to human existence worldwide, causing mass migrations, terrorism, and social breakdown and chaos. Nothing—​not indigenous peoples’ lands or grave sites, not public or private property, not devastated communities, not dead babies in rivers and deserts, not wildlife sanctuaries or wilderness areas, not species hanging on by a thread—​has stood in the way between Trump and his obsession to build a continuous border wall. But resistance is growing. Conservationists and scientists; 44

Jeremy Lovell, “Climate Change to Make One Billion Refugees-​Agency,” Reuters, May 13, 2007, https://​www.reuters.com/​article/​idUSL10710325. 45 Elisabeth Vallet, “Border Walls Are Ineffective, Costly and Fatal—​ but we Keep Building Them,” The Conversation, July 2017, https://​theconversation.com/​border-​walls -​are-​ineffective-​costly-​and-​fatal-​but-​we-​keep-​building-​them-​80116. 46 Best, The Politics of Total Liberation.

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environmental, animal protection, and human rights organizations; native tribes; border businesses, communities, and private landowners as well—​all are battling the US state over the border wall. These disparate voices have developed research, organized petitions and protests, issued restraining orders, and filed lawsuits. It is an irony that Trump’s divisiveness has united people along the border regions, with unlikely alliances forming between groups such as ranchers and environmentalists. Indeed, a new social movement is emerging, based on broad alliances and coalitions, using direct action tactics, with the goal of abolishing ice and the migrant-​industrial complex while promoting human and labor rights.47 The US-​Mexico border is not only a geographical and political boundary, but an emerging front line of struggle in the battle against state tyranny and the war on nonhuman animals and the environment. The wall must not only be stopped, it must be dismantled in order to revitalize migratory flows of life and to rewild damaged habitats. If tribes shattered Hadrian’s Wall, and citizens sledge-​hammered the Berlin Wall, people can raze Trump’s Wall as well. Of course, the problem is not only Trump’s Wall, which is but a symptom of the underlying disease of a corporate-​state power complex stifling democracy and threatening all life. This poses the much larger task of systemic social transformation, while contending with the dark forces of the US psyche, the impulses of fascism becoming ever more manifest, and the pathological mindset of predatory humanism. 7

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Jerold D. Friedman and Natalie Khazaal for their helpful comments on initial drafts of this essay.

References

Alden, Edward. The Closing of the American Border: Terrorism, Immigration, and Security Since 9/​11. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2018. Barclay, Eliza, and Frostenson, Sarah. “The Ecological Disaster That is Trump’s Border Wall: A Visual Guide,” Vox, February 5, 2019, https://​www.vox.com/​energy-​and-​ environment/​2017/​4/​10/​14471304/​trump-​border-​wall-​animals.

47

Dayen, “Below the Surface.”

278 Best Best, Steven. The Politics of Historical Vision: Marx, Foucault, and Habermas. New York: Guilford Press, 1995. Best, Steven. “Minding the Animals: Ethology and the Obsolescence of Left Humanism,” The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy 5, no. 2 (Spring 2009), https://​www. inclusivedemocracy.org/​journal/​vol5/​vol5_​no2_​best_​minding_​animals.htm. Best, Steven, et. al. (eds.). The Global Industrial Complex: Systems of Domination. New York: Lexington Books, 2011. Best, Steven. The Politics of Total Liberation: Revolution for the 21st Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Burnett, John. “Border Wall Rising In Arizona, Raises Concerns Among Conservationists, Native Tribes,” National Public Radio, October 13, 2019, https://​www.npr.org/​2019/​ 10/​13/​769444262/​border-​wall-​rising-​in-​arizona-​raises-​concerns-​among-​conservationists-​native-​trib?ft=nprml&f=1001. Carswell, Cally. “Trump’s Wall May Threaten Thousands of Plant and Animal Species on the US–​Mexico Border.” Scientific American, May 10, 2017, https://​www.scientificamerican.com/​article/​trump-​rsquo-​s-​wall-​may-​threaten-​thousands-​of-​plant-​and-​ animal-​species-​on-​the-​u-​s-​mexico-​border/​. Carter, David B., and Poast, Paul. “Why Do States Build Walls? Political Economy, Security, and Border Stability.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 61, no.2 (September 2015): 239–​270, https://​pdfs.semanticscholar.org/​3801/​7b9d352f1a7f8c0ceae740187ab8e5ec1a67.pdf?_​ga=2.207410899.1350996188.1572533394-​554913321.1572533394. Chalfant, Morgan. “FBI’s Wray Says Most Domestic Terrorism Arrests this Year Involve White Supremacy,” The Hill, July 23, 2019, https://​thehill.com/​homenews/​administration/​454338-​fbis-​wray-​says-​majority-​of-​domestic-​terrorism-​arrests-​this-​year. Clark, Jamie Rappaport. “The Enormous and Irreparable Impact Trump’s Wall Will Have on Wildlife,” The Hill, December 30, 2018, https://​thehill.com/​opinion/​energy-​ environment/​423237-​congress-​must-​stand-​against-​border-​funding. Davis, Julie Hirschfeld, and Shear, Michael. Border Wars: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019. Dayen, David. “Below the Surface of ICE: The Corporations Profiting from Immigrant Detention,” In These Times, September/​October 2017, https://​inthesetimes.com/​features/​ice-​abolish-​immigration-​child-​detention-​private-​prison-​profiting.html. Edwards, Rebecca. “The 10 Safest and Most Dangerous Metro Cities in America for 2019,” Safewise.com, April 22, 2019, https://​www.safewise.com/​blog/​safest-​metro-​cities/​. Ferman, Mitchell. “DHS Chief Visits Valley,” The Brownsville Herald, December 13, 2017, https://​www.brownsvilleherald.com/​news/​local/​dhs-​chief-​visits-​valley/​article_​ 7ccb6f88-​e07d-​11e7-​9f91-​2f5a75836e4a.html. Freeman, David, “Donald Trump’s Border Wall Could Have ‘Yuge’ Environmental Costs,” Huff Post, January 12, 2017 (https://​www.huffpost.com/​entry/​donald-​trumps-​ border-​wall-​could-​have-​yuge-​environmental-​costs_​n_​57b36eaee4b0b42c38aedf21).

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Frey, John Carlos, Sand and Blood: America’s Stealth Wat on the Mexico Border. New York: Bold Type Books, 2019. Gaskill, Melissa. “The Environmental Impact of the US-​Mexico Border Wall,” Newsweek, February 14, 2016, https://​www.newsweek.com/​environmental-​impact-​us-​mexico-​ border-​wall-​426310#slideshow/​426290. Gaskill, Melissa. “How More Border Barriers Could Harm the Biodiverse Texas Rio Grande Valley,” The Revelator, May 29, 2018, https://​therevelator.org/​border-​wall-​ rio-​grande/​. Grandoni, Dino, and Juliet Eilperin. “Interior Dept. Officials Downplayed Federal Wildlife Experts’ Concerns about Trump’s Border Wall, Documents Show,” The Washington Post, December 11, 2018, https://​www.washingtonpost.com/​energy-​ environment/​2018/​12/​11/​interior-​officials-​downplayed-​federal-​wildlife-​experts-​ concerns-​about-​trumps-​border-​wall-​documents-​show/​. Greenwald, Noah, et al. “A Wall in the Wild: The Disastrous Impacts of Trump’s Border Wall on Wildlife,” The Center for Biological Diversity, May 2017, https://​www.biologicaldiversity.org/​programs/​international/​borderlands_​and_​boundary_​waters/​pdfs/​ A_​Wall_​in_​the_​Wild.pdf. Jacobs, Lynn. Waste of the West: Public Lands Ranching. Lynn Jacobs: 1992. Jordan, Rob, “How would a border wall affect wildlife?” Stanford Earth, July 24, 2018. https://​earth.stanford.edu/​news/​how-​would-​border-​wall-​affect-​wildlife#gs.fx7l1k. Kessler, Rebecca. “Rewriting Biological History: Trump Border Wall Puts Wildlife at Risk,” Mongabay, February 12, 2018, https://​news.mongabay.com/​2018/​02/​rewriting-​ biological-​history-​trump-​border-​wall-​puts-​wildlife-​at-​risk/​. Ketcham, Christopher. This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption Are Ruining the American West. New York: Viking, 2019. Kolbert, Elizabeth. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. New York: Picador, 2014. Lind, Dara. “State of the Union 2019: The Facts About the US-​Mexico Border,” Vox, February 5, 2019, https://​www.vox.com/​policy-​and-​politics/​2019/​2/​5/​18212729/​ state-​of-​the-​union-​2019-​border-​facts. Lovell, Jeremy. “Climate Change to Make One Billion Refugees-​Agency,” Reuters, May 13, 2007, https://​www.reuters.com/​article/​idUSL10710325. Miroff, Nick. “Right-​Wing Group Continues to Build Private Border Wall. It Lacks Permits, but Not Official Praise,” The Washington Post, November 22, 2019, https://​ www.washingtonpost.com/​immigration/​right-​wing-​group-​continues-​to-​build-​private-​border-​wall-​it-​lacks-​permits-​but-​not-​official-​praise/​2019/​11/​22/​b4281676-​0c71-​ 11ea-​8397-​a955cd542d00_​story.html?outputType=amp. Nickel, Dana. “Who Profits From Migrant Detention in the US?,” The Globe Post, August 19, 2019, https://​theglobepost.com/​2019/​08/​19/​profit-​migrant-​detention/​. Patterson, Charles. Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust. New York: Lantern Books, 2002.

280 Best Peters, Robert et.al. “Nature Divided, Scientists United: US-​ Mexico Border Wall Threatens Biodiversity and Binational Conservation,” Bioscience 68, no. 10, October 28, 2018. Sale, Kirkpatrick. After Eden: The Evolution of Human Domination. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Schlyer. Krista. Continental Divide: Wildlife, People and the Border Wall. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2012. Slessor, Catherine. “A World of Walls: The Brutish Power of Man-​Made Barriers, ” August 11, 2019, The Guardian, https://​amp.theguardian.com/​artanddesign/​2019/​ aug/​11/​us-​mexico-​border-​wall-​funding-​walls-​of-​power-​arles-​calais-​hungary-​spain. Sommer, Will. “Border Wall GoFundMe Declares War on Butterfly ‘Freaks’ and Local Priest,” The Daily Beast, November 23, 2019, https://​www.thedailybeast.com/​ border-​wall-​gofundme-​declares-​war-​on-​butterfly-​freaks-​and-​local-​priest. Vallet, Elisabeth. “Border Walls Are Ineffective, Costly and Fatal—​but we Keep Building Them.” The Conversation, July 2017, https://​theconversation.com/​ border-​walls-​are-​ineffective-​costly-​and-​fatal-​but-​we-​keep-​building-​them-​80116. Weingarten, Debbie. “We Already Have a Border Wall. It’s an Environmental Disaster,” TalkPoverty, January 3, 2019, https://​talkpoverty.org/​2019/​01/​03/​already-​border-​ wall-​environmental-​disaster/​.

pa rt 3 Media Representations of the Divide and the Potential Points of Its Disruption

∵

­c hapter 8

The Press outside the West

Displacement, Refugees, and Nonhuman Animals in Bulgaria and Lebanon Natalie Khazaal Abstract Natalie Khazaal describes the key role of speciesism in the production of anti-​ refugee prejudice and in opposing such prejudice. Since the beginning of the current global refugee crisis in 2011, the media in Europe and the US have amplified a discourse on refugees/​(im)migrants as “animals” inspired by speciesism. Does the speciesist human-​nonhuman divide similarly affect the media in countries outside the West that host refugees? Informed by Costello’s & Hodson’s interspecies model of prejudice, this chapter examines empirical evidence from news and op-​ eds in multiple Bulgarian, Arabic, and English-​language newspapers from Bulgaria and Lebanon between 2013 and 2019 to answer two questions: (1) Do Bulgarian and Lebanese newspapers use animalization as a tool to produce prejudice against refugees/​(im)migrants or as a tool to oppose such prejudice? (2) What are the vocabulary and imagery that make it possible for Bulgarian and Lebanese newspapers to talk about the human-​nonhuman divide in this context? The chapter concludes that the analyzed sources use hunting rituals, disgust, and grandstanding to perpetuate the animalization of refugees/​(im)migrants, while their attempts to ridicule and oppose animalization protect and reiterate the human-​nonhuman divide. These insights matter because they display the global scale of animalization of refugees/​(im) migrants, and help theorize how concepts like species and speciesism are essential to the practices of exclusion and differential inclusion that characterize the border politics of the nation-​state.

Keywords newspapers –​Bulgaria –​Lebanon –​refugees –​animals –​dehumanization

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004440654_010

284 Khazaal

­f igure 8.1  Dolno Yabalkovo, Strandja mountain, August 2019 source: the author

1

Introduction

Two personal experiences piqued my interest in how host societies outside the West and their media engage with the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis. After my grandparents retired, they moved to a small Bulgarian village in Strandja mountain four miles north of the Turkish border (Figure 8.1). Their neighbor Kosta was a school principal of 30 years who visited the village during breaks until he retired there in the 1990s. In 2015, the outlet Deutche Welle Bulgaria published an article praising Kosta for his humane treatment of Syrian refugees that passed almost daily.1 When I showed him the article in 2019, he was shocked: “Of course we’ll help them; they’re people, like you and me” (Figure 8.2). The same year, David, a Lebanese electric engineer in his 30s with a side-​ gig as a rental manager, was trying to immigrate to Poland. Too many Syrians had crossed into Poland illegally, he vented to me. These lazy “animals” only

1 Tatiana Vaksberg, “ ‘Onzi Dinko Kakvo Iska? Da Trepe Lapetata li?’ ” DW Bulgaria, March 1, 2016.

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285

­f igure 8.2  Kosta in front of his house with weekend visitors—​his sister (left) and my aunt (right), August, 2019 source: the author

mooched from the government, ruining the chances of good immigrants like him to make money, he continued. When I observed that he had used the word “animals,” he became self-​conscious and backpedaled: “You know what I mean.” Are these two attitudes—​“they’re people” versus “they’re animals”—​as diametrically opposed as they seem at first glance? And why choose Bulgaria and Lebanon to test that? The first reason is the two countries’ direct impact by the refugee crisis. A major land route for refugees passes through Bulgaria, a member of the European Union that acts as the union’s outer border, like Greece and Italy on the sea routes. Bulgaria hosts some refugees but mostly conveniently connects Turkey, which hosts the highest number of Syrian refugees, with many refugees’ terminus ad quem in Western Europe. Lebanon, which borders Syria, is the host country with the second highest number of Syrian refugees. Given this direct impact, the discourse on refugees in Bulgarian and Lebanese media and larger public spheres has been prominent. Yet, little is known whether this discourse uses blanket speciesism as a tool to produce prejudice against refugees or as a tool to oppose such prejudice. This is the

286 Khazaal second reason for choosing Bulgaria and Lebanon. Prominent public figures in the US and Western Europe made international headlines with shocking quotes dehumanizing refugees as animals. The media also covered Western protests over refugees’ treatment “like animals”—​protesters’ label for discrimination and dehumanization. As the introduction to this volume suggests, the protests and their positive coverage were no less informed by the deep divide between human and nonhuman animals. Is the intersection between racism and speciesism just as inherent in the press of host countries like Bulgaria and Lebanon? If so, how, and why does that matter? The complex backgrounds of Bulgaria and Lebanon preclude drawing straightforward conclusions about the role of speciesism in the production of anti-​refugee prejudice or its opposition. Therefore, this chapter examines empirical evidence from news and op-​eds from multiple Bulgarian, Arabic, and English-​language newspapers from Bulgaria and Lebanon between 2013 and 2019. I start with a discussion of prejudice and the human-​nonhuman divide (the so-​called human-​animal divide). After describing the role of the media in the production of the divide, I explore the Bulgarian and Lebanese contexts and conduct textual analysis of select sources from each country. I conclude that right-​wing outlets in the Bulgarian press use speciesism to justify Bulgarian fantasies of superiority over Muslims and cover up anxiety over being among the poorest members of the EU. In its most symbolic iterations, speciesism there appears as a hunting ritual both glorified and ridiculed. By contrast, the Lebanese press pushes a practical racism. This press instrumentalizes (i) disgust to vilify Syrian refugees and (ii) grandstanding against their abusers, suggesting that the solution to racism is more speciesism. 2

Interspecies Model of Prejudice

This chapter applies the interspecies model of prejudice, developed by Kimberly Costello and Gordon Hodson, to a sample of Bulgarian and Lebanese newspaper articles reporting on refugees.2 I aim to determine how this 2 Kimberly Costello and Gordon Hodson, “Exploring the Roots of Dehumanization: The Role of Animal-​Human Similarity in Promoting Immigrant Humanization,” Group Processes and Intergroup Relations 13, no. 1 (2010), 3–​22; Kimberly Costello and Gordon Hodson, “Explaining Dehumanization among Children: The Interspecies Model of Prejudice,” British Journal of Social Psychology 53 (2014): 175–​197; Gordon Hodson, Cara MacInnis, and Kimberley Costello, “(Over)valuing Humanness as an Aggravator of Intergroup Prejudices and Discrimination,” in Humanness and Dehumanization, eds. Paul J. Bain, Jeoren Vaes, and Jacques-​Philippe Leyens (London, UK: Psychology Press, 2013): 86–​110.

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coverage reflects the human-​nonhuman divide and how the divide frames prejudice against refugees and (im)migrants there. The human-​nonhuman divide is a perceived unbridgeable difference between humans and other animals, where humans place in a unique, superior category. Humans use the divide to rationalize systematic abuse and exploitation of other animals, including abducting them from their natural habitat, imprisoning them in zoos and factory farms, torturing them in chemical, scientific, and pharmaceutical experiments, depriving them of fulfilling basic physical, psychological, and social needs in all of the above, and murdering them to satisfy human palettes.3 The divide prompts cognitive dissonance—​a phenomenon that allows full knowledge that nonhumans are thinking and feeling beings, and full denial that abusing and exploiting these thinking and feeling beings is unacceptable. The divide’s consequences are catastrophic for nonhumans, but they are also tragic for humans. The interspecies model of prejudice reveals some of the human cost of the divide.4 The interspecies model of prejudice explores the causes of prejudice in modern multicultural societies, which dominant, higher-​ status ingroups practice against disenfranchised and marginalized outgroups such as refugees and undocumented immigrants. Scholars have shown that outgroup dehumanization is a key predictor of prejudice in humans.5 It is a psychological process where a group or individual are labeled lesser than human.6 Outgroup dehumanization comes in a number of ways, such as direct and

3 David Smith, Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2011); David Nibert, Animal Rights/​Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publisher, 2002); Jim Mason, An Unnatural Order: The Roots of Our Destruction of Nature (NY: Lantern, 2005); Charles Patterson, Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust (New York: Lantern Books, 2002). 4 Gordon Hodson and Kimberley Costello, “The Human Cost of Devaluing Animals,” New Scientist 216, no. 2895 (2012): 34–​35. 5 Costello and Costello, “Exploring the Roots of Dehumanization”; see also Phillip Goff, Jennifer Eberhardt, Melissa Williams, and Matthey Jackson, “Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization, and Contemporary Consequences,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94 (2008): 292–​306; Gordon Hodson and Kimberley Costello, “Interpersonal Disgust, Ideological Orientations, and Dehumanization as Predictors of Intergroup Attitudes,” Psychological Science 18 (2007): 691–​698; Jaques-​Phillipe Leyens et al., “The Emotional Side of Prejudice: The Attribution of Secondary Emotions to Ingroups and Outgroups,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 4 (2000): 186–​197. 6 Nick Haslam, “Dehumanization: An Integrative Review,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 10 (2006): 252–​264; Leyens et al., “The Emotional Side of Prejudice.”

288 Khazaal indirect animalization and infrahumanization.7 If direct animalization is to label refugees and immigrants “animals,” for instance, indirect animalization is to describe them with imagery typically used for nonhumans, while infrahumanization is to deny them so-​called uniquely human characteristics such as shame, guilt, curiosity, creativity, etc. Dehumanization is a tool that justifies exclusion from moral consideration, and makes human outgroups vulnerable to discrimination and violence. The interspecies model of prejudice empirically demonstrates that the human-​nonhuman divide is a “fundamental cause of dehumanization.”8 In other words, the human-​nonhuman divide drives prejudice by facilitating dehumanization.9 The model shows that dehumanizing and discriminating against outgroups such as refugees and immigrants are customary for all age groups—​from mature adults, to younger adults such as university students, to children as young as six.10 A famous iteration of the human-​nonhuman divide is the concept of Nature’s ladder, later referred to as the Great Chain of Being. Philosophers like Aristotle developed this concept to describe an alleged hierarchy of existence based on perceived intelligence, as well as capacity to benefit humans. Nature’s ladder descended from god to angels, then male philosophers, male property owners, males generally, male slaves, then the smartest women, women generally,

7

8 9 10

Erin Steuter and Deborah Wills, At War with Metaphor: Media, Propaganda, and Racism in the War on Terror (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008); Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, Jackson, “Not Yet Human”; Stephen Loughnan and Nick Haslam, “Animals and Androids: Implicit Associations between Social Categories and Nonhumans,” Psychological Science 18 (2007): 116–​121; Tendayi Viki et al., “Beyond Secondary Emotions: The Infrahumanization of Outgroups Using Human-​Related and Animal-​Related Words,” Social Cognition, 24, no. 6 (2006): 753–​775; Haslam, “Dehumanization: An Integrative Review”; Leyens et al., “The Emotional Side of Prejudice”; Jaques-​Phillipe Leyens et al., “Psychological Essentialism and the Differential Attribution of Uniquely Human Emotions to Ingroups and Outgroups,” European Journal of Social Psychology 31 (2001): 395–​411; Costello and Hodson, “Exploring the Roots of Dehumanization”; Costello and Hodson, “Explaining Dehumanization among Children.” Kimberly Costello and Gordon Hodson, “Lay Beliefs About the Causes of and Solutions to Dehumanization and Prejudice: Do Non-​Experts Recognize the Role of Human-​Animal Relations?,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 44 (2014): 278–​288, 280. Costello and Hodson, “Exploring the Roots of Dehumanization”; Costello and Hodson, “Explaining Dehumanization among Children”; Hodson, MacInnis, and Costello, “(Over) valuing Humanness.” Costello and Hodson, “Explaining Dehumanization among Children”; Costello and Hodson, “Exploring the Roots of Dehumanization”; Kimberly Costello and Gordon Hodson, “Social Dominance-​ Based Threat Reactions to Immigrants in Need of Assistance,” European Journal of Social Psychology 41 (2011): 220–​231; Hodson and Costello, “Interpersonal Disgust.”

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women slaves, then the most rational nonhumans, etc. While slaves, women, immigrants, or poor men became lower-​status groups in various degrees and suffered from prejudice, nonhuman animals have consistently been treated as “the quintessential low-​status outgroup.”11 Despite Darwin’s turn, this obsolete concept retains a powerful grasp on human understanding of the world. There are two main proposed explanations of why the human-​nonhuman divide lies at the root of human prejudice. David Nibert argues that the divide is a political-​economic ideology that develops as a justification for oppression and gives rise to prejudice.12 Expanding on Donald Noel’s theory of oppression, Nibert traces speciesist ideology to competition over resources and the unequal power humans hold over other animals and earth resources. A second main explanation proposes that the human-​nonhuman divide, “may be rooted in basic cognitive and social-​motivational concerns about social dominance.”13 As Kristof Dhont, Gordon Hodson, and Ana Leite and Dhont et al. show empirically and meta-​analytically, prejudice against ethnic groups consistently correlates with speciesism (species-​based prejudice) because the two share a common ideological motive, i.e., desire for group-​based dominance.14 This desire is known as social dominance orientation (sdo) and its effect—​ support for hierarchy and dominion, i.e., acceptance of inequality—​is the common ideological root that links speciesism and ethnic prejudice. They conclude that a social dominance human-​animal relations model (sd-​h arm) is key to understanding human-​human and human-​nonhuman prejudice to a similar degree. Hence, they explain how a common ideological-​psychological trait causes speciesism and generalized ethnic prejudice.15 While the interspecies model of prejudice distinguishes between individuals with higher social dominance orientation versus those with lower, researchers of communities and polities, too, have arrived at similar conclusions confirming the tight link between human and nonhuman oppression. Yon Soo Park and Benjamin Valentino, for instance, studied each of the 50 11

Kristof Dhont, Gordon Hodson, and Ana Leite, “Common Ideological Roots of Speciesism and Generalized Ethnic Prejudice: The Social Dominance Human-​Animal Relations Model (SD_​HARM),” European Journal of Personality 30 (2016): 507–​522, 508. 12 Nibert, Animal Rights/​Human Rights. 13 Costello and Hodson, “Lay Beliefs,” 280. 14 Dhont, Hodson, and Leite, “Common Ideological Roots of Speciesism”; Dhont et al., “Social Dominance Orientation Connects Prejudicial Human-​ Human and Human-​ Animal Relations,” Personality and Individual Differences 61–​62 (2014): 105–​108. 15 Whereas SDO has a moderate to strong effect, it doesn’t fully explain speciesism and ethnic prejudice. Resistance to change (RWA) and overall conservatism have been shown to complement it.

290 Khazaal US states as independent polities.16 Looking at state legislation, they aim to understand why different political communities protect nonhumans to a greater or lesser degree. It turns out that societies that benefit economically from animal agriculture are more politically conservative and have fewer protections for nonhumans as well as for marginalized humans, such as undocumented immigrants. The researchers conclude that animal rights in legislation is strongly linked to the rights of disenfranchised and marginalized human groups, including immigrants. Another group of scholars also confirms the link between human and nonhuman abuse. Amy Fitzgerald, Linda Kalof, and Thomas Dietz found that communities with more slaughterhouses and slaughterhouse employees also have greater crime rates, suggesting that nonhuman animal abuse spills over into crimes against humans.17 These empirical studies show that, like individuals, communities also exhibit connections between oppression against human and nonhuman animals. Next, I explain how the media manipulates the human-​nonhuman divide animalizing refugees/​(im)migrants, and how exploring this can help further theorize a connection between oppression against human and nonhuman animals. 3

How the Media Manipulates the Human-​Nonhuman Divide

Two of three relevant studies fail to link dehumanization to speciesism. The first is Otto Santa Ana’s study about how the Los Angeles Times reflected the 1993–​94 discourse around the anti-​immigrant referendum in California, Proposition 187.18 He found that the dominant immigrant metaphor in the daily was “immigrants are animals,” encouraging US industry, immigration services, and the public to metaphorically bait, hunt, and eat immigrants. Such negative perceptions, he argues, create conceptual frameworks through which to see the world and lead to negative outcomes in public policy like the approval of Prop 187. Santa Ana incorrectly concludes that degrading animal metaphors are uniquely associated with immigrants because he didn’t find them for other

16 17 18

Yon Soo Park and Benjamin Valentino, “Animals Are People Too: Explaining Variation in Respect for Animal Rights,” Human Rights Quarterly 41, no. 1 (February 2019): 39–​65. Amy Fitzgerald, Linda Kalof, and Thomas Dietz, “Slaughterhouses and Increased Crime Rates: An Empirical Analysis of the Spillover from ‘The Jungle’ into the Surrounding Community,” Organization & Environment 22, no. 2 (2009): 158–​184. Otto Santa Ana, “ ‘Like an Animal I Was Treated’: Anti-​immigrant Metaphor in US Discourse,” Discourse and Society 10 no.2 (1999): 191–​224.

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human groups in his sample. The second study, by Victoria Esses and Stelian Medianu, experimentally proves that the media doesn’t need explicit animalizing metaphors to dehumanize refugees and immigrants.19 Participants from Canada associated refugees/​(im)migrants with nonhuman animals at higher rates after being incidentally exposed to cartoons that portray the immigrants as contaminants, fake claimants, or terrorists, as the researchers demonstrate. The increase occurs whether participants remember seeing the cartoon or not and leads to negative emotions, negative attitudes, and lack of support for pro-​ immigration policies. By comparison, Costello’s & Hodson’s study directly links dehumanization to speciesism. The researchers asked participants from Canada to read editorials that described immigrants as posing realistic, symbolic, or no threat, and then tested them on the interspecies model of prejudice.20 This experiment brings up three important elements—​fear, threat, and disgust—​that are essential to framing refugees/​(im)migrants in the Bulgarian and Lebanese samples. According to Costello and Hodson, fear activates and amplifies prejudice, especially in accounts filled with indirect animalization and infrahumanization. They also argue that categorizing threats helps us understand animalization better. Realistic threats don’t relate as strongly to perceived humanity because they pertain to conflict over material resources; they highlight similarities between groups and slightly humanize the outgroup.21 By contrast, symbolic threats include perceived conflict over values, beliefs, or cultural identity. They emphasize differences in characteristics considered unique to humans such as culture, language, religion, or morality. When the media fear-​frames refugees and immigrants, it exaggerates symbolic threats.22 Under the conditions of such symbolic threats we observe the strongest link between infrahumanization and sdo.23

19

Victoria Esses and Stelian Medianu, “Uncertainty, Threat, and the Role of the Media in Promoting the Dehumanization of Immigrants and Refugees,” Journal of Social Issues 69, no. 3 (2013): 518–​536. 20 Costello and Hodson, “Social Dominance-​Based Threat.” 21 Jaques-​ Phillipe Leyens and Stéphanie Demoulin, “Hierarchy-​ Based Groups: Real Inequalities and Essential Differences,” in Intergroup Relations: The Role of Motivation and Emotion, eds. Kai Sassenberg, Thomas Kessler, and Sabine Otten (Hove, UK: Psychology Press, 2009): 199–​219. 22 Teun Van Dijk, “Discourse and Migration,” in Qualitative Research in European Migration Studies, eds. Ricard Zapata-​Barrero and Evren Yalaz (New York: Springer, 2018): 227–​ 245; Teun Van Dijk, Elite Discourse and Racism (London: Sage, 1993); Teun Van Dijk, Communicating Racism: Ethnic Prejudice in Thought and Talk (London: Sage, 1989). 23 Costello and Hodson, “Social Dominance-​Based Threat.”

292 Khazaal Fear also amplifies prejudice fueled by interpersonal disgust.24 Interpersonal disgust is a basic emotion of concern that the outgroup is tainted and can contaminate the ingroup.25 It has evolved from concerns with ingesting poisonous food that protect physical survival. Individuals high in interpersonal disgust see refugees and immigrants as sick or immoral and fear contamination from the diseases they allegedly carry or from the different values they espouse.26 Interpersonal disgust is particularly implicated in anti-​Arab and anti-​Muslim prejudice.27 Because values related to language, religion, group identity, etc. are linked to interpersonal disgust, accounts that emphasize unbridgeable differences amplify the perception of a threat from the outgroup. For example, the ideological account of a clash of civilizations produced an upsurge of prejudice against Arabs and Muslims. In sum, circulating and exaggerating threats puts the media in a position to influence refugee/​(im)migrant policy because of its role as a vehicle for political discourse, as Santa Ana, Esses & Medianu, and Costello & Hodson warn us. 4

Refugees and (Im)Migrants in Bulgarian and Lebanese Media

A considerable part of the Bulgarian public shares negative views of refugees. Local volunteer gangs participate in their abuse, while some of the local population protest housing and schooling refugees in their towns. To top that, the Orthodox church loudly rallies the government to ban refugees, calling them an “invasion.”28 By contrast, a smaller portion of the public urges empathy toward refugees, criticizes the poor conditions they suffer in the country, and reminds of the two million Bulgarian immigrants (a quarter of the population) dependent on Western hospitality, e.g., the Facebook group “Priateli na bejantzite” (Friends of the refugees), Slavi’s Show documentary series on refugees, or Maria Milkova’s 2014 documentary Nichii Detza (Nobody’s Kids).

24 25 26 27 28

Becky Choma, Gordon Hodson, and Kimberly Costello, “Intergroup Disgust Sensitivity as a Predictor of Islamophobia: The Modulating Effect of Fear,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48 (2012): 499–​506. Gordon Hodson et al., “The Role of Intergroup Disgust in Predicting Native Outgroup Evaluation,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 49, no. 2 (2012): 195–​205. Hodson and Costello, “Interpersonal Disgust, Ideological Orientations”; Choma, Hodson, and Costello, “Intergroup Disgust Sensitivity.” Hodson, MacInnis, and Costello, “(Over)valuing Humanness.” Aleksandar Andreev, “Bulgaria i ‘Miusiulmanskata Invazia,’ ” DW Bulgaria, November 21, 2015.

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Bulgarian media bears substantial responsibility for the mass xenophobia in the midst of deteriorating press freedom and lack of ownership transparency. According to a study by the Ethical Journalism Network (ejn) on migration coverage, Bulgarian mainstream and tabloid press, as well as broadcast and online media “failed to play a responsible role” in covering the refugee crisis.29 Leading national outlets have so consistently incited anti-​immigrant racism, breaching basic professional and ethical journalistic standards, that the ejn mentioned Bulgarian media as an exceptional case that maliciously manipulates the facts and sensationalizes the crisis. Private tv stations skat and Alpha, owned by far-​right political parties, led the spread of hate-​speech, while online newspapers became a “nest of openly xenophobic comments.”30 According to the study, this was a leading factor in an upsurge in hate-​speech and hate crimes, despite their criminalization. The Lebanese public is also split. Opponents predominate; over 25,000 have signed a petition to kick Syrians out, while others raise banners threatening to cut off their hands. Supporters like former lbc journalist Dima Sadek or American University of Beirut professor Nasser Yassine are few and far between. However, in 2013, most Lebanese media organizations signed an ethical code of conduct that eschewed using racist frames to describe refugees. This discouraged overt racism in official media, best noticeable on Lebanese television drama, which has incorporated a handful of famous Syrian actors since the beginning of the conflict. By comparison, the discourse on refugees on Lebanese social media is overtly racist. (For a similarly racist discourse on Turkish social media, see Ergin Zengin’s chapter in this volume.) Despite the ethical code, more subtle, covert forms of racism continue to proliferate. A case in point is an article in the leading daily Nahar that bemoans how the presence of Syrian refugees has turned the swanky shopping drag of Hamra (lit. red) “black,” falsely implying that Syrians have darker skin.31 The journalist chastises Lebanese shoppers and businesses, who left the area as soon as the Syrians began opening restaurants there, for lack of patriotism and summons them to take back their land. The summon builds on the article’s racist disgust with Syrian food and hygiene.

29

Rossen Bosev and Maria Cheresheva, “Bulgaria: A study in Media Sensationalism,” in Moving Stories: International Review of How Media Cover Migration, Ethical Journalism Network, accessed March 21, 2020, https://​ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/​resources/​publications/​moving-​stories/​bulgaria. 30 Ibid. 31 Hussein Hazouri, “Al-​Hamra ma ‘Adat Lubnaniyya … al-​Tawassu‘ al-​Suri Yughayyir Hawiyyataha,” al-​Nahar, January 6, 2015.

294 Khazaal General coverage of Syrian refugees in the Lebanese press and other official media does not come from a rights perspective. The Maharat Foundation report on representations of Syrians and Palestinians in local news concluded that Lebanese media plays a key role in promoting racism through overt and covert means.32 A later Abaad study showed that while 70 percent of the press coverage deals with refugee issues, it blames refugees for the country’s economic problems and pedals Christian fears that the majority Sunni Muslim refugees would alter Lebanon’s demographic if they resettle permanently.33 Refugees’ perspectives and issues such as living conditions, gender-​based violence, early marriage, or violence by host communities are ignored.34 Instead, refugee women are animalized as lustful baby-​making machines, and men as criminals lacking the capacity to understand right from wrong and unable to control their instincts.35 5

Methodology

A newspaper sample derived from NexisUni, Factiva, and scraping Arabic and English sources yielded 55 articles: 18 in Bulgarian, 23 in Arabic, and 14 in English (Table 8.1). They come from 11 different newspapers: Flagman, Dariknews, dw Bulgaria, al-​Nahar, al-​Akhbar, al-​Hayat, Tayyar, al-​Safir, nna, the Daily Star, and Naharnet (Table 8.2). I selected all articles I found where the keywords “animal(s)” and “refugee(s)”/​“(im)migrant(s)” co-​occur in ways that link human refugees/​(im)migrants with nonhumans, while articles that talk about human refugees/​(im)migrants and nonhumans in unrelated ways were not considered. The majority of the articles are op-​eds, while 13, all from Lebanese sources, are news. It is likely that there are many more articles that match the search criteria, even though they didn’t show up in my search. Therefore, this study is a first attempt at analyzing animalization in the context of refugees in newspapers outside the West. I use textual analysis with the goal of producing insights into the context, use, and significance of the co-​occurring tropes of “animal(s)” and “refugee(s)”/​ 32 Maharat, Monitoring Racism in Lebanese Media: Representations of ‘The Syrian’ and ‘The Palestinian’ in News Coverage (Beirut: Maharat Foundation, 2015). 33 ABAAD, Negative: Refugee Women from Syria in the Lebanese Media 2015 -​2016 (Beirut: Resource Center for Gender Equality, 2016). 34 Ibid. 35 Inani, Ghada, director of Abaad, personal interview by author, Beirut, June 24, 2019.

295

The Press Outside the West table 8.1 Number of articles by language and category

Newspapers

Articles

11

55 18 Bulgarian

23 Arabic 14 English

News articles

Op-​eds

13

42

“(im)migrant(s)” in the non-​Western press. The main questions this study answers are:

6

(1) Do Bulgarian and Lebanese newspapers use animalization as a tool to produce prejudice against refugees/​(im)migrants or as a tool to oppose such prejudice? (2) What are the vocabulary and imagery that make it possible for Bulgarian and Lebanese newspapers to talk about the human-​ nonhuman divide in the context of anti-​ refugee/​ (im)migrant prejudice?

Bulgarian Sample—​“The Refugee Hunt”

6.1 Context Bulgaria is often called a multicultural cliché for the peaceful relationships among its different ethnic and religious communities. It saved its entire Jewish community from the Nazis, while its capital, unlike any other in Europe, boasts an Orthodox Christian, a Muslim, a Jewish, and a Catholic temple located within a few hundred feet. Its two largest minorities—​Turkish and Roma—​ are politically represented and enjoy leverage, yet, they continue to experience discrimination and disenfranchisement. Minorities and majority also harbor bitter historical memories. During the last leg of the communist regime, an ill-​ conceived attempt at social cohesion forcefully Bulgarianized the given names of ethnic Turks and later displaced thousands of them to Turkey. Neither have EU standards for multicultural coexistence, in force since Bulgaria joined the union in 2007, been able to fade the majority’s historical memories of being ruled by the Ottoman Turks, including of massacres that turned my other grandfather’s family and other ethnic Bulgarians into refugees after the 1903

296 Khazaal table 8.2 Breakdown of articles by newspaper

Newspaper Language Country

Number Positioning & affiliation of articles

Flagman Dariknews dw Bulgaria al-​Nahar

Bulgarian Bulgaria Bulgarian Bulgaria Bulgarian Bulgaria

10 7 1

Arabic

Lebanon

7

al-​Akhbar al-​Hayat

Arabic Arabic

Lebanon Lebanon/​ international

4 4

Tayyar

Arabic

Lebanon

3

al-​Safir

Arabic

Lebanon

2

nna the Daily Star al-​Akhbar English nna English Naharnet

Arabic English

Lebanon Lebanon

3 10

English

Lebanon

1

Far-​right populist Centrist Publicly-​financed; liberal democratic; multiculturalist Right-​of-​center liberal; Orthodox Christian owners Leftist, anti-​American Liberal, Arab-​nationalist; Former Lebanese daily owned by the Mruwwe family, bought by Saudi royal owners Christian nationalist; liberal conservative; official outlet of the Maronite party al-​ Tayyar al-​Watani al-​Hurr (the Free Patriotic Movement) Left-​of-​center, Arab nationalist State news agency Centrist, Owned by the Mruwwe family Leftist, anti-​American

English

Lebanon

2

State news agency

English

Lebanon

1

Centrist

Ilinden-​Preobrazhenie liberation uprising against the Ottoman Empire and the Balkan wars of 1912–​13.36 36

Lyubomir Miletich, Razorenieto na Trakiiskite Bulgari prez 1913 Godina (Sofia: Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 1918).

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Syria was a Bulgarian ally during communist times, when Bulgarian specialists helped build Syrian infrastructure and train technical staff. Yet, in 2014 the EU funded a useless barbed-​wire fence, which cut across a nature park to stop the entrance of Syrian refugees from Turkey. Ironically, a similar fence had been dismantled and demined in the 1990s after it had kept Bulgarians from leaving for neighboring nato allies Greece and Turkey before the collapse of Communism. Unlike its predecessor, though, the 2014 wall became a distraction from the slow reforms in the hands of corrupt politicians. Some politicians managed to fan public panic over Muslims allegedly infiltrating Europe to turn it into a Sharia-​law caliphate,37 while behind the scene profited from the installation of expensive surveillance cameras along the wall.38 European media, EU government institutions, and international rights watch organizations have accused Bulgarian border police and refugee centers of systemic abuse. Multiple refugees report being beaten by the police, denied water and food for days, forced to clean garbage, sprayed with freezing water, kicked, thrown in jail, threatened at gun point, chased by police dogs, and shot at.39 As a result, few Syrian refugees have chosen to repatriate there. 6.2 Direct Animalization I didn’t find instances of the co-​occurrent keywords “animal(s)” and “refugee(s)/​ (im)migrant(s)” in the leading mainstream regional newspaper Chernomorski Far. The Bulgarian sample therefore is skewed toward the far-​right populist online newspaper Flagman. The examples of direct refugee animalization in the sample are plenty, despite European criticism and what might be a global media move to the more subtle, indirect form.40 These examples usually appear in quoted speech or headlines: It was like feeding animals in a cage (Darkinews quote), [Journalist] Toma Tomov described Europe as a huge zoo, where all the gates are open and the animals are roving around freely. According

37 38 39 40

Ivailo Dichev, “Rasizmat na Malki Narodi Kato Bulgarskia,” DW Bulgaria, Oct 7, 2015. These matters were widely discussed in the Bulgarian press and television, especially with the promotion and screening of Elena Yoncheva’s 2017 documentary Granitza (Border). K. Zanev, “Ne Izbiraite Marshruta prez Bulgaria,” DW Bulgaria, Nov 13, 2015. This move parallels banning the use of the term “illegal immigrants” from the ethical code of large media organizations like BBC and AP and replacing it with “refugees” and “asylum seekers.” See Harald Bauder, “Why We Should Use the Term ‘Illegalized’ Refugee or Migrant: A Commentary,” International Journal of Refugee Law 26, no. 3 (2014): 327–​332.

298 Khazaal to him, we can’t reason with the beasts from the Middle East (Flagman indirect quote), The animals are among us, while the staff that should provide security has gone home (Flagman quote). Examples of protesting direct animalization come from refugee supporters or refugees themselves and appear in dw Bulgaria, which strongly criticizes racism, and Dariknews: Syrian kids aren’t animals (refugees quote, Darkinews), We’re not animals, after all, even though we flee (refugees quote, Darkinews). 6.3 Indirect Animalization In addition to direct refugee animalization, the Bulgarian press also uses indirect animalization. Under the headline “Are We Going to Fight the Forceful Imposition of a Foreign ‘Culture’ and Arrogance, or Are We Going to Drop Our Pants Down?,” a Flagman article mixes the two types of animalization with classic racism: Who is shielding those Arab ‘aborigines’ in heat? […] Who failed to see right away that they’re cunning, underhand, and always gathered in mobs like a pack of wolves, since acting in groups is their mo to shirk personal responsibility? They poured into Europe in swarms, pushing the women and children to the front, while the men were hiding behind like sissies, angrily grinning at the police and the border patrol, demonstratively knocking down the food and water they were brought, filling up whole stadiums and parks with turds, destroying benches and seats like barbarians, dumping their trash all over the ground and heading onwards like hordes, wiping everything along the way, often behaving like a herd of animals […] Those at the notorious Helsinki Committee jumped right away to defend the refugees [… suggesting] there are two cultures that need to integrate, and we need to show understanding. Understanding? How? Perhaps while a team of hogs is raping the next girl, she should stroke their heads with tolerance and try to integrate, turning into a slave of a mob of savages? A clash-​ of-​ civilizations frame organizes this fearmongering passage—​ someone is shielding an alleged pseudo-​culture threatening to devastate real cultural values. First, the symbolic threat to these values comes from “savages”

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(labeling refugees as primitive and animal) who have deceived the Helsinki Committee. Their lack of individuality (“swarm,” “horde,” “pack,” “mob”) threatens local culture that allegedly values individuals. The passage also paints refugees as a pre-​language group—​they grin rather than talk to the police, and knock down food rather than decline it verbally. Their alleged lack of moral values, such as honesty and self-​control prompts the rape trope of a girl forced into sexual slavery. The most notorious example of indirect refugee animalization in the sample is a recurrent hunting trope. It emerged after a hillbilly called Dinko appeared in the media under the nickname “hunter of refugees.” This xenophobe bragged he was patrolling Strandja mountain with a gang of volunteers trying to round up and murder refugees. Such hate speech was sure to shock and attract readers’ attention, so the analyzed newspapers began reporting that local hunting clubs and right-​wing volunteers were taking hunting trips to catch a new type of “prey”—​refugees. The bombastic Dinko became a regular topic on Flagman, which described him as “the hero from Yambol” who protects the border with “selfless machismo.” When an imitator appeared, Flagman named him Dinko 2, praising him in a suggestive article as “a brave hunter” and “national hero” who places national loyalty above all. More often though, these newspapers ridiculed the hunting trope, exploiting the sensationalist image by which Dinko sought to be known publicly. Flagman, for instance, provided readers with details about his antics—​from riding a tank on the freeway to posturing as a good Samaritan on the scenes of accidents when he knew the media was there. At one point, he posted on his Facebook page that Damascus, which he claimed to be visiting, was swarming with “jihadis.” Given the general negative public opinion of the refugee hunters, the press happily criticized Dinko’s post especially after another xenophobe commented underneath it: “Murder systematically!” Even Flagman couldn’t resist to ridicule him as a “provincial fan of pop-​folk … [and track suits] … like in a mediocre, provincial joke,” with a different track suit for different occasions—​clubbing, business meetings, dates. The copy-​hunter also became an object of ridicule. Flagman ran headlines like “There Popped up a Dinko 2; He Thinks He Is Going to Kill Refugees Systematically,” where the put-​down “thinks” questioned the sincerity of the whole operation. The article discredited him as an “enthusiast” and a “youngster” who “bravely stated […] he would kill refugees systematically,” placing “bravely” before “stated,” rather than before “kill.” The analyzed newspapers used the hunt trope to resuscitate diminishing interest in refugees. Seizing on the general distrust toward the vigilantes, the sources commented that the latter bore all the marks of street gangs—​track

300 Khazaal suits, muscles, skin heads, tattoos—​and appeared in hoodies on tv to hide their identity. Dariknews called them “mutri” (lit. mean mugs), an offensive term for the post-​communist racketeering mafia, which emerged from the midst of competitive wrestlers, adorned with tracksuits, shades, and thick gold jewelry. The “old mutri,” the article continued, “until recently known only from crime statistics, are now stars in the international ether […] legitimized as national heroes […] slamming [refugees] on the ground like animals.” A similarly critical piece in Flagman lists the refugee hunters’ rap sheet of hooliganism, tax evasion, burglary, auto arson, harassment, and battery. 6.4 Infrahumanization Examples of infrahumanization and disgust appear in the Bulgarian sample as often as instances of direct and indirect animalization. The typical issue is disease or hygiene. For instance, the quoted witness account of Ukrainian journalist Aida Bolivar portrays Arab bodies as dirty and discharging excrements: A “large number of people with Arab looks, completely filthy, unwashed […] like real animals, with no shame, were taking care of their biological needs directly on the street. The Arab women were screaming—​they were beating them” (Flagman). Another article muses on the allegedly low standards of health and hygiene in countries like Syria and Afghanistan: Scabies is a normal thing there (Flagman), while several others blame refugees for recent epidemics in Bulgaria, including the 2018-​19 plague on farmed animals, who were killed by the thousands: [They] caused the epidemic in sheep and goats (Flagman). In some instances, infrahumanization arises out of disgust, and takes on the form of ridicule. One article in the more centrist Dariknews discusses a refugee protest at the largest immigrant transit center in Harmanli. In the words of its director, the refugees want “to be put in hotels and to drive automobiles […] Tomorrow these people may insist on Jacuzzis. D’you know there’re single men among them—​they insist on girlfriends.” Dariknews is more reserved in applying racist frames and avoids Flagman’s explicit slurs. Yet, it highlights persistent refugee demands (whether real or a rhetorical tool) as the main problem. The assumption, of course, is that refugees are less human (sophisticated) and they

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don’t deserve hotels, automobiles, Jacuzzis, or romantic love. The article makes an effort to discuss the disastrous conditions in the center: working at 250 percent capacity without power, hot water, enough food or medical assistance. Yet, it quotes 105 words from the director’s speciesist and racist perspective, compared to only 33 words from the refugees’ perspective. In addition to bias stemming from such mechanical imbalance, refugee quotes only complain of being treated “like animals,” which heightens the speciesist portrayal. 6.5 Summary Direct animalization, indirect animalization, and infrahumanization in the context of refugees/​immigrants occur well beyond the 18 analyzed articles of the Bulgarian sample that include the word “animal(s).” A number shows that the refugees internalize animalization tropes: “Better be a dog in Germany, than a human in Bulgaria” (dw Bulgaria),41 “They hunted us down, caught us, beat us, then sent us to a camp” (dw Bulgaria),42 “Five days and nights we walked through Bulgaria, mostly at night, through the woods, because we were afraid not to be arrested” (dw Bulgaria).43 Others link infrahumanization and disgust: “It’s a sacrilege to let them live in barracks where Bulgarian soldiers had served” (Flagman), “Black Ingratitude! Illegal Immigrants Threw Away Food with Shouts, Not Tasty, Say They” (Flagman headline), “They had enough food. Bread, apples, all sorts of snacks were just lying around on the street. They were stomping over them” (Flagman). In sum, there are a number of examples of direct animalization, indirect animalization, and infrahumanization in the discourse on refugees in the Bulgarian press, with the most xenophobic appearing in Flagman, while opposition to the intersection of speciesism and racist xenophobia is absent. This discourse draws heavily on Bulgaria’s position within the EU to justify xenophobia. As one of the latest members, Bulgaria has had to make adjustments in the last two decades to conform to European standards. This has brought irritation on both sides. In Bulgaria, it’s a public secret that conforming to the standards has raised prices but hardly income. The rest of the union judges Bulgaria slow to adapt to European benchmarks, which puts it in a precarious position to prove its symbolic contribution, e.g., by protecting EU’s outer border. That’s why many Bulgarian newspapers remind readers of Bulgaria’s crucial value as Europe’s security guard when commenting on refugee matters. As 41 42 43

Andreev, “Bulgaria i ‘Miusiulmanskata Invazia.’ ” Georgi Papakochev, “ ‘Bulgarskite Polizai se Gavreha s Nas,’ ” DW Bulgaria, November 5, 2015. Andreev, “Bulgaria i ‘Miusiulmanskata Invazia.’ ”

302 Khazaal one article comments on the newly built Bulgarian-​Turkish border fence: “the structure is a critically important facility not only for Bulgarian security but also for European, and the political speculations on this subject are inappropriate” (Flashnews).44 The political speculations likely refer to Elena Yoncheva’s documentary Granitza (Border).45 Former journalist and current parliament member Yoncheva alleges in the film that politicians embezzled wall funding, border police bought expensive defective surveillance cameras, and heavy rains created sinkholes under the fence, so refugee groups cross unobstructed while the border patrol twiddles its thumbs. 7

Lebanese Sample—​“In the End, the Tiger Will Escape”

7.1 Context The refugee question in Lebanon has had a long tumultuous history. A country of 4.5 million Lebanese citizens, 2 million refugees from other countries, and 10–​14 million Lebanese emigrants around the world, Lebanon has been a safe haven for refugees from the Middle East for centuries. A large number of Palestinian refugees arrived during the Palestinian nakba after Israel’s creation in 1948. Despite Lebanon’s image as a safe haven, refugees there live in a precarious state. Official Lebanese policy is discriminatory, whereas sectors of the public blame Palestinian refugees for igniting the 1975 Lebanese Civil War. At the end of 2011 and early 2012, Lebanon opened its borders to Syrian refugees. They first settled on the Lebanese side along the border to take advantage of older familiar and trade networks. Slowly, two distinct groups reached Beirut: wealthier Syrians who could afford buying homes and starting businesses, and a destitute group who took to begging (Figure 8.3). In the rest of the country, refugees settled in unofficial camps. After Tammam Salem’s government took over in 2013, the subject of refugees blew up. Before the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011, some Lebanese believed the slogan of late Syrian president Hafez al-​Asad “one people, two states”; but after the crisis began, public opinion split between those who saw Lebanon as a generous host and many more who opposed accommodating refugees. The latter feared repeating the country’s troubled experience with Palestinian refugee camps. They were 44

Neli Petrova, “Vazstanoviha Shtetite na Podkopanata Ograda po Bulgaro-​Turskata Graniza sled Padnalite v Raiona Dajdove,” Flashnews, October 19, 2017, https://​www.flashnews. bg/​vazstanoviha-​shtetite-​na-​podkopanata-​ograda-​po-​balgaro-​turskata-​granitsa-​sled-​ padnalite-​v-​rajona-​dazhdove/​. 45 Yoncheva, Granitza.

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­f igure 8.3  Syrian refugee girls at Corniche al-​Mazra'a, Beirut, July 2019 source: the author

still bitter too from the Syrian army’s 15-​year-​long occupation that ended in 2005 after Syria allegedly assassinated Lebanon’s prime minister on Valentine’s Day and a popular Lebanese uprising kicked the Syrians out. The Lebanese government committed serious policy errors that shaped the country’s response to the 2011 refugee crisis.46 In a policy of “no policy,” it failed to take proactive measures to deal with the crisis and placed all Syrians in one category—​that of refugee, failing to distinguish between Syrians who had been living in the country for decades and were well established, refugees who had fled from danger, and those who had come from areas without hostilities. The second mistake was lacking a comprehensive strategy for requesting and distributing international aid. As a result, some Lebanese families

46

Ayman Mhanna, director of the Samir Kassir foundation, personal interview by author, Beirut, June 12, 2019.

304 Khazaal had lower income than some Syrian refugees, which angered Lebanese public opinion. Third, the ngo s pocketed a large chunk of the international aid before it reached the refugees, while cunning politicians like Maronite Michel Aoun seized the opportunity to fuel their campaigns for political office with anti-​refugee grandstanding. Aoun predicted fire and brimstone if the Lebanese allowed an alleged Sunni-​Syrian takeover to devastate the country’s demographic and political balance. Soon, those in the Christian camp who empathized with Syrians were depicted as traitors.47 The 2014 wave of terrorist attacks in Europe and Lebanon additionally served as a pretext to link Syrian refugees to crime and terrorism. In the wake of these developments, public opinion began blaming most Lebanese woes on the refugees. 7.2 Direct Animalization Like in the Bulgarian case, the Lebanese context shaped the intersection of racism and speciesism in the analyzed examples. Given the anti-​racist code many outlets signed, the analyzed sources call only refugee abusers “animals” (reverse direct animalization). In addition, they distance themselves from the perpetration of abuse against refugees with quotes, geographic distance, and irony. Some reports on refugees distance the outlet or the Lebanese nation from the perpetration of abuse by denying those who harm them membership in the human species. For instance, in one account, Jihad al-​Khazen strongly condemns the attack and humiliation of Syrian refugees by a Lebanese man from the southern poverty belt who incites his two-​or three-​year old to hit a ten-​year old Syrian child, then proudly posts the video. He is an animal in human form (Hayat). Another, gory report on Yazidi refugees adds geographic distancing when describing their isis abusers in faraway Iraq as “animals in human form.” This repeated phrase is a striking reflection of David Smith’s theory of dehumanization. According to him, dehumanizers see their victims as subhuman essence in human form because of two folk beliefs: (i) that all things have an outward form and an essence, and (ii) that different essences are valued differently. The al-​Khazen report also distances the Lebanese public by pointing the finger at two extreme cases: the man from the southern poverty belt and 47 Ibid.

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a Lebanese “artist” claiming to be a journalist, who said that every Lebanese has a duty to kill a Syrian […] I can’t swear in a respectable newspaper like Hayat, so let me just say to this woman, “I curse the belly that carried you” (Hayat). Al-​Khazen’s reverse animalization, mixed with misogyny here (“I curse the belly that carried you”), is typical for the discourse opposing refugee animalization in the sample. It shocks the reader, creating the impression that normal Lebanese don’t commit such acts, even if the report includes language that claims otherwise. This diffuses responsibility readers feel for the diminished moral consideration of refugees at home, while strongly endorsing dehumanization. Another distancing strategy is denying or minimizing refugees’ embodied experience and material needs. One report mentioned that in the biting cold of Zaatari camp in Jordan more than 60,000 Syrian refugees had no food, blankets, or heating, while strong winds tore their tents apart. Yet, it quoted the refugees denying their need for assistance: Fadil al-​Ali […] 50 years old […] “We don’t need money or cash, we need dignity and freedom” […] Ahmad, 40 years old: “We’re not animals, we’re people” (Hayat). The problem the article showcases is depriving refugees of moral consideration, rather than their financial neglect on the hands of the state. Suspicions of fake refugeehood abound in Lebanese public space, presuming that even refugees who beg in the streets have fat bank accounts, or invest the money they make from begging or refugee aid in gold jewelry. Given such public views, the quoted refugees release readers in their own voice from the duty to demand or support pro-​refugee economic policies. This is especially true for articles like this, which first describe refugees’ physical and economic woes from the perspective of an outside observer. Then they follow with direct statements from refugees who claim damage only to their dignity. Furthermore, protestations of being treated like an animal are speciesist, like the chapters by Garrett Bunyak, Atsuko Matsuoka and John Sorenson, and Debra Merskin in this volume demonstrate, because they reinforce the deep human-​nonhuman divide.48 As speciesism furthers rather than precludes the reoccurrence of 48

Garrett Bunyak, “Inferiority by Association: Animals, Migrants, and Chicana/​Ecofeminist Possibilities,” Atsuko Matsuoka and John Sorenson, “ ‘Like an Animal’: Tropes for Delegitimization,” and Debra Merskin, “Species Traitor? Foundations and Tensions in

306 Khazaal racism, the abused (refugees) participate in their own objectification in support of a system that oppresses them, like in the Bulgarian case. Irony, on the other hand, showcases refugees’ self-​deprecation and sarcasm. One refugee from Arsal camp provokes a guffaw in his surrounding Syrian compatriots when he calls his temporary place a “stable,” while another from Nour camp gets a laugh for musing that In Syria the chickens lived in a better home than this one. At least they never got rained on in the winter (The Daily Star). In other cases, irony and laughter are a response to indirect animalization-​as-​ ignorance. For instance, an article depicts a decades-​old case where a Lebanese landlord says to his Palestinian refugee wage workers: “It’s not my fault, but, honestly, they say that Palestinians have tails.” Everyone laughed at this idea, which prompted one of them to take off his pants to show him that he’s a human with no tail, not an animal (Ahkbar). The children and grandchildren of the generation of Palestinian workers from this article were born in Lebanon, yet, they’re still considered refugees, and most are legally banned from employment. The Syrian conflict made their position even more precarious, as it introduced a competing outgroup of Syrian refugees and a new group of Palestinian refugees who fled Syria to become double refugees in Lebanon. Flattering the readers’ intelligence compared to the ignorant landlord likely distances readers from feeling part of the practice of indirect animalization and xenophobia, even if the article brings more mundane examples of disenfranchisement and racism against Palestinian refugees. On the other hand, laughter and self-​deprecation portray refugees as having moral high ground, which too may diminish readers’ empathy for the former’s suffering. This is generally consistent with the ambiguous function of parody and the carnivalesque as temporary release valve that ultimately reaffirms systems of oppression. When Trump called immigrants animals, the analyzed newspapers reported on his statement but didn’t turn his direct animalization into a grabbing headline. Instead, headlines like “Trump Describes Some Muslim Immigrants as …?” (Tayyar) or simply “Trump Describes Some Immigrants” (Nahar) carefully Human/​Animal Scholarship and Advocacy,” in “Like an Animal”: Critical Animal Studies Approaches to Borders, Displacement, and Othering, eds. Natalie Khazaal and Núria Almiron (Leiden: Brill, 2020).

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played on readers’ expectations of Western Islamophobia. Animalization-​as-​ taboo only appears in relation to Muslims as a religious group and doesn’t spread to other cases in the sample where immigrants/​refugees are not simultaneously an outgroup and an ingroup. 7.3 Indirect Animalization The Lebanese sample includes indirect animalization too. This type of animalization sometimes comes from reports that showcase refugees’ difficult conditions. Authors position themselves as refugee defenders, describing refugees as “half-​naked,” sleeping in “animal barns,” exposed to filth and cold weather. At other times, indirect animalization frames analyzed newspapers’ subtle invalidation of refugees. Consider the following example. When Human Flow, Ai Weiwei’s documentary on refugees, premiered in Lebanese theaters in October 2017, Akhbar published a celebratory article about it. The article opening positions the outlet as empathetic refugee supporter that grasps this “painful tragedy caused by war, poverty, famine, and ethnic or religious persecution:” The morning calm, during which refugees cross the sea, has ruled the world since before human existence. Ai Weiwei will often return to this calm to showcase the silence of the world’s politicians, broken occasionally only by police goads and bombs thrown at refugees at European borders. The closing is just as grandstanding. According to it, Weiwei shows “utter condemnation of the European and American part of the world and their resounding renunciation of the refugees.” The actual documentary portrays suffering refugees around the globe, including in Lebanon and other Arab countries. The Western-​blame frame, however, allows the article to blame European police for animalizing refugees (“goads”), and whitewash the anti-​ Syrian racism of Lebanese society, as well as the contribution of the Lebanese press to the refugees’ animalization and oppression. The body doubles down on this evasiveness by instrumentalizing Palestinian suffering on the hands of the Israelis. As soon as the narrator takes on the devastation of the refugees’ home countries, the narration shifts to Gaza: Internal refuge in Gaza is no different from the cage of the tiger imprisoned in the local zoo. In the end, the tiger will escape Gaza’s borders, whereas Gaza teenage girls can only daydream on camera about seeing the world outside the besieged West Bank. References to animals abound

308 Khazaal in this documentary, side by side with human presence and nature’s expanse. What has been conceived as imaginative metaphor is also reality; a cow walks in the ruins, a herd of cattle crosses the screen […] circular motion embodies the condition of waiting [at the border], which we often discern in a child who finds joy only in spinning, or a tiger coiled inside his cage. The report doesn’t compare the tiger’s feelings of depression and anxiety with similar feelings of human refugees. Instead, it focuses on the inanimate cage, while the victim disappears. Typically, actual nonhumans imprisoned in zoos are never released; but the article tiger is somehow free to escape “Gaza’s borders,” when the article Palestinians only dream of leaving their “cage.” This comparison draws on Arab media’s decades-​long profiteering from the Palestinian tragedy. The strategic choice to focus on Palestinians is a double diversion. On one hand, it diverts attention away from the failure of Lebanese government and society to address discrimination and economic challenges both Syrian/​ Palestinian refugees and poor Lebanese face in the wake of the Syrian war (geographic distancing). On the other, it points the finger for the tragedy of refuge at a strawman—​the fantasy of an upside-​down chain of dominance where nonhuman animals are unduly elevated. The article’s author has simply applied her prejudices, biases, and fears, rather than deliberately choosing between speciesism and racism. Yet, the resulting effect is what can be termed the grand assumption of refugee advocates, namely that widening the divide between humans and nonhumans will rehabilitate discriminated humans like refugees. 7.4 Infrahumanization There are also examples of infrahumanization, mixed in with the direct and indirect animalization. The most remarkable example is an article, titled “Refuge—​On Modern Bestiality” (Nahar). The author, Farouq Yousef, describes displacement as a common condition in the Arab world that has become a kind of bestiality: We’ve become beasts again, not “like beasts.” Were we always like that: rabbits, donkeys, turtles, or stray sheep? […] To save our beastly kind, we’ll have to adapt to our role as temporary guests in hastily-​set-​up camps in reservations that until recently used to be an Orientalist idea. Yousef asks the above question to frame his challenge of infrahumanization as racist prejudice. He argues that refugees and immigrants live under an

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alternative cultural system imposed by life on ngo aid in refugee camps. Non-​refugees here are non-​beasts (higher humans) because they enjoy what he inscribes as the higher attributes of human civilization: rooms with assigned functions, schools, indoor lighting, night pillows, shoe polish, grooming in front of a mirror, kitchen appliances, pajamas, neckties, shopping, consumer choice, paying for things. By contrast, he continues, these attributes make no sense within the beastly order of displacement where refugees and immigrants are allotted lower attributes such as the iconic ngo food packages with plastic utensils. Like in the Human Flow example, an injustice has occurred on the rungs of Nature’s Ladder. Here though, it’s the merging of the rungs of refugees and nonhumans that constitutes the injustice rather than their inversion. Yousef plays a taxonomist, identifying his newly discovered, yet possibly old, species of the refugee-​beast (“Were we always like that”). After existent taxonomies incorporate an animal species previously unknown to humans, someone like an evolutionary biologist provides a theory of its emergence and evolution. How has Yousef’s refugee-​beast species emerged? According to him, the inertia of the Arab people is the primary cause of the condition of bestiality. Arabs have been “neutered,” silenced, and “domesticated” with the help of Arab education: “You, animal,” the teacher calls his student to groom him for visiting the Canadian embassy. Does Canada need imported animals? […] We have animals for decoration too. Neutered dogs trained to be silent. A domesticated race groomed for migration as a lifestyle […] If we’re given feed like beasts, do we have the right to live like humans? Expecting a life of refuge turns Arabs into “parasitic beings” within this narrative. They wake up only to eat, and when they go back to sleep, they dream solely of being refugees in some other country. In all else, they choose to be “silent.” The narrative blames the condition of bestiality, a.k.a. infrahumanization, on refugees’ silence and lack of a conscience. Yousef’s logic advances a moral explanation about the deficient essence of his species of refugee-​beast. As Smith has argued, folk claims of a different, or deficient, essence that marks a human-​looking outgroup is the first step in the group’s dehumanization. The second step is placing that group on a lower rung in a hierarchy of intrinsic value. Instead of resisting the hierarchy as a system, Yousef affirms it, albeit cynically.

310 Khazaal 7.5 Summary Despite the many examples of direct animalization, indirect animalization, and infrahumanization of refugees in the Lebanese sample, I didn’t find instances that address explicitly the intersection of speciesism and racist xenophobia except one paragraph in Yousef’s article: We’ve never heard of a crisis of conscience. Don’t animals feel regret and step back? The holy books don’t bring up conscience in animals; they mention cattle only as a means for transportation or a food source, or that their skin makes good clothes and tents. But is it impossible for bestiality to be one of the degrees of humanity? I mean, of our humanity, which has always been deficient. Humans assume that placing humanity way high, in exaggeration, is the flip side of an exaggerated low bestiality. Are humanity and bestiality really that different? Yet, like the rest of the narrative, this series of questions remains speciesist. Yousef artfully prepares his audience to think along speciesist lines by reminding them that scripture sees nonhumans as a resource lacking alleged higher human characteristics like conscience. Arguing against the text of scripture (opposed to someone’s interpretation) may result in accusations of apostasy. Yet, he risks it: “But is it impossible for bestiality to be one of the degrees of humanity?” However, he quickly corrects himself: “I mean, our humanity which has always been deficient.” “Our” deficient humanity is the bestiality of refuge announced in the title and developed in the body. It’s no heresy to argue that this type of bestiality is no bestiality at all but a degree of humanity, a label of discrimination; it’s in fact the definition of infrahumanization. Therefore, to challenge the exaggeration of a superior humanity and inferior bestiality is to challenge the unfair alleged superiority of some humans and the inferiority of others. Infrahumanization is critiqued, yet, speciesism isn’t. The human-​nonhuman divide remains the framework of this article and likely the majority of Lebanese press coverage on refugees. 8

Conclusion

The human-​nonhuman divide naturalizes nonhumans’ abuse, exploitation, and denial of moral consideration. It is also the hidden mechanism of modern prejudice against human outgroups such as refugees, according to multiple experimental studies by Costello and Hodson. The introduction chapter in this volume calls this process speciesism-​as-​framework, where speciesism provides

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“the foundational vocabulary, mechanisms, and attitudes to create and sustain practices of anti-​immigrant and anti-​refugee racism as well as to critique these practices” (p. 26). Because the critique remains deeply committed to its speciesist framework, it cannot challenge and dismantle the foundations on which it stands, and therefore the prejudice it fights. After all, the general public categorically rejects the effect of the human-​nonhuman divide on discrimination and prejudice; neither does it see challenging the divide as a solution to human prejudice, as Costello and Hodson have shown.49 The contribution of the Bulgaria-​Lebanon comparison, therefore, consists in (i) exposing the extent to which newspapers outside the West use “speciesism-​ as-​framework” by exploiting the human-​nonhuman divide and (ii) the different forms of animalization the press uses to further prejudice against refugees, given this framework’s foundational yet largely unrecognized role. The analyzed examples from the Bulgarian and Lebanese press where “animal(s)” and “refugee(s)/​(im)migrant(s)” co-​occur show that there is a close and systemic connection between racism and speciesism in the context of refugees. (Such connection also likely exists when animalization and speciesism are implied).50 In particular, this study found a racist and a speciesist component in both cases, taking the form of direct animalization, indirect animalization, and infrahumanization. In the Bulgarian case, refugees present a greater symbolic than realistic threat. As a result, despite the sympathetic refugee coverage in dw Bulgaria’s single article, the more prolific far-​right populist portrayals in Flagman frame refugees through animalizing tropes related to disgust, fear, disease, and threat. In addition, Flagman simultaneously praises and ridicules the criminality of vigilantism through the refugee hunt trope, playing on both sides of public opinion. Symbolic threats are powerful mobilizers of prejudice because they threaten established hierarchical order. Those at the lower rungs typically perceive themselves as the most threatened. Since Bulgaria finds itself at the lower rungs within the EU, in other words, at the lower rungs of the Nature’s Ladder of EU members, the Bulgarian press, especially the far-​right populist outlet Flagman, frames the country’s contribution to the EU as a first guard against the perceived danger of Islamization.

49 50

Costello and Hodson, “Lay Beliefs.” For analysis of overt versus implied speciesism in international newspapers, see Natalie Khazaal and Núria Almiron, “An Angry Cow is Not a Good Eating Experience: How US and Spanish Media Are Shifting from Crude to Camouflaged Speciesism in Concealing Nonhuman Perspectives,” Journalism Studies 15, no. 3 (2016): 374–​391.

312 Khazaal In the Lebanese case, refugees present a greater realistic than symbolic threat. As a result, and given the ethical code many outlets signed, the speciesist component includes similar amounts of animalization and grandstanding against it. Grandstanding is inscribed through frames of reverse animalization of refugee abusers, extreme cases, irony, instrumentalizing Palestinian suffering, and geographic distance. The effect is weakening refugees’ material suffering, cynically blaming infrahumanization on them and only inscribing animalization as unspeakable when Muslims are both an ingroup and an outgroup. Like in Bulgaria, despite some attempts to ridicule or critique racism, attempts at opposing speciesist tropes within the negative refugee coverage protect and reiterate the human-​nonhuman divide rather than challenge it.

References

abaad. Negative: Refugee Women from Syria in the Lebanese Media 2015–​ 2016. Beirut: Resource Center for Gender Equality, 2016. Andreev, Aleksandar. “Bulgaria i ‘Miusiulmanskata Invazia.’ ” DW Bulgaria, November 21, 2015. Bauder, Harald. “Why We Should Use the Term ‘Illegalized’ Refugee or Migrant: A Commentary.” International Journal of Refugee Law 26, no. 3 (2014): 327–​332. Bosev, Rossen and Maria Cheresheva. “Bulgaria: A study in Media Sensationalism.” In Moving Stories: International Review of How Media Cover Migration, Ethical Journalism Network. Accessed March 21, 2020. https://​ethicaljournalismnetwork. org/​resources/​publications/​moving-​stories/​bulgaria. Choma, Becky, Gordon Hodson, and Kimberly Costello. “Intergroup Disgust Sensitivity as a Predictor of Islamophobia: The Modulating Effect of Fear.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48 (2012): 499–​506. Costello, Kimberly and Gordon Hodson. “Exploring the Roots of Dehumanization: The Role of Animal-​Human Similarity in Promoting Immigrant Humanization.” Group Processes and Intergroup Relations 13, no. 1 (2010), 3–​22. Costello, Kimberly and Gordon Hodson. “Social Dominance-​Based Threat Reactions to Immigrants in Need of Assistance.” European Journal of Social Psychology 41 (2011): 220–​231. Costello, Kimberly and Gordon Hodson. “Explaining Dehumanization among Children: The Interspecies Model of Prejudice.” British Journal of Social Psychology 53 (2014): 175–​197. Costello, Kimberly and Gordon Hodson. “Lay Beliefs About the Causes of and Solutions to Dehumanization and Prejudice: Do Non-​Experts Recognize the Role of Human-​ Animal Relations?” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 44 (2014): 278–​288.

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Dichev, Ivailo. “Rasizmat na Malki Narodi Kato Bulgarskia.” DW Bulgaria, Oct 7, 2015. Dhont, Kristof, Gordon Hodson, Kimberly Costello, and Cara MacInnis. “Social Dominance Orientation Connects Prejudicial Human-​Human and Human-​Animal Relations.” Personality and Individual Differences 61–​62 (2014): 105–​108. Dhont, Kristof, Gordon Hodson, and Ana Leite. “Common Ideological Roots of Speciesism and Generalized Ethnic Prejudice: The Social Dominance Human-​ Animal Relations Model (SD_​ HARM).” European Journal of Personality 30 (2016): 507–​522. Esses, Victoria and Stelian Medianu. “Uncertainty, Threat, and the Role of the Media in Promoting the Dehumanization of Immigrants and Refugees.” Journal of Social Issues 69, no. 3 (2013): 518–​536. Fitzgerald, Amy, Linda Kalof, and Thomas Dietz. “Slaughterhouses and Increased Crime Rates: An Empirical Analysis of the Spillover from ‘The Jungle’ into the Surrounding Community.” Organization & Environment 22, no. 2 (2009): 158–​184. Goff, Phillip, Jennifer Eberhardt, Melissa Williams, and Matthey Jackson. “Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization, and Contemporary Consequences.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94 (2008): 292–​306. Haslam, Nick. “Dehumanization: An Integrative Review.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 10 (2006): 252–​264. Hazouri, Hussein. “Al-​Hamra ma ‘Adat Lubnaniyya … al-​Tawassu’ al-​Suri Yughayyir Hawiyyataha.” Al-​Nahar, January 6, 2015. Hodson, Gordon and Kimberley Costello. “Interpersonal Disgust, Ideological Orientations, and Dehumanization as Predictors of Intergroup Attitudes.” Psychological Science 18 (2007): 691–​698. Hodson, Gordon and Kimberley Costello. “The Human Cost of Devaluing Animals.” New Scientist 216, no. 2895 (2012): 34–​35. Hodson, Gordon, Cara MacInnis, and Kimberley Costello. “(Over)valuing Humanness as an Aggravator of Intergroup Prejudices and Discrimination.” In Humanness and Dehumanization, edited by Paul J. Bain, Jeoren Vaes, and Jacques-​Philippe Leyens, 86–​110. London, UK: Psychology Press, 2013. Hodson, Gordon et al. “The Role of Intergroup Disgust in Predicting Native Outgroup Evaluation.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 49, no. 2 (2012): 195–​205. Inani, Ghada. Director of Abaad. Personal interview by author. Beirut, June 24, 2019. Khazaal, Natalie and Núria Almiron. “An Angry Cow is Not a Good Eating Experience: How US and Spanish Media Are Shifting from Crude to Camouflaged Speciesism in Concealing Nonhuman Perspectives.” Journalism Studies 15, no. 3 (2016): 374–​391. Leyens, Jaques-​Phillipe and Stéphanie Demoulin. “Hierarchy-​Based Groups: Real Inequalities and Essential Differences.” In Intergroup Relations: The Role of Motivation and Emotion, edited by Kai Sassenberg, Thomas Kessler, and Sabine Otten, 199–​219. Hove, UK: Psychology Press, 2009.

314 Khazaal Leyens, Jaques-​ Phillipe, et al. “Psychological Essentialism and the Differential Attribution of Uniquely Human Emotions to Ingroups and Outgroups.” European Journal of Social Psychology 31 (2001): 395–​411. Leyens, Jaques-​Phillipe, et al. “The Emotional Side of Prejudice: The Attribution of Secondary Emotions to Ingroups and Outgroups.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 4 (2000): 186–​197. Loughnan, Stephen and Nick Haslam. “Animals and Androids: Implicit Associations between Social Categories and Nonhumans.” Psychological Science 18 (2007): 116–​121. Maharat. Monitoring Racism in Lebanese Media: Representations of ‘The Syrian’ and ‘The Palestinian’ in News Coverage. Beirut: Maharat Foundation, 2015. Mason, Jim. An Unnatural Order: The Roots of Our Destruction of Nature. NY: Lantern, 2005. Mhanna, Ayman. Director of the Samir Kassir foundation. Personal interview by author. Beirut, June 12, 2019. Miletich, Lyubomir. Razorenieto na Trakiiskite Bulgari prez 1913 Godina. Sofia: Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 1918. Nibert, David. Animal Rights/​ Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publisher, 2002. Park, Yon Soo and Benjamin Valentino “Animals Are People Too: Explaining Variation in Respect for Animal Rights.” Human Rights Quarterly 41, no. 1 (February 2019): 39–​65. Patterson, Charles. Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust. New York: Lantern Books, 2002. Papakochev, Georgi. “ ‘Bulgarskite Polizai se Gavreha s Nas.’ ” DW Bulgaria, November 5, 2015. Petrova, Neli. “Vazstanoviha Shtetite na Podkopanata Ograda po Bulgaro-​Turskata Graniza sled Padnalite v Raiona Dajdove.” Flashnews, October 19, 2017. https://​www. flashnews.bg/​vazstanoviha-​shtetite-​na-​podkopanata-​ograda-​po-​balgaro-​turskata-​ granitsa-​sled-​padnalite-​v-​rajona-​dazhdove/​. Santa Ana, Otto. “ ‘Like an Animal I Was Treated’: Anti-​immigrant Metaphor in US Discourse.” Discourse and Society 10, no.2 (1999): 191–​224. Smith, David. Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2011. Steuter, Erin, and Deborah Wills. At War with Metaphor: Media, Propaganda, and Racism in the War on Terror. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008. Vaksberg, Tatiana. “ ‘Onzi Dinko Kakvo Iska? Da Trepe Lapetata li?’ ” DW Bulgaria, March 1, 2016. Van Dijk, Teun. Elite Discourse and Racism. London: Sage, 1993. Van Dijk, Teun. Communicating Racism: Ethnic Prejudice in Thought and Talk. London: Sage, 1989.

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Van Dijk, Teun. “Discourse and Migration.” In Qualitative Research in European Migration Studies, edited by Ricard Zapata-​Barrero and Evren Yalaz, 227–​245. New York: Springer, 2018. Viki, Tendayi et al. “Beyond Secondary Emotions: The Infrahumanization of Outgroups Using Human-​Related and Animal-​Related Words.” Social Cognition 24, no. 6 (2006): 753–​775. Yoncheva, Elena. Granitza. Documentary. 2017. Zanev, K. “Ne Izbiraite Marshruta prez Bulgaria.” DW Bulgaria, Nov 13, 2015.

Chapter 9

Parasitic Breeding Herds

The Representation of Syrian Refugees on Turkish Social Media Sezen Ergin Zengin Abstract Sezen Ergin Zengin examines the use of animal metaphors in Turkish social media. Drawing on the theory of conceptual metaphor, denigrating views on Syrians refugees are presented through five grounds of the REFUGEES ARE ANIMALS metaphor, namely being inferior, breeding rapidly, being out of control, exploiting resources, and being uncivilized. This metaphorical account provides insight into how ideas of inferiority based on race, gender and species are connected in the human mind. This complex conceptualization also reflects culture-​specific patterns of thought, as shown by the abundance of stray dog metaphors.

Keywords Syrian refugees –​social media –​conceptual metaphor –​speciesism –​discourse

1

Introduction

The Republic of Turkey hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees—​the largest Syrian refugee population in the world since the beginning of the Syrian refugee crisis in 2011.1 This makes refugees the second-​largest minority group in Turkey after Kurdish people. Following this immense demographic shift, various contradictory opinions about Syrian refugees have appeared in Turkish media. Emphasizing the open-​door policy of the government, discourses in official media have been rather welcoming, filled with metaphors of hosts, guests, and

1 “Turkey: Key Facts and Figures,” UNHCR Turkey, accessed October 10, 2019, https://​www. unhcr.org/​tr/​wp- ​content/​uploads/​sites/​14/​2019/​08/​7.1-​UNHCR-​Turkey-​Key-​Facts-​and -​Figures-​August-​2019-​1.pdf.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004440654_011

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fraternity.2 Yet, dissenting voices are vocal, especially in social media where the most discriminating and unreserved views have emerged. Nonhuman animal metaphors are central to many of these views, which employ symbolic representations of nonhuman animals as a way of expressing negative ideas about Syrian refugees and of denigrating the latter’s actions. The analysis of nonhuman animal metaphors in Turkish social media posts about Syrian refugees reveals a twofold thought mechanism—​on one hand, the metaphors sustain hierarchies, while on the other, they justify subjugation and oppression. Since the two sides of the mechanism are intertwined, the negative conceptualization of nonhuman animals (henceforth, “nonhumans”) through metaphors can ultimately have deleterious consequences for both the discriminated humans as well as for the depreciated nonhumans. The objective of this study is to explore the understudied connection between the ideological underpinnings of human and nonhuman degradation. To do this, I conduct a critical metaphor analysis, and investigate the grounds of the conceptual metaphor refugees are animals to uncover its universal as well as cultural groundwork. 2

Critical Metaphor Analysis and Animals

Critical metaphor analysis is built on the premises of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (cmt). The first coherent and systematic study of conceptual metaphors was formulated by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their seminal book Metaphors We Live By (1980). The work moved beyond the idea that metaphor was merely a linguistic phenomenon reserved for creative imagery, and argued that ordinary metaphors were deeply entrenched in our thought mechanisms.3 Therefore, what seems like an ordinary linguistic expression 2 It is important to note that although the discourse of host/​guest seems to reflect a humanitarian stance, Turkey’s foreign policy on immigration plays an important role in the construction of this discourse. After 2000s, Turkey has taken many steps toward the European Union full membership, and the harmonization of immigration legislation is part of the membership process: see Aysel Öztürk, “The Production of Refugee Subjectivities in the State Discourse: The Case of Syrian Refugees in Turkey” (Master’s Thesis, İstanbul Şehir University, 2017). Moreover, in 2016, Turkey has also signed an agreement with the EU for stopping and controlling the migration. Thus, it can be assumed that refugees are an important diplomatic issue, a topic of bargaining. 3 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980). See also Zoltán Kövecses, Metaphor: A Practical Introduction, second edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

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such as “you are wasting my time” is just a surface reflection of a deeper correlation between “time” and “money.” Other expressions, such as “saving time,” “spending time,” “investing time,” etc., also reveal a pattern called conceptual metaphor themes, typically rendered in capital letters (e.g., time is money).4 Therefore, conceptual metaphors can be defined as “understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” that renders an abstract term like time (called target) more accessible by means of a concrete term like money (called source).5 To be more precise, in the context of this study, the term “target” refers to the topic in question, whereas “source” refers to what the topic is compared with.6 Further, the features shared by target and source are labelled “ground(s).”7 In other words, the grounds indicate which aspects of the two concepts are compared. They are the underlying similarities. Another component of conceptual metaphor is entailment, which points to additional meanings beyond the basic similarities captured by the grounds.8 Entailments refer to rich additional knowledge and inferences about the source domain.9 For instance, the metaphor refugees are dogs may give rise to the entailment “refugees must be neutered” because we have the additional knowledge that dogs (source domain) are routinely neutered. It is important to note that although universal thought processes have been cmt’s main focus, several scholars, including Lakoff and Johnson, have highlighted the role that culture plays in influencing and shaping metaphors.10 The role of metaphor in arranging our thought processes in a systematic way leads to a number of ideologically significant consequences. First, choosing one metaphor over another means that certain perceptions, that is, ways of thinking, are foregrounded while alternative perceptions are discounted.11 In other words, “metaphor may be exploited in discourse to promote one

4

Andrew Goatly, Washing the Brain: Metaphor and Hidden Ideology (Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2007), 15; Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 8. 5 Ibid, 5. 6 Andrew Goatly, “Humans, Animals, and Metaphors,” Society and Animals 14, no. 1 (2006): 16. 7 Goatly, “Humans, Animals, and Metaphors,” 16. 8 Zoltán Kövecses, Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 7. 9 Kövecses, Metaphor: A Practical Introduction, 122. 10 Kövecses, Metaphor in Culture, 160; Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 23–​24. 11 Jonathan Charteris-​Black, Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 28; Paul A. Chilton, Security Metaphors: Cold War Discourse from Containment to Common House (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), 74.

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particular image of reality over another.”12 Second, metaphors often appeal to emotions and thus have an evaluative force “intimately bound with attitude.”13 Metaphors that describe social realities may portray a social problem in a way that induces fear. For instance, in a number of studies on media and official discourses, immigration is portrayed through metaphors of water related to natural disasters, and realized linguistically with expressions such as “flood of refugees” and/​or container metaphors such as “Britain is full up.”14 Therefore, it is highly predictable that a particular discourse—​immigration in this case—​would draw on several different metaphors with varying degrees of dominance so as to depict the social problem more vividly. Gerald O’Brien, for instance, demonstrates that early immigrants in the United States were slandered with metaphors of diseased organisms, objects, natural catastrophes, invaders, and nonhuman animals.15 In general, nonhuman animal metaphors are less prevalent than the others. In Otto Santa Anna’s 1999 study, however, nonhuman animal metaphors were the most prevalent metaphors to depict immigrants during the discourse around California’s anti-​immigrant campaign for Proposition 187.16 Metaphor choices can act as a powerful tool in shaping public opinion and social policy. Santa Ana, for example, argues that nonhuman animal metaphors may lead to inhumane or adverse social policies since they contribute to the depiction of refugees as “less than fully human.”17 Paul 12

Christopher Hart, Discourse, Grammar, and Ideology: Functional and Cognitive Perspectives (London; New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), 137. 13 Hart, Discourse, Grammar, and Ideology, 143. 14 Jonathan Charteris-​Black, “Britain as a Container: Immigration Metaphors in the 2005 Election Campaign.” Discourse & Society 17, no. 5 (September 2006), 575; Teun van Dijk, “Semantics of a Press Panic: The Tamil ‘Invasion,’ ” European Journal of Communication 3, no. 2 (June 1988), 183; Christopher Hart, Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Science: New Perspectives on Immigration Discourse (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Otto Santa Ana, Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002); Raith Zeher Abid, Shakila Abdul Manan, and Zuhair Abdul Amir Abdul Rahman, “ ‘A Flood of Syrians Has Slowed to a Trickle’: The Use of Metaphors in the Representation of Syrian Refugees in the Online Media News Reports of Host and Non-​Host Countries,” Discourse & Communication 11, no. 2 (April 2017): 121–​40. 15 Gerald O’Brien, “Indigestible Food, Conquering Hordes, and Waste Materials: Metaphors of Immigrants and the Early Immigration Restriction Debate in the United States,” Metaphor and Symbol 18, no. 1 (January 1, 2003): 33–​47; see also Elisabeth El Refaie, “Metaphors We Discriminate by: Naturalized Themes in Austrian Newspaper Articles about Asylum Seekers,” Journal of Sociolinguistics 5, no. 3 (August 2001): 352–​71. 16 Otto Santa Ana, “ ‘Like an Animal I Was Treated’: Anti-​Immigrant Metaphor in US Public Discourse,” Discourse & Society 10, no. 2 (April 1999), 192. 17 O’Brien, “Indigestible Food,” 45.

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Thibodeau and Lera Borodistky also demonstrate that those primed with different metaphors framing a social problem like crime (“crime is a beast” vs. “crime is a virus”) do indeed support different solutions to solve it.18 Previous studies of news media discourses conducted on Syrian refugees in Turkey have presented similar findings. For example, in a study of online media reports, metaphors describing Syrian refugees in host countries, including Turkey, compare refugees to “water mass,” “rising entity,” “pressuring force,” and “buildings” (in particular, “open doors”).19 A recent corpus analysis of Syrian representation in the Turkish press (2011–​2016) likewise reports the use of geographical/​physical and natural disaster metaphors such as “migrant flood” or “migration wave,” and metaphors of movements such as “leaned upon” or “sweep into,” which evoke burden and danger.20 Although the negative portrayal of Syrian refugees in the news is more salient as most of the studies point out, Syrians have also been widely represented in the news as victims and sufferers.21 State discourses, on the other hand, have been welcoming until very recently,22 framing refugees and the state as guest and host with religious connotations (muhacir and ensar).23 Turkey’s president has also appealed to historical discourses such as the generosity of the Ottoman Empire—​our ancestors (ecdad) and pragmatic discourse in which Syrians are mere tools for diplomatic bargaining.24

18

Paul H. Thibodeau and Lera Boroditsky, “Metaphors We Think With: The Role of Metaphor in Reasoning,” PLoS ONE 6, no. 2 (February 23, 2011): 167–​82. 19 Abid, Manan, and Rahman, “A Flood of Syrians Has Slowed to a Trickle,” 127. 20 Ibrahim Efe, “A Corpus-​Driven Analysis of Representations of Syrian Asylum Seekers in the Turkish Press 2011–​2016,” Discourse & Communication 13, no. 1 (February 2019): 55–​56. 21 Göksel Göker and Savaş Keskin, “Haber Medyası ve Mülteciler: Suriyeli Mültecilerin Türk Yazılı Basınındaki Temsili,” İletişim Kuram ve Araştırma Dergisi, no. 41 (Fall 2015), 243. 22 After 8 years, the president of Turkey, R. T. Erdogan has only begun to mention the relocation of Syrians outside the Turkish border, to a safe zone: see Carlotta Gall, “Turkey’s Radical Plan: Send a Million Refugees Back to Syria,” The New York Times, September 10, 2019, sec. World, https://​www.nytimes.com/​2019/​09/​10/​world/​middleeast/​turkey-​syria-​ refugees-​erdogan.html. 23 Öztürk, “The Production of Refugee Subjectivities.” Ensar (Ansar) and Muhacir (Muhajirin) refer to a historical account of fraternity and solidarity mentioned in the religious texts of Islam. The Muhajirin—​Prophet Mohammad and his followers—​flee their homes from persecution and emigrate from Mecca to Medina. The inhabitants of Medina (Ansar—​meaning “helpers”) take these immigrants into their homes. Thus, the story symbolizes true hospitality and kindness. 24 Ibid.

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Nonhuman animal metaphors are common in many languages.25 Yet, although almost every culture compares nonhumans to humans, the particular nonhumans chosen as the metaphor source, their grounds, and their entailments may differ. For instance, M. Reza Talebinejad and H. Vahid Dastjerdi show that of the 44 nonhuman metaphors investigated in English and Persian, 75% are identical or similar whereas the remaining 25% differ in meaning.26 Nevertheless, despite cultural differences, metaphorical expressions regarding nonhumans fit together, as Zoltán Kövecses suggests, to form the highly general metaphor human is animal.27 This general metaphor consists of other related conceptual metaphors, which can be called specific-​level metaphors. Thus, the human is animal generic-​level metaphor includes, among many others, the specific-​level metaphor human behavior is animal behavior.28 Although some nonhuman metaphors reference positive qualities, e.g., lion for bravery, most are derogatory.29 They are used not just for analogies but also for their emotional power, which according to Andrew Goatly, makes them “value-​laden and ideologically attitudinal.”30 By the same token, socio-​ economically disadvantaged racial or ethnic groups like Bosnian Muslims, Jews, American Indians, etc. have been labeled “animals” throughout history.31 Hitler called Jews “black parasites” and “vermin.”32 Blacks were likened to 25 M. Reza Talebinejad and H. Vahid Dastjerdi, “A Cross-​ Cultural Study of Animal Metaphors: When Owls Are Not Wise!” Metaphor and Symbol 20, no. 2 (April 2005), 133. 26 Ibid, 143. 27 Kövecses, Metaphor: A Practical Introduction, 153. Kövecses’ study covers English expressions and related metaphors but I believe it is easy to observe similar groupings of animal expressions in different languages. This study, for instance, confirms the hierarchical grouping of animal metaphors in Turkish. 28 Ibid, 46. 29 Goatly, Humans, Animals, and Metaphors, 25. Goatly presents in this study a comprehensive list of human is animal metaphors, taking note that many of pejorative metaphors portray women as animals. A similar undertaking is done in Turkish by Abdullah Onay under the name of “Speciesist Dictionary” showcasing the derogatory animal metaphors as well as idioms in Turkish: Abdullah Onay, “Türcü Sözlük,” Hayvanların Aynasında İnsan, accessed September 10, 2019, https://​hayvanlarinaynasinda.wordpress.com/​2017/​ 10/​22/​turcu-​sozluk-​hayvanlari-​asagilamakta-​kullanilan-​kelimeler-​deyimler-​atasozleri/​. 30 Goatly, “Humans, Animals, and Metaphors,” 16. 31 Paul Ekman, Emotions Revealed (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2000), 6; William Brennan, Dehumanizing the Vulnerable: When Word Games Take Lives (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1995). 32 Bruce Hawkins, “Ideology, Metaphor and Iconographic Reference,” in Descriptive Cognitive Approaches: Volume II Descriptive Cognitive Approaches, eds. René Dirven, Roslyn Frank, and Cornelia Ilie (Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2001),

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apes,33 while Gypsies were associated with wild animals.34 Apart from ethnic groups, the appeal to use nonhuman animal names for the socially-​excluded is also common. For instance, the prison slang for a sex offender is “animal” or “beast,” whereas “ape” is reserved for troublesome and tough prisoners.35 Similarly, captive refugees oppose their animalization in border security discourses with nonhuman metaphors: “we are not animals!”36 The powerful images nonhuman metaphors convey may have serious consequences for the targeted group. Luca Andrighetto et al. demonstrate that nonhuman metaphors exacerbate social marginalization and nurture hostile behaviors more than their literal counterparts—​i.e., calling someone a “hyena” rather than “cruel.”37 Moreover, nonhuman metaphors tend to delegitimize and dehumanize an out-​group as a means to justify the status quo.38 The object of this study is, however, to reveal the equally devastating consequences of nonhuman metaphors on nonhumans themselves. Therefore, what follows is a brief discussion of the philosophical foundations of how the human is animal metaphor has assumed negative connotations. When humans accept the irrefutable fact that they are animals, the formulation human is animal is just a statement. However, as a result of the long, and highly influential tradition of Western thought, this statement generally functions as a metaphor. In his extensive study of nonhuman metaphors Goatly examines the human is animal statement/​metaphor. He explains that pejorative meanings of nonhuman metaphors mostly stem from a medieval hierarchy of 27–​50; Martin Reisigl and Ruth Wodak, Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 13. 33 Phillip Atiba Goff, Jennifer L. Eberhardt, Melissa J. Williams, and Matthew Christian Jackson, “Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization, and Contemporary Consequences,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94, no. 2 (2008): 292–​306. 34 Juan A. Pérez, Serge Moscovici, and Berta Chulvi, “The Taboo against Group Contact: Hypothesis of Gypsy Ontologization,” The British Journal of Social Psychology 46, no. 2 (June 2007): 249–​72. 35 Joshua B. Hill and Julie Banks, “Bitches, Fishes, and Monsters: Prison Slang and Nonhuman Animal Terminology,” Society & Animals, no. 26 (2018), 8. 36 Nick Vaughan-​Williams, “ ‘We Are Not Animals!’ Humanitarian Border Security and Zoopolitical Spaces in Europe,” Political Geography 45 (March 2015): 1–​10. 37 Luca Andrighetto, Paolo Riva, Alessandro Gabbiadini, and Chiara Volpato, “Excluded from All Humanity: Animal Metaphors Exacerbate the Consequences of Social Exclusion,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 35, no. 6 (December 2016), 637. 38 Anne Maass, Caterina Suitner, and Luciano Arcuri, “The Role of Metaphors in Intergroup Relations,” in The Power of Metaphor: Examining Its Influence on Social Life, eds. Mark J. Landau, Michael D. Robinson, and Brian P. Meier (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2014), 166.

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being,39 also known as the Great Chain of Being, which goes back to Plato and Aristotle.40 This hierarchy places humans below angels but above nonhumans, seeing humans as part spiritual-​part animal. The persistent human superiority has penetrated into the use of pejorative nonhuman metaphors.41 Human superiority is tightly connected to perceptions of animality and the ontological status of nonhuman animals. Although attitudes about nonhumans show variation according to history and culture, they fall under two contrasting approaches. According to Tim Ingold, one approach acknowledges animality as a common domain humans share with nonhumans; the other approach imagines animality as a state of not being human. The inhuman state includes nonhuman animals as well as certain humans or human groups who are driven by innate emotions and instincts rather than by allegedly superior human moral and rational capacities.42 The second approach equates culture with humanity and nature with what is left outside of humanity, in other words an opposing nonhuman animal realm.43 Using nonhuman metaphors not only denigrates human subjects but also perpetuates the deep-​seated ideology of human superiority over nonhumans. As common metaphors, they avoid scrutiny and pass as ordinary and natural.44 Many scholars suggest that the ideology of human supremacy, also known as speciesism, intersects with other forms of oppression such as sexism and racism.45 Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality to account for the interconnected nature of race and gender and the term was later extended to class, age, sexuality, and disability.46 More recently the idea has been applied to 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

46

Goatly, “Humans, Animals, and Metaphors,” 24. See also, George Lakoff and Mark Turner, More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor (London; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 167. Goatly, “Humans, Animals, and Metaphors,” 24–​25, 34. Tim Ingold, “Introduction,” in What Is an Animal? ed. Tim Ingold (London; Boston: Routledge, 1994), 4. Samantha Hurn, Humans and Other Animals: Cross-​Cultural Perspectives on Human-​ Animal Interactions (London: Pluto Press, 2012), 41. See Norman Fairclough, Language and Power (New York: Longman, 1989), 85; Teun van Dijk, “Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis,” Discourse & Society 4, no. 2 (1993), 254. For instance, see Carol J. Adams’ influential article on the sexual politics of meat for the connections between human women and females in other animal species: Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-​Vegetarian Critical Theory (New York: Continuum, 1990). For the links between racism and speciesism, see Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery (New York, NY: Mirror Books/​i dea, 1997.) For a collection of articles on anthropocentrism, see Rob Boddice, ed., Anthropocentrism: Humans, Animals, Environments (Leiden: Brill, 2011). Nik Taylor, Humans, Animals, and Society: An Introduction to Human-​Animal Studies (New York: Lantern Books, 2012), 228.

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human-​nonhuman relations to show, on one hand, how deeply human beliefs about race and sex shape the oppression of nonhuman animals, and, on the other hand, how the speciesist belief in a human-​nonhuman divide encourages and perpetuates the race and sex-​based discrimination of humans.47 In my own work, I found that statements and behaviors that discriminate against Syrian refugees work in conjunction with the devaluing nature of nonhuman animal symbolism. Echoing the anthropocentric and speciesist history of human-​nonhuman relations, the negative connotations of animality are shared, reproduced, and normalized as long as nonhumans are represented as inferior, and this inferiority is projected onto disadvantaged groups. 3

Methodology

In an attempt to uncover ideological connections between the low status of nonhumans and human refugees, this study analyzes the grounds of the cognitive metaphor refugees are animals which appears in the comments section of YouTube videos on Syrian refugees. I focus on YouTube—​a participatory Web 2.0 platform—​because views in comment threads on YouTube, regardless of the topic, can be shared anonymously, which decreases self-​censorship. Web 2.0 platforms easily disseminate hate speech and derogatory messages because of the unregulated nature of their comment threads.48 To analyze these comments, I applied a form of critical metaphor analysis to the comments from YouTube videos on Syrian refugees in Turkey. I identified the videos through a YouTube search, using the keywords “Syrian,” “refugees,” “thoughts,” and “views” in Turkish. The search yielded 35 videos, the titles of which included some of the keywords. I excluded any videos that featured a prominent social figure from the study since the comments focused on the social figure rather than the refugees. Additionally, videos with less than 1000 views or with disabled comments were eliminated. As a result, I selected a total of 22 videos from street interviews regarding refugees which took place between 2014 and 2018, and I searched a total of 28,819 comments for metaphors referencing nonhumans. I disregarded other metaphors used for Syrian refugees, yet I read all the comments to gain an overall understanding of the commenters’ opinions of Syrian refugees. 47 48

See Erika Calvo, “ ‘Most Farmers Prefer Blondes’: The Dynamics of Anthroparchy in Animals’ Becoming Meat,” Journal for Critical Animal Studies vi, no. 1 (2008): 32–​45. Indhu Rajagopal and Nis Bojin, “Digital Representation: Racism on the World Wide Web,” First Monday 7, no. 10 (October 7, 2002).

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Parasitic Breeding Herds table 9.1 The Grounds of the metaphor refugees are animals

Source

Target

Ground

Animals

Syrian Refugees Syrian Refugees Syrian Refugees Syrian Refugees Syrian Refugees

Animals are unpleasant and untrustworthy Animals have no purpose other than breeding Animals are out of control

Animals Animals Animals Animals

Animals squander and pollute resources without producing anything themselves Animals are uncivilized

No. of metaphors 67 64 46 28 22

The analysis in this study produced five categories shown in Table 9.1, each one corresponding to a different ground of the conceptual metaphor refugees are animals. The categories are created according to the following procedure: The ground of each nonhuman metaphor is determined by taking into consideration the context. Then, these grounds are further categorized into superordinate categories of ground, without leaving any metaphor unclassified. Apart from metaphors, similes such as “shouting like a bear” as well as precision similes such as “breeding like rabbits” are also included in the analysis. Conceptual metaphors “exist in hierarchies of specificity,” in other words, a more general metaphor such as life is a journey might subsume other specific-​level metaphors such as love is a journey.49 Similarly, the humans are animals metaphor theme can be narrowed down to the refugees are animals theme within the framework of this study. Since almost all these metaphors have a negative connotation, I followed Kövecses’ suggestion to reformulate the theme as objectionable people (refugees) are animals.50 This theme is realized in my sample through the use of diverse metaphorical expressions where the general metaphor branches off into 49

Joseph E. Grady, “Metaphor,” in The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, eds. Dirk Geeraerts and Robert Cuyckens (Oxford University Press: Oxford & New York, 2007), 191. 50 Kövecses, Metaphor: A Practical Introduction, 153.

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specific-​level metaphors such as refugees are dogs, refugees are rabbits … etc. Context is often enough to clarify the grounds of these metaphors. For instance, “dog” has many connotations, thus the following metaphorical expressions may both be read as refugees are dogs, yet the first one has the ground of breeding whereas the second one utilizes “dog” as a broader form of insult.

1. As if their women are better shit. They breed like dogs. [Kadınları da sanki çok iyi bok köpek gibi ürüyolar.] 2. They are no brothers and sisters, they are all traitor dogs. [Kardeş mardeş değil, hain köpek hepsi.]

I discuss the grounds listed in Table 9.1 in detail in the following section in order of frequency, from most to least common ground. In addition, I support each ground with examples of metaphorical linguistic expressions, and categorize the examples and a selection of comments in tables. Examples from the original comments in Turkish as well as their translations can be provided upon request. 4

Analysis and Discussion

Throughout the corpus generated from the review of 28,819 YouTube comments, I encountered the use of nonhuman metaphors in 236 occasions. The number of metaphors for each category is provided in Table 9.1. above. Compared to the number of comments, it is obvious that nonhuman animal metaphors are not widely used in the reactions of YouTube commenters, yet as explained in the theoretical section, they can be a powerful cognitive tool that can foster hostile behaviors and stereotypes; therefore, their use is critical in the representation of refugees. 4.1 Ground 1: Animals Are Unpleasant and Untrustworthy The largest category of the identified nonhuman metaphors (67 cases) has the ground of “animals are unpleasant and untrustworthy.” This category of nonhuman metaphors is mostly used as derogatory insults. The category taps into a plethora of culture-​bound sources in which the generic metaphor of refugees are animals breaks down into refugees are dogs, refugees are monkeys, etc. Therefore, the ground that I identified must be read as an overgeneralized statement inclusive of multiple specific-​level nonhuman metaphors.

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The sources of specific-​level metaphors determined in the comments are wide-​ranging. The complete list of animals used as metaphors are as follows: dog, bitch, jackal, snake, camel, bird, chicken, monkey, pig, rat, dung fly, nymph (louse), donkey, crow, bullock, cicada, lizard, and skunk. The generic terms of “animal” and “creature” were also used in limited cases and one comment even referred to the refugees as “microbes.” A frequently used source in this category was “dog,” found in more than half of the comments (36 times “dog” and twice “bitch”). Although pet-​ownership is quite uncommon in Turkey compared to other Westernized countries, dogs are still loved and considered to be loyal friends and companions. However, many connotations related to the word dog in Turkish (köpek or it) are quite negative, as it is often used as an insult for a lowly and fawning type of person.51 Pig, donkey, and bullock are among other nonhumans used broadly also in offensive metaphors, yet with no specific traits associated with them in Turkish. Jackal, on the other hand, is associated with treachery, and similarly, snake carries the connotation of sneakiness and maliciousness, while chicken represents cowardice. (See Table 9.2 for related examples.) The connotation of dog in Turkish culture is drawn from a variety of mythological, religious, and historical sources.52 These entangled layers of meaning paint a negative portrait of what a dog represents, especially after the Neolithic revolution because dogs were rarely considered hunting companions. Dogs in Turkish mythology appear in an Altai creation myth as protectors of the tree of life, yet in the end the dog is fooled by the devil. Also, in Turkic shamanist beliefs, the dog holds a special place in the cosmology of the underworld and is portrayed as the guardian of hell and protector of the underworld. In some proverbs, dogs stand in for the most negative traits found in humans. Moreover, Islam deems dogs filthy and impure creatures that have no place inside the house unlike cats. Even certain sayings of the Prophet (hadith) order the killing of dangerous dogs. Yet, Islam also encourages kindness toward all nonhumans, which complicates the interpretation of these sayings. Such conflicted attitudes were evident in early 20th century Istanbul where stray dogs in traditional neighborhoods were fed and deeply loved, yet not allowed inside homes. As a result, the massacre of stray dogs led by the modernist and positivist Young Turks was severely denounced by the general public.53 51

Köpek and it are synonyms in Turkish. However, while köpek is used in both literal and figurative senses, it is now mostly used in a figurative way as an insult. 52 The following section is summarized from Züleyha Türkeri Baltacı, “Türk Kültüründe Köpek (İnanış, Uygulama ve Anlatılar)” (Master’s Thesis, Balıkesir Üniversitesi, 2015). 53 Catherine Pinguet, İstanbul’un Köpekleri, trans. Saadet Özen (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2009).

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table 9.2 Pejorative use of nonhuman metaphors

1 2 3 4 5 6

What do you expect of dogs who sell out their homelands??? Syrian snakes, there has been no peace since the day they came, enough! This country has become anything but Turkey, it has turned into a zoo, filled with desert lizards. Those who see them as victims, take them into your beds. Have you ever seen any war-​inflicted Syrian in Istanbul? Sewer rats. Why are we accepting this enemy in our lands, they have betrayed us since the 970’s these sons of bitches, African chimpanzees in Muslim clothing. They should have fought, rather than coming here. How can they stand up for their country? They can’t, they are coward chickens. Our soldiers fight, while they roam around, take vacations. How many martyrs do we have? I have been unemployed for many years, they offer me a low salary, I say no, I won’t work. He says Syrians will work. Please send these away.

Commenters’ justifications for using nonhuman-​related insults can be mined from the context. For example, refugees are often blamed for being traitors to their homeland, for not defending their territories, not fighting. Many often view them to be the cause of rising unemployment in the host country. According to Teun Van Dijk, as a discursive strategy, the dominant group often depicts immigrants as a social and economic threat, implying that immigrants receive unjustified favorable treatment.54 Similarly, in my sample Syrian refugees were regarded as cowardly, despicable, inglorious, dishonorable, filthy, backward, primitive, vicious, troublesome people, muggers, rapists, molesters, beggars, and glue-​sniffers. These qualities were often grounded in the use of nonhuman metaphors or provided an explanation for the metaphors themselves. Some of these derogatory comments also reveal the use of racist language, for example, Syrians are not just “dogs” they are “Arab dogs.” The insults also include references to historical accounts of alleged Arab treachery from World War i or even further back in history (see Table 9.2). For the commenters, to 54

Van Dijk, “Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis,” 264.

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table 9.3 Nonhuman animal metaphors and racism

1 2 3 4

These Arab bastards are all the same, they are primitive people, microbes with an inferiority complex, sons of bitches born from concubines. Camel shit faces. … Have we sold out our country? We have lived from 1683 to 1922 in a country similar to Syria! Have we sold it out? No because we are from the race of the God, Turkish race! Not Arab dogs, sons of bitches! Inferior people, those Arabs. These dogs eat and shit. Arab means pig. They are no brothers and sisters, they are all traitor dogs. Arabs betray anything for money. They fled their homeland, and that sums it all up!!! All traitors.

be Arab means to be a backward and primitive person who would sell out for money. Some statements talk of Turks as God’s chosen race, glorifying Turkish nationalism. (See Table 9.3 for mentioned examples.) The intersectionality of racism and speciesism manifests in the above comments in which the degradation of a race goes hand in hand with the degradation of nonhumans. Another disconcerting finding is that some commenters who embrace this frightening dose of racism openly invoke the atrocities of Nazism: “We got the idea from our man Adolf; we are going to make soap from Syrians, come Syrians, descendants of monkeys, to the gas chamber.” Another commenter writes: “the best Syrian is a dead Syrian,” while another one comments that he has profoundly appreciated Hitler for the first time, and wishes for the death of all Syrians, babies and elderly. Ground 2: Nonhuman Animals Have No Purpose Other than Breeding The refugees are animals metaphor in the category “nonhuman animals have no purpose other than breeding” appears in 64 YouTube comments, which makes it the second most used metaphorical ground. Its salience likely comes from media reports suggesting that refugees have too many children and give birth too often. It is also possible that the high number of children accompanying Syrian women on the streets give rise to the use of such metaphors. YouTube comments frequently express such attitudes with metaphors or other language. But when commenters prefer to use this nonhuman metaphor, their opinions take a more aggressive tone. Because its linguistic expression varies, two sub-​categories help understand it better: “to 4.2

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breed” and “to mate.” They also have different entailments, which I will discuss shortly. “To breed” refers to a biological function that all species share, yet only scientific textbooks use it for humans.55 Calling refugees breeders aims to dehumanize them, building on a long discursive tradition that separates the conceptual world of humans and nonhumans.56 The separation reflects humans’ desire to distance themselves from nonhuman animals, to put up fences between us and them, to demote them to an inferior domain governed by instincts while elevating us to a place reserved only for humans. “To breed” or “breeding” are used independently in nine comments and are frequently accompanied by common precision similes such as “like a dog” or “like rabbits” and less common ones such as “like lice” or “like bacteria.”57 The last example illustrates the belief that Syrians sometimes do not qualify as nonhuman animals; they are instead considered single cell organisms that divide. Two other commenters compare Syrians to farmed nonhumans and condemn spending money on refugees claiming it would be better spent on breeding farmed nonhumans. In that case, meat prices would decrease, they pontificate. In short, these comments endorse a worldview in which certain types of nonhumans are tortured and killed in the name of human convenience and pleasure, while refugees are deemed to have even lesser value. (See Table 9.4 for related examples.) An expected entailment implies that Syrians are nonhumans that breed excessively and must be neutered, not just controlled in numbers. Likewise, in the third section Syrians are described as out of control stray dogs. Breeding metaphors take on refugees’ sexual activity as well, where commenters see refugees as nonhuman animals that mate or copulate rather than make love. Some comments specify the nonhuman species, for instance, “cats,” whereas others describe rabbits with so-​called human-​like attributes like “having sex.” A couple of comments even use offensive language which claims that refugees “fuck like horses” or “bang like dogs.” (See Table 9.5 for mating metaphors.)

55 56

57

Üremek (“to breed”) also means “to reproduce” in Turkish. For instance, in her pivotal book Animal Equality: Language and Liberation, Joan Dunayer exposes the false dichotomy created by certain lexical choices that separate humans from animals, for example, using such terms as “eat” for humans, “feed” for animals; “nurse” for humans, “gestate or lactate” for animals; “corpse” for humans, and “carcass” for animals: Joan Dunayer, Animal Equality: Language and Liberation (Derwood, MD: Lantern Books, 2001). Yavşak (“the offspring of lice”) is commonly used in Turkish as an insult but its etymological origin is unknown for many.

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table 9.4 Breeding metaphors

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Well if you are thinking of the children, why don't you give up on breeding even under these circumstances? If Syrians begin to vote, this means that they are going to settle down. They already breed too much. They could be a problem for us in the future. If you spent the money used for the breeding and multiplication of Syrians for animal husbandry, the meat would be 10 tl/​kg. Syrians are breeding very fast. Rather than tending Syrians, I would tend cattle, and then meat would be 15 tl/​kg. As if their women are better shit. They breed like dogs. … and then I am the racist, the reason is Syrians who sell out their lands and breed here like rabbits. They were to bring 2 million more people after 6 million! They breed like dogs, rats, and bacteria on top of that! There you go, 9 million people next year! They breed like dogs, as if these bastards are undergoing mitosis. They already reproduce like bacteria.

table 9.5 Mating metaphors

1 2 3 4

They all have a baby in their belly, a one-​year-​old child holding their hand; have you come here as a refugee or for mating? They have nothing to eat, they stay in tents in the dead of winter but they mate like cats and give birth to 500,000 children … Those who flee the war think of their own lives, they don't consider having sex like rabbits and reproducing. It is said that there were 5 million refugees in 5 years. Lies. They fuck like horses and their numbers must have reached at least 10 million.

Regardless of the linguistic expression, precision similes or metaphors of breeding use nonhumans as sources. In descending order of frequency, those are dogs, rabbits, cats, and rats, while lice, locusts, and horses only appear in one comment. Dog metaphors make up almost half of all nonhuman metaphors. The salience of dog metaphors stems from cultural

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models, and as will be covered in detail in the following section, stray dogs are abundant in Turkey. The supervision of dog shelters and the neutering of stray dogs are under the authority of municipalities, yet many municipalities have been accused of collecting and killing dogs, rather than providing shelter or population control through neutering. Thus, the ever-​increasing number of stray dogs may have given rise to the cultural model in which dogs have become evocative of those who bear a seemingly excessive number of children. 4.3 Ground 3: Nonhuman Animals Are out of Control In 46 cases, the metaphor refugees are animals has the ground of “nonhuman animals are out of control.” The source of this metaphor is predominantly stray dogs. Turkey’s large population of stray dogs, which many see as a nuisance, has led to discussions about how to deal with them for decades. Most comments in this section, construe Syrians as stray hungry dogs. This construal has many entailments, such as, when they are on the streets, it is our responsibility to “feed” them. Like such unwanted responsibility, comments also describe the “release” of refugees from the camps into Turkish cities as a grave mistake. To fix it, the comments go on, refugees must be “collected” by the municipalities and returned to the camps, where they can go through a follow-​up neutering program. Commenters who doubt that this will happen, lash out at the minority of citizens who support the state’s care for Syrians. In fact, almost half of the comments in this section (23 comments) advise refugee supporters to feed Syrians in their homes. The same phrase appears in heated discussions around stray dogs, where again a minority of citizens support stray dogs’ right to live freely, outside of shelter cages. A commenter fittingly named Mussolini, suggests that a concentration camp is a suitable place for the refugees, which resembles a dog shelter. Another comment compares refugees to farmed nonhuman animals, whose import requires good management. Refugees, for the commenters, are out of control, unlike cows, which dehumanizes refugees as well as citizens. (See Table 9.6. for related examples.) A comparatively smaller portion of comments refer to Syrian refugees as disease carrying nonhuman animals, commenting that “they contaminated the country, everywhere is infected” and wishing for a quarantine. Others comment that refugees are aids viruses that could infect us in the future, or they are filths, spreading disease. One commenter compares refugees to “wild” nonhuman animals that harm their surroundings, commenting that: “… 20-​year-​old Syrians are begging

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table 9.6 Metaphors of stray animals

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10 11

Germans also accepted Syrians but they built a zone and Syrians can hardly live anywhere else, but in our country, they are on the streets like dogs. All can go away, hungry dogs. While the genuine children of this country live in unemployment and poverty we are feeding Syrians. The biggest mistake that the state made was to release these Syrians into the cities. Well then feed them in your homes and don't release them outside, so that they can't hit on the daughters and wives of others … Hey akp [Justice and Development Party] if you won't send these dogs away, then collect them in your municipalities. The government must look after the Syrians by building camps in several locations rather than releasing them among the citizens. Let's neuter every Syrian before they enter the country. Then, make them work in jobs that are useful for the country. And only feed them the tiniest amounts (thrown away but edible stuff and 3 liters of water) but give them no money. Let them work from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. in the concentration camp under the soldiers … Neuter these sons of bitches, these dogs, one of these dogs hit my grandfather and broke his hip bone. The man who said that we needed to take of care of Syrians, take them home and feed them, share your salary, let's see. I just want to say to these people; go and ask those who import animals (livestock) abroad, even these animals are brought in with numbers and control, yet these Syrians are entering and leaving the country as they wish. Even cows are more worthy than citizens in this country.

rather than fighting, and besides any type of people enter the country freely, then we become obliged to hunt down Syrians in Turkey.” This comment uses a cultural model in which humans are considered superior to nature, rather than coexisting in harmony. As a result, any “wild” nonhuman animal who comes into contact with and harms human property, which happens frequently due to human encroachment, is bound to be exterminated.

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Ground 4: Nonhuman Animals Squander and Pollute Resources without Producing Anything Themselves The metaphor with the ground of “nonhuman animals squander and pollute resources without producing anything themselves” appears in 28 comments. Half of them use a specific-​level metaphor of refugees are parasites. The other half draw from the following sources: microbe, virus, bacteria, crow, dog, tick, leech, pest, hyena, dung beetle, and cow. Although most are used independently, some receive qualifiers such as “freeloader dog,” and “carrion crow” since dogs and crows are not specifically construed for plundering behavior. Refugees are mostly characterized as parasites, where commenters allege that they are unproductive and idle.58 Yet, paradoxically, they also assert that refugees have stolen their jobs and increased the overall unemployment rate among Turkish citizens. Refugees also allegedly subsist on Turkish citizens’ taxes, live off of state aid and monthly government stipends, and rights not granted to ordinary Turkish citizens like hospital care and affirmative action in university entrance exams. Media plays an important role in disseminating allegations of social and economic privilege frequently pedaling fake news stories.59 (See Table 9.7 for examples.) 4.4

4.5 Ground 5: Nonhuman Animals Are Uncivilized Although not as salient as other categories, another ground of the refugees are animals metaphor is “nonhuman animals are uncivilized” (22 cases). This ground is largely represented by the word “animal” (9 cases) and to a lesser extent by the words creature/​wildling, dog, sheep herds, hyena, crocodile, cow, bear, ox, and horse, mostly in the form of precision similes. Among these, bear and ox are the most frequently used insults (apart from dog) as a form of interjection for those who lack good manners. Because the word “animal” has a broad meaning and can account for all forms of inhumane behavior, it is the most intensively used derogatory slur in this category. The word “animal” has many connotations in Turkish, all of them pejorative. According to the Turkish Language Society dictionary, in figurative language “animal” means someone who is irrational, unemotional, uncivil, and boorish. People also use it to insult someone who has angered them. Knee-​jerk associations of animality are embedded in our thinking by religious or scientific 58 59

asalak or parazit in Turkish. Oğuzhan Taş and Tuğba Taş, “Post-​Hakikat Çağında Sosyal Medyada Yalan Haber ve Suriyeli Mülteciler Sorunu,” Galatasaray Üniversitesi İleti-​ş-​im Dergisi 29 (December 2018), 199.

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table 9.7 Parasitical exploitation metaphors

1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8

But you are nothing to us, you are parasites in this country, we don't want you to feed on our taxes, to impose your own dirty culture on us! Get the hell out of here. Syrians are like microbes, when they see a body they begin to multiply immediately. I don't see a good future for our country. Syrian Arabs are total carrion crows; Syrian Turks are our beloved sisters and brothers. Granting citizenship to Syrian Arabs is the greatest infidelity to this country. Arabs won't make good friends. Freeloader dogs, don't let them exploit us anymore. Sixty percent of the country is unemployed, Syrians, Iranians, Afghans, Asians, Africans are recruited for jobs. People are devastated because of unemployment. Even though we are not working, they collect taxes in order to pass on to these ticks. I laughed out loud at the question. What benefit can these pests have? Don't feed these hyenas … the State is already helping these hyenas. Those who don't take care of their country of course would hit on girls in my country, and set their eyes on our bread … Have you seen any Syrian who goes to work in the morning? They are all parasites, each one of them.

ideologies, whose anthropocentric cosmologies dictate a clear-​cut boundary between nature and evolved humans. The nature-​culture dichotomy assigns humans higher faculties like culture, civilization, reason, ethics, and complex emotions like compassion. Nonhuman animals, by contrast, become humans’ antithesis that feeds derogatory metaphors like those mentioned above.60 When commenters compare Syrians to nonhuman animals, they think of Syrians as uncivilized, uneducated, without manners, and ignorant of social norms, e.g., they talk loudly, put their feet on seats, yell, beg, don’t heed advice, and allegedly eat cats and dogs. Like in the previous sections, Syrians are also categorized as harassers, perverts, and assailants. Denied the alleged marker of evolution and civility that sets humans apart from nonhumans, Syrian refugees appear in comments as unevolved primates and “wild” creatures. (See Table 9.8 for related examples.) 60

See for instance, Ingold, What is Animal?

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table 9.8 Metaphors of uncivilized nonhuman animals

1 2 3 4 5 6

7

5

They breed like dogs, wild creatures hated by the world, Arabs. They are not human, they can’t even be animals. I wish that they leave as soon as possible. They make sounds like oxen on the streets, they are total bears … … two Syrians came up to me in the minibus; I held my nose until they got out. A bear would be politer than these. And their talking, like an animal, they don't even care if people are around. Uneducated dogs, they cook and eat cats and dogs. There's no such thing as manners, morality, or civilization. They are no different than a cattle raised in a cave, they are of no use. Let the Ukrainians come, Bosnians, Circassians come, but what are Syrians for God’s sake. These people are like mud. Not even people, they have remained as primates, they did not evolve into human beings. They don't even know how to sit on the tram. I want them to get the hell out of my country, they are of no use. They are animals, uneducated animals.

Conclusion

Metaphors are the product of universal thought processes which can be shaped by our cultural experiences and as such, reveal unquestioned correlations and assumptions. Because humans tend to use metaphors with ideological significance, this study investigated nonhuman animal metaphors describing the personality traits, actions, behavior, and appearance of Syrian refugees in YouTube comments. By employing critical metaphor analysis, the present study demonstrated that Syrian refugees in Turkey are seen as nonhuman animals through five grounds of comparison: being inferior, breeding rapidly, being out of control, exploiting resources, and being uncivilized. A major inference from the findings is that there are signs of growing far-​ right ideas in Turkey in line with the rise of authoritarian and conservative politics worldwide. That’s why many comments that degrade Syrians, Arabs, and nonhumans simultaneously praise Turkish nationalism, Hitler, and the Holocaust. I urge future research to delve in detail into the nexus of nationalism, racism, and speciesism in the context of growing authoritarian tendencies. Speciesism should not be discounted as an insignificant element of authoritarian crack downs on minorities and the illusion of mass public support for such

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crackdowns. Human refugees and nonhuman animals are the two most vulnerable minorities today. Nonhuman animal metaphors in Turkish YouTube comments dehumanize refugees with depictions as lesser humans unworthy of sympathy, construed as the other. They are likely to increase Syrian refugees’ inhumane treatment. The intensification of a minority’s animalization often leads to genocide. The abundance of pejorative dog metaphors in my sample (which is a unique finding) is likely affected by Islamic and local cultural contexts. Nonetheless, daily interactions with a large population of homeless dogs also informs the metaphor’s negative connotations of danger, threat, wildness, and being out of place and out of control. Such metaphor is a reminder of the draconian murder of thousands and perhaps millions of dogs in Turkish streets and illustrates how easy it is to abuse a vulnerable nonhuman minority, despite dissenting voices. The long-​held dualist construction of human versus nonhuman animals, or as the Introduction to this volume calls it speciesism-​as-​framework, should not, just as equally, be taken lightly. Nonhuman animal metaphors perpetuate the discrimination of vulnerable human groups. They also perpetuate nonhuman animals’ lower status especially because they are never questioned in my sample. They function as a means of establishing in-​groups and out-​ groups, but the most pernicious implications of such deep division is when it is invisible and unquestioned. Unveiling these signifying practices and their ideological roots is the first step in questioning the dominant worldviews that devalue nonhuman animals. Such inquiry would open up alternative ways of conceptualizing nonhuman animals that would bring about positive outcomes for them as well as for those vulnerable humans commonly associated with them.

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Hart, Christopher. Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Science: New Perspectives on Immigration Discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Hart, Christopher. Discourse, Gramma,r and Ideology: Functional and Cognitive Perspectives. London; New York: Bloomsbury, 2014. Hawkins, Bruce. “Ideology, Metaphor and Iconographic Reference.” In Language and Ideology: Volume II Descriptive Cognitive Approaches, edited by René Dirven, Roslyn Frank, and Cornelia Ilie, 27–​50. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2001. Hill, Joshua B., and Julie Banks. “Bitches, Fishes, and Monsters: Prison Slang and Nonhuman Animal Terminology.” Society & Animals, no. 26 (2018): 1–​17. Hurn, Samantha. Humans and Other Animals: Cross-​Cultural Perspectives on Human-​ Animal Interactions. London: Pluto Press, 2012. Ingold, Tim. Ed. What Is an Animal? Revised edition. London; Boston: Routledge, 1994. Kövecses, Zoltán. Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation. Cambridge University Press, 2005. Kövecses, Zoltán. Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. Second edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Lakoff, George, and Mark Turner. More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. London; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Maass, Anne, Caterina Suitner, and Luciano Arcuri. “The Role of Metaphors in Intergroup Relations.” In The Power of Metaphor: Examining Its Influence on Social Life, edited by Mark J. Landau, Michael D. Robinson, and Brian P. Meier, 153–​77. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2014. O’Brien, Gerald. “Indigestible Food, Conquering Hordes, and Waste Materials: Metaphors of Immigrants and the Early Immigration Restriction Debate in the United States.” Metaphor and Symbol 18, no. 1 (January 1, 2003): 33–​47. Onay, Abdullah. “Türcü Sözlük.” Hayvanların Aynasında İnsan. Accessed September 10, 2019. https://​hayvanlarinaynasinda.wordpress.com/​2017/​10/​22/​turcu-​sozluk-​hayvanlari-​asagilamakta-​kullanilan-​kelimeler-​deyimler-​atasozleri/​. Öztürk, Aysel. “The Production of Refugee Subjectivities in the State Discourse: The Case of Syrian Refugees in Turkey.” Master’s Thesis, İstanbul Şehir University, 2017. Pérez, Juan A., Serge Moscovici, and Berta Chulvi. “The Taboo against Group Contact: Hypothesis of Gypsy Ontologization.” The British Journal of Social Psychology 46, no. 2 (June 2007): 249–​72. Pinguet, Catherine. İstanbul’un Köpekleri. Translated by Saadet Özen. İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2009. Rajagopal, Indhu, and Nis Bojin. “Digital Representation: Racism on the World Wide Web.” First Monday 7, no. 10 (October 7, 2002).

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Reisigl, Martin, and Ruth Wodak. Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Santa Ana, Otto. “ ‘Like an Animal I Was Treated’: Anti-​Immigrant Metaphor in US Public Discourse.” Discourse & Society 10, no. 2 (April 1999): 191–​224. Santa Ana, Otto. Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. Spiegel, Marjorie. The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery. New York, NY: Mirror Books/​i dea, 1997. Talebinejad, M. Reza and H. Vahid Dastjerdi. “A Cross-​Cultural Study of Animal Metaphors: When Owls Are Not Wise!” Metaphor and Symbol 20, no. 2 (April 2005): 133–​50. Taş, Oğuzhan, and Tuğba Taş. “Post-​Hakikat Çağında Sosyal Medyada Yalan Haber ve Suriyeli Mülteciler Sorunu.” Galatasaray Üniversitesi İleti-​ş-​im Dergisi 29 (December 2018): 183–​207. Taylor, Nik. Humans, Animals, and Society: An Introduction to Human-​Animal Studies. New York: Lantern Books, 2012. Thibodeau, Paul H., and Lera Boroditsky. “Metaphors We Think With: The Role of Metaphor in Reasoning.” PLoS ONE 6, no. 2 (February 23, 2011): 167–​82. Türkeri Baltacı, Züleyha. “Türk Kültüründe Köpek (İnanış, Uygulama ve Anlatılar).” Master’s Thesis, Balıkesir Üniversitesi, 2015. “Turkey: Key Facts and Figures,” UNHCR Turkey. Accessed October 10, 2019. https://​ w ww.unhcr.org/​ t r/​ w p-​ c ontent/​ u ploads/ ​ s ites/ ​ 1 4/ ​ 2 019/ ​ 0 8/ ​ 7 .1- ​ U NHCR -​Turkey-​Key-​Facts-​and-​Figures-​August-​2019-​1.pdf. Van Dijk, Teun. “Semantics of a Press Panic: The Tamil ‘Invasion.’ ” European Journal of Communication 3, no. 2 (June 1988): 167–​87. Van Dijk, Teun. “Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis.” Discourse & Society 4, no. 2 (1993): 249–​83. Vaughan-​Williams, Nick. “ ‘We Are Not Animals!’ Humanitarian Border Security and Zoopolitical Spaces in Europe.” Political Geography 45 (March 2015): 1–​10.

Chapter 10

Seeking a Place to Live

Visual Representations of Human and Anymal Migrants in Images from the International Daily Press Laura Fernández Abstract Laura Fernández’s chapter contributes to the fields of critical animal and media studies and migration studies by empirically addressing the visual representation of human and nonhuman migrants in the international press. The visual representation of these collectives has not been previously analyzed together or compared in terms of press photography representation. The analysis is enriched by examining it in the context of the human supremacist colonial modern/​world system, and the analysis underlines from an empirical point of view how the process of othering is in both cases intertwined with the animalization of human and nonhuman migrants. Also, six new frames are proposed that could be useful for future empirical research on the issue.

Keywords international press photography –​visual representation –​migration –​animals –​ ideolo­gy –​ otherness

1

Introduction

You find yourself in the middle of a flood. Your muscles tense for a moment, then kick into drive to stay afloat. You search for anything to hold onto, for anywhere to hide. You still searh frantically when the water covers your entire body. You were born a pig; now, you’re locked in a cage from which there’s no escape. Your life expires. An image captures that precise moment. Or when a cat grabs onto the side of a trailer fighting for her life against the storming Cape Fear River. Or when your life is devasted by poverty, crisis, and social violence, with no prospects for the future. Your name is Juan Antonio, and you carry your daughter Lesly on your shoulders. You trod along thousands of others like you

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004440654_012

342 Fernández in a long caravan with hopes for survival in another land. Thousands of miles away, your eye captures the image of María Meza grabbing her daughters Cheili and Saira by the hand running from tear gas at the Mexico-​US border. Migration and the search for refuge in other lands defines the history of a large number of animal species. For instance, many species of European swallows winter in South Africa and then migrate to Europe to breed in the summer. Likewise, all current human populations, except for a few in Africa, are the result of past migration. Throughout history, birds, turtles, fishes, bats, humans, and butterflies, among others, have migrated temporarily or permanently for subsistence, environmental pressure, or by choice. 1 On the other hand, human and anymal migration cannot be understood outside the context of the global capitalist system, the climate crisis, and the human supremacist and colonial order in which the world finds itself. The purpose of this chapter is to reflect on how migration and climate-​ related crises are framed in the current colonial/​modern world-​system.2 To do so the chapter focuses on the colonial/​modern world-​system through analysis of photographs published in three newspapers from the Global North. The aim is to explore how these outlets represent human and anymal migrants. I argue that ideological and moral displacement (re)produced in the media by framing human and anymal migrants as “others” is intertwined with the physical and material conditions of their displacement through the creation of borders, racist raids, prisons, slaughterhouses, “pest” control operations, or detention centers for immigrants, among others. This chapter aims to contribute a critical animal studies perspective to the current conversation on media, ideology, and representation taking place in critical studies in response to concerns raised by the different migration crises of our time. For this purpose, I conduct visual content analysis of human and anymal migrants in international press photography (from El País, The Guardian and The New York Times).3 The selected press photographs depict 1 In this chapter, I use non-​speciesist language that questions human exploitation of nonhuman animals. For example, I use “fishes” in the plural to make numerous sentient individuals visible, which the concept of “fish” fails to signal, and “farmed anymals” to emphasize that farming is something we do to other animals. On the use of “anymals,” see the last paragraph of the introduction. 2 Immanuel Wallerstein and Aníbal Quijano, “Americanity as a Concept or the Americas in the Modern World-​System,” International Journal of Social Science 134 (1992): 549–​59. 3 Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen, ​Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design ​(London: Routledge, 1996); Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials (London: sage Publications, 2001).

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the US-​Mexico border and the 2018 migrant caravan, in the case of human migrants, and the 2015 and 2018 Ebro River flooding in Spain and flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma (2017) and Hurricane Florence (2018) in the US, in the case of anymal migrants. The chapter is structured as follows. First, a brief theoretical framework addresses the visual media representation, press photography, oppressive ideologies, and migration in the current colonial/​modern world-​system. Second, I introduce the methodology, data collection, main objectives, and limitations of the study. Next, I organize the findings according to the main frames I uncover in the photographs. The main frames in the case of human migrants are the border frame, the migrant journey frame, and the personal story frame, while in the case of anymal migrants, they are anymals as threatened, anymals as commodity, and anymals as threat. After the conclusions section, I discuss the intertwined condition of racism, classism, and speciesism as well as media’s responsibility toward migrants. The important insight from the analysis is that representation plays a key role in the maintenance of harmful ideologies that perpetuate the oppression of certain animals. Finally, the chapter ends with recommendations on how to avoid framing human and anymal migrants as “others” and how to promote more respectful representations of migration stories. The term “anymals” will be used here to refer to animals of species other than that of the speaker/​author and “animals” is used to include both human and nonhuman animals. Following Lisa Kemmerer, I incorporate the term as an instance of verbal activism: There is no word in the English language for any animal who is not a human being. This lexical gap is more and more problematic in a world of animal rights, animal ethics, and animal liberation. Several common ways of referring to this referent have evolved, such as “nonhuman animal,” “other animals,” and “animals other than humans”—​all of which are cumbersome. A simple, one-​word term would be preferable […] This term refers to all animals, unique and diverse, marvelous and complex, who do not happen to be homo sapiens. Anymal is a contraction of “any” and “animal,” and is a shortened version of the concept, “any animal who does not happen to be the species that I am.”4

4 Lisa Kemmerer, “Verbal Activism: ‘Anymal,’ ” Society and Animals 14, no. 1 (2006): 10.

344 Fernández 2

Theoretical Framework

2.1 Press Photography, Ideology, and “Othering” The visual wields great power. As visual messages often make a deeper impression on the collective imaginary than the written word, the daily press uses them not just to complement the news, but as texts in their own right. But the visual hardly works in isolation. It is embedded in wider culture, which we see reflected in the scholarly notion of “visual culture,” according to Gillian Rose.5 Images and written news in the daily press are embedded in ideology rather than neutral. In many cases, mainstream media ideology reflects Western colonialist, imperialist, hetero-​patriarchal, and speciesist values. Images, therefore, play a decisive role in the individual and social construction and understanding of news, which in turn influences global worldviews. Scholars in critical cultural studies and political economy underline the ideological dimension of the media.6 The media hardly reflect any consensus, in their view; rather the media’s role is to manufacture social consent in society.7 That applies to manufacturing consent around the ideology of speciesism as well, as critical animal and media studies has proved.8 That’s why it is important to contest the problematic conception of the photograph as a neutral image or one that portrays “truth” objectively, according to visual communication and art theory scholars. As Keri Cronin argues: Images can only ever tell part of the story—​a single image cannot possibly tell “the truth” (in a singular sense) about a situation. Rather, imagery 5 Rose, Visual Methodologies. 6 Stuart Hall, “The Rediscovery of Ideology,” in Culture, Society and the Media, eds. Tony Bennett et al. (London: Methuen, 1982), 128–​38. 7 Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988). 8 Cathy Glenn, “Constructing Consumables and Consent: A Critical Analysis of Factory Farm Industry Discourse,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 28, no. 63 (2004): 63–​81; Carrie Freeman, “This Little Piggy Went to Press: The American News Media’s Construction of Animals in Agriculture,” The Communication Review, 12, no. 1 (2009): 78–​103; Natalie Khazaal and Núria Almiron, “An Angry Cow Is Not a Good Eating Experience,” Journalism Studies, 17, no. 3 (2016): 374–​91; Núria Almiron and Milena Zoppeddu, “Eating Meat and Climate Change: The Media Blind Spot—​A Study of Spanish and Italian Press Coverage,” Environmental Communication 9, no. 3 (2015): 307–​25; Ally McCrow-​Young, Tobias Linné, and Annie Potts, “Framing Possums: War, Sport and Patriotism in Depictions of Brushtail Possums in New Zealand Print Media,” Animal Studies Journal 4, no. 2 (2015): 29–​54; Núria Almiron, Matthew Cole, and Carrie Freeman, Critical Animal and Media Studies: Communication for Nonhuman Animal Advocacy (New York: Routledge, 2016).

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serves as part of a larger narrative and, as such, needs to be contextualized. This does not mean that these kinds of images don’t hold tremendous power.9 Susan Sontag has also underlined the inherent contradiction of photography: it is never objective because it always has a point of view, while at the same time it offers a testimony of reality because somebody captured it.10 In fact, a press photograph is often considered objective data because of its journalistic character and “documentary status,” even more so than other formats, as Athanasia Batziou points out.11 Nonetheless, even if a photograph can never stand for the truth itself, it still plays an important role in reflecting how we categorize others. Even more so, it legitimizes that categorization because it serves as “evidence” in the form of a visual representation.12 As Debra Merskin states: Vital to our understanding of media is identifying the power of images and words to either reveal or conceal. Thus, ideologies that support hegemonic order support everyday groupthink. The ‘logic’ of the idea is one that sustains the economic, political, and social structure of things as they have always been and are presumed to always be. Thus, those who hold power will advocate a worldview that supports the status quo.13 Due to its inherent contradiction and the fact that it is enmeshed with ideologies such as colonial racism, classism, hetero-​patriarchy, ableism, and anthropocentric speciesism, photography reflects intertwined spheres of oppression. In this sense, we can talk of a continuum between the oppression of human and anymals, where “animality” is a construct of radical otherness rooted in oppression and violence.14 For instance, visual representations in the 9

Keri Cronin, Art for Animals: Visual Culture and Animal Advocacy, 1870-​1914 (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018), ch. 2, Kindle. 10 Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002). 11 Athanasia Batziou, “Framing ‘Otherness’ in Press Photographs: The Case of Immigrants in Greece and Spain,” J​ ournal of Media Practice 12​, no. 1 (2011): 42. 12 Ibid, 43. 13 Debra Merskin, “Media Theories and the Crossroads of Critical Animal and Media Studies,” in Critical Animal and Media Studies: Communication for Nonhuman Animal Advocacy, eds. Núria Almiron, Matthew Cole, and Carrie Freeman (New York: Routledge, 2016), 20. 14 Billy-​ Ray Belcourt, “Animal Bodies, Colonial Subjects: (Re)Locating Animality in Decolonial Thought,” Societies 5, no. 1 (2015): 1–​11; Aph Ko and Syl Ko, Aphro-​ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism and Black Veganism from Two Sisters (New York: Lantern, 2017); Sunaura Taylor, Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation (New York: The

346 Fernández international daily press often help legitimate colonialism, racism, and speciesism by framing human and anymal migrants as distant and morally inferior “others.”15 This prevents readers from identifying with human and anymal migrants as equals. 2.2 Migration, Speciesism, and the Colonial/​Modern World System Immanuel Wallerstein holds that the social reality that determines our life choices is much larger than the nation-​states where we hold citizenship. He calls this social reality the world-​system.16 For Wallerstein and other decolonial theorists, the analytical framework of the world-​system affords us a new way of comprehending social reality. Wallerstein and Quijano coined the concept “colonial/​modern world-​system” in 1992, thereby broadening the original concept of “modern world-​system” introduced by Wallerstein in 1974.17 The updated concept reflects the importance of America in the capitalist world economy. Similarly, Rita Segato argues that this world-​system is based on: a) coloniality, that is, a ranking system of states and administrative borders created by colonial authorities; b) ethnicity, that is, new ethnic categories that are central to the organization of the world-​system and c) racism, a colonial invention that justifies and organizes exploitation.18 The independence of the former colonies did not abolish coloniality. Instead, the new system reproduced it as a mode of labor exploitation, social hierarchy, political administration, and subjectivity that continues today.19 What these scholars have missed is to account for human supremacy and speciesism that underlie the world-​system. If we scrutinize history with the ethical tools and knowledge we currently hold, we can see that humanity is constructed in a binary opposition to animality. And not by coincidence, the category of humanity reflects the dominance of white, masculine, rational, New Press, 2017); Laura Fernández, Hacia Mundos Más Animales (Madrid: Ochodoscuatro Ediciones, 2018). 15 Jane Bone and Mindy Blaise, “An Uneasy Assemblage: Prisoners, Animals, Asylum-​ Seeking Children and Posthuman Packaging,” Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 16, no.1 (2015): 18–​31; Batziou, “Framing ‘Otherness’ in Press Photographs”; McCrow-​Young, Linné and Potts, “Framing Possums.” 16 Immanuel Wallerstein, Análisis de Sistemas Mundo: Una Introducción (Madrid: Siglo veintiuno editores, 2006), 4. 17 Wallerstein and Quijano, “Americanity as a Concept”; Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-​System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-​Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic Press, 1974). 18 Rita Segato, La Crítica a la Colonialidad en Ocho Ensayos y una Antropología por Demanda (Buenos Aires: Prometeo libros, 2015), 45. 19 Ibid.

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and able-​bodied values.20 In practice, then, speciesism justifies and perpetuates anymal abuse where anymals are systematically exposed to violence and oppression by humans, both direct (e.g., human exploitation, aggression, or killing) and indirect (e.g. the alteration of their environment due to anthropogenic climate change, human architectures that condemn them to death or threaten their autonomy, or denying anymals positive rights, as observed by Sue Donalson and Will Kymlicka, or Catia Faria and Eze Paez, among others).21 The colonial/​modern world-​system perspective views human migration as an outcome of the historical pillage of the Global South by the Global North, which allowed the latter to accumulate mass economic wealth. This perspective does not allow us to comprehend human migratory movements outside the world-​system’s logic, because it attributes them to the material circumstances created by the system, especially poverty, war, and the Global North’s demand for a cheap workforce. Take for instance the case of Darwin Menjivar, a young man interviewed by The Washington Post who was part of the 2018 migrant caravan headed for the US.22 In his words, it was poverty, corruption, and violence in Honduras and Guatemala that forced people to migrate. Drought and flooding also have economic consequences that reinforce poverty and promote migration as a means for survival. Anymal migration issues, on the other hand, don’t generally receive coverage in the media as human societies rarely recognize anymal’s migrant status. Anymal trafficking and anthropogenic climate change are the two main factors that drive their migration. Anymal trafficking is often an outcome of the live “exotic” anymal trade for the “pet” industry and zoos or of the exploitation of anymals’ forced labor in circuses. Because they are not complicit to such migration, anymals sometimes escape and adapt to life in the new environment. For instance, Argentinian parrots learned to survive in Spanish cities. Although they are victims of anymal trafficking and therefore must be protected, anymals tend to be viewed as pests and are targeted for extermination, frequently under racist and speciesist discourses that portray them as “foreigners.”

20 21

22

Ko and Ko, Aphro-​ism; Taylor, Beasts of Burden; Fernández, Hacia Mundos Más Animales. Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Catia Faria and Eze Paez. “Animals in Need: The Problem of Wild Animal Suffering and Intervention in Nature,” Relations 3, no. 1 (2015): 7–​13. Kevin Sieff, “Central Americans in Caravan Cross into Mexico,” The Washington Post, October 21, 2018, https://​www.washingtonpost.com/​world/​the_​americas/​migrant-​caravan -​ c entral-​ a mericans-​ c ross-​ i nto-​ m exico/​ 2 018/​ 1 0/ ​ 2 0/ ​ 0 1ec93da- ​ d 3db- ​ 1 1e8- ​ a 4db-​ 184311d27129_​story.html.

348 Fernández Atmospheric phenomena and changes in anymals’ native environment can also drive their migration. These changes are often so drastic for free living anymals as to compel them to migrate temporarily or permanently after life becomes impossible. Recent evidence connects climate change to the stronger impact of Hurricane Florence, measured by the increase of its mean maximum diameter by nine kilometers, or the increased precipitation in extreme storms. “The extreme rainfall was increased by up to ten percent, and the fraction of rainfall accumulations of more than 30 inches was increased by more than seven percent of what it would have been without climate change,” conclude Kevin Reed et al. for 48 hours of individual landfall time.23 The three anymal cases I analyze here—​Hurricanes Irma and Florence in the US and the flooding of the Ebro River in Spain—​illustrate this kind of anymal migration. Anthropogenic climate change is a product of the human supremacy and colonial extractivism that define the colonial/​modern world-​system. On one hand, the system allows big business and transnational companies to generate enormous economic profits, plunder vast lands, and impoverish vulnerable populations. At the same time, they use their corporate influence to deny climate change and its global consequences, and evade responsibility.24 The cruel paradox is that the anymals who live in the affected areas contribute to global climate change the least, yet, they are the most affected and have the least means and resources to counteract its effects. As a result of these enormous pressures, certain human and anymal inhabitants of the Global South turn into climate refugees. 3

Data Criteria, Methodology, and Objectives

This chapter aims to examine to what extent the representation of animal migrant collectives in media from the Global North reproduces or challenges ideologies such as colonial racism, classism, and anthropocentric speciesism. To this end, I conduct visual content analysis of thirty press photographs following Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen and Rose, and then complement it with the content analysis of the photographs’ captions.25 The pictures I analyze appeared in three international dailies from the Global North: The 23 24 25

Kevin Reed et al., “Forecasted Attribution of the Human Influence on Hurricane Florence,” Science Advances 6, no. 1 (2020): 1–​8, doi.org/​10.1126/​sciadv.aaw9253, 4. Núria Almiron and Jordi Xifra, Climate Change Denial and Public Relations: Strategic Communication and Interest Groups in Climate Inaction (London: Routledge, 2019). Kress and Van Leeuwen, Reading Images; Rose, Visual Methodologies.

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New York Times (US), The Guardian (UK), and El País (Spain). I selected these three outlets because of their worldwide influence and readership and their international reputation as quality newspapers. The fifteen photographs that make up half of the sample are devoted to the Honduran migrant caravan headed to the United States. In October 2018, a thousand Hondurans embarked on a journey from San Pedro Sula (Honduras) to Mexico and then the US, seeking asylum and better life conditions and running away from violence and poverty. Far from being a stand-​alone event, this first of several exoduses by Honduran people toward North America is a paradigmatic case of the Global North-​Global South inequalities in the colonial/​ modern world-​system. Five press photographs were selected from each daily. All of the images were collected through the websites of the newspapers using the keyword “migrant caravan” (“caravana migrante” for El País) within the period between October 2018 and February 2019. Other criteria used for the selection was relevance in The New York Times and the most shared articles in the case of The Guardian. Only cover photos were selected from The New York Times and The Guardian. In the case of El País, photos inside news articles were selected since there were fewer articles on the topic. In all cases, galleries of pictures were excluded. The rest of the sample, fifteen other photographs, again five per newspaper, is devoted to analyzing the representation of anymals. The majority of them (13) are pictures included in the coverage of Hurricane Irma (2017) or Hurricane Florence (2018) in The New York Times, The Guardian, and El País. Two images were obtained from El País coverage of the Ebro River flooding in Spain. The images were collected through the websites of the newspapers using the keywords “Hurricane Irma animals,” “Hurricane Florence animals” (for The New York Times and The Guardian) and “Huracán Irma animal” “Huracán Florence animal” “Inundación Ebro animal” (for El País). As coverage of anymal realities in newspapers is scarce, in this case images in galleries of pictures were included in the analysis. Images were selected by proximity to the date of the event (September/​October 2017 for Hurricane Irma, September/​October 2018 for Hurricane Florence and March 2015 and April 2018 for Ebro floods) and using diversity as main criteria, to include a variety of animal species and situations. The analysis was performed through visual content analysis methodology,26 which is on the borderline between quantitative and qualitative methods.27 26 27

Kress and Van Leeuwen, Reading Images; Rose, Visual Methodologies. Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins, Reading National Geographic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).

350 Fernández This method analyzes the frequency of certain visual elements in a particular sample and focuses on the interpretation of cultural meanings on the basis of image composition. Coding is the essential step of content analysis: “Coding means attaching a set of descriptive labels (or ‘categories’) to the images.”28 For this study, the list of coded labels, here called variables, include both original variables and a number of categories taken from the work of other authors. These include Kress and Van Leeuwen’s pioneer Reading images: the grammar of visual design,29 Terry Barrett’s chapter “Principles for Interpreting Photographs,”30 Batziou’s analysis of immigrant representation in Greek and Spanish press photography,31 and the analysis by Joanna Kędra and Mélodine Sommier of the visual representation of children in World Press Photo.32 In the case of anymals, I built on Cecilia Mörner and Ulrika Olausson’s previous research on the social media framing of wild-​boar hunting.33 For details on the coded variables, see Table 10.1. The photograph captions complement and condition the interpretation of the visual image. Therefore, I conducted text content analysis of the captions, and analyzed the inferred meanings in the process of frame creation. After coding the two samples, I drew frames for each set of pictures to address the main research question of the study: How do the media frame human and anymal migrants through press photographs? and the secondary research questions: What emotions do the images seek to evoke? What latent ideas enhance the images? How are symbols used from an ideological perspective? What visual story is promoted about the migrants? How is the search for refuge represented? How do the image captions complement the visual discourse?

28 Rose, Visual Methodologies, 59. 29 Kress and Van Leeuwen, Reading Images. 30 Terry Barrett, “Principles for Interpreting Photographs,” in The Weight of Photography: Photography History, Theory and Criticism, eds. Johan Swinnen and Luc Deneulin (Brussels: ASP, 2010), 147–​172. 31 Batziou, “Framing ‘Otherness’ in Press Photographs,” 41–​60. 32 Joanna Kędra and Mélodine Sommier, “Children in the Visual Coverage of the European Refugee Crisis: A Case Study of the World Press Photo 2016,” Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies 7, no. 1 (2018): 37–​58. 33 Cecilia Mörner and Ulrika Olausson, “Hunting the Beast on YouTube: The Framing of Nature in Social Media,” Nordicom Review 38, no. 1 (2017): 17–​29.

Seeking a Place to Live351 table 10.1 Coding variables used for the sample of photographs

Variables

Description

Visual modality (based –​“high” (if the image uses highly saturated colors on Kress and van naturalistically) Leeuwena) –​“medium” (when the image uses less saturated colors) –​“low” (when the image is monochrome). Depicted Subjects In the human animal migrant’s analysis: –​“Central American migrants” –​“US citizens” –​“Mexican citizens” –​“both Central American migrants and Mexican citizens” –​“both Central American migrants and US citizens” –​ “military/​police/​border control officers” –​ “anymals” In the anymal migrant’s analysis: –​“companion anymals” –​“ ‘wild’ anymals” –​“farmed anymals” –​“human and nonhuman animals together” Gender (only applied –​“only men” to human animals in –​“only women” both analyses) –​“both men and women” –​ “children” –​“men and children” –​“women and children” –​“men, women, and children” –​ “unknown” Depiction in groups or –​“single shot” (just one person depicted) as individuals (based –​“group with few people” (between two and nine on Batziou) people depicted) –​“group with many people” (ten or more people depicted) Spatial proximity –​“close-​up” (only face shown) (based on Batziou) –​“close shot” (chest and above) –​“medium shot” (knees up) –​“long shot” (full body shot or more)

352 Fernández table 10.1 Coding variables used for the sample of photographs (cont.)

Variables Recognizability

Description

–​“face(s) completely shown” –​“face(s) partially shown” –​“face(s) masked or hidden” –​“person unrecognizable” –​“some faces recognizable, some unrecognizable” –​“nobody is fully recognizable” Expression of –​ “no” emotions (based on –​ “yes” Batziou) –​“no and yes”, referring to “the cases where the majority of the portrayed people remain expressionless and only one or a few individuals show expression.” Communication with –​“yes” (eye contact is established) the viewer (based on –​“no” (no eye contact is established) Batziou) –​“no, although the face is visible” –​ “unclear” Geographical location For human animal migrants: –​“Central America” –​ “Mexico” –​ “US” –​“the border” –​ “unknown” For anymal migrants: –​ “unknown” –​ “US” –​ “Spain” Human migrants as –​ “wounded” victims –​ “dead” (in the migrant –​ “grieving” caravan analysis) –​ “protesting” –​“arrested person” –​“victim of violence” –​“victim of oppression” –​“no victim”

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table 10.1 Coding variables used for the sample of photographs (cont.)

Variables

Description

Anymal migrants as –​ “wounded” victims (in the anymal –​ “dead” migrants analysis) –​“under human exploitation” –​“suffering because of climate causes” –​“victim of violence” –​“victim of oppression” –​“no victim” Children –​“child/​children as part of a group or crowd, and Representation (based being an integral part of that group” on Kędra & Sommier) –​“child/​children as the main character or one of the main characters within the group” –​“child/​children as the main and only character in the photograph” -​Animal relations –​“nonhuman individual(s) as part of a group or (inspired by Kędra & crowd, and being an integral part of that same-​ Sommier and applied species group” in the anymal refugees –​“nonhuman individual(s) as part of a group or analysis) crowd, and being an integral part of that inter-​ species group” –​“nonhuman individual(s) as the main character or one of the main characters within the group” –​“nonhuman individual(s) as the main and only character in the photograph” Main theme addressed For human animal migrants: in the photograph –​“ scene of the migrant journey” (transport, walking, sleeping, eating—​daily life of the migrant caravan) –​“people on the border trying to enter” –​“people being hurt, killed or arrested” –​ “people grieving or remembering fallen relatives or friends” For anymal migrants: –​“scene of anymals being affected by climate issues in the moment (flooding, hurricane)” –​“anymals living their usual life” –​“anymals dead, or being hurt or killed” –​“anymals being helped during the climatic adversity”

354 Fernández table 10.1 Coding variables used for the sample of photographs (cont.)

Variables Cultural and religious symbols Intertextuality (based on Barrett) Visual argument (based on Barrett) Description of the setting

Description

To what other texts does the photograph refer? What argument is made through the photograph?

a. Kress and Van Leeuwen, Reading Images. b. Batziou, “Framing ’otherness’ in press photographs”, 41–​60. c. Ibid. d. Ibid. e. Ibid, 46. f. Ibid, 41–​60. g. Kędra and Sommier, “Children in the visual coverage of the European refugee crisis,” 37–​58. h. Ibid. i. Barrett, “Principles for interpreting photographs,” 147–​172. j. Ibid.

4

Findings

The analysis unveiled six main frames used in the representation of migrants. For the human animals in the migrant caravan, the frames found in the sample include the personal story frame, the migrant journey frame, and the border frame. In the case of the anymals in the Hurricanes and the flooding, the frames are anymals as threatened (companion and free-​living anymals), anymals as commodity (farmed anymals and anymals under exploitation), and anymals as a threat (“dangerous” anymals). Overall the analysis shows how media depictions play an important role in othering human and anymal refuge seekers and in manufacturing consent around classism, racism, white-​human supremacy, speciesism, and the criminalization of poverty. However, a minority of visual depictions promote a different understanding of migration and more fairly represent the individuals and collectives.

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This section describes the two sets of frames separately for each group of pictures. A summary of the main data from the visual and caption content analysis precedes each human animal and anymal sample. Representation of Human Animals: the Migrant Caravan from Central America to the United States This section analyzes the three newspapers’ representations of people in the migrant caravan from Central America to the US. The images are tagged with the different coding variables and then the results of the coding are compared to the captions. First, I consider the variable of group or individual; then I describe the individuals in the picture in terms of social categories such as migrants, civil society, or control officers. The geographical locations where the photos were taken, as well as other characteristics related to the subjects (e.g., age or gender) and their relationship to the viewer (distance, recognizability, spatial proximity, eye-​contact, and expression of emotions) are also coded. Finally, I studied the main themes, and categorized the pictures into one of the following frames: the migrant journey frame, the border frame, and the personal story frame. The results of the visual content analysis show that human migrants were displayed in large groups of more than ten individuals in nine of the analyzed images, equivalent to 60% of the fifteen-​photograph sample. One-​third of the photos show small groups of between two and nine people, and just one photograph displays a single individual (see Figure 10.1). The portrayed individuals are mainly (in eleven pictures) central American migrants who are alone. Interaction with Mexican civilian society is presented in just one photograph. Three more pictures show military, police, or border control officers together with Central American migrants. The geographical locations of the images are mainly in Mexico (seven pictures) and at the border (four pictures), with three pictures with unknown locations, and just one image clearly located in Honduras. Only one picture displays the interaction between the civilian population in Mexico and Central American migrants, and three photographs show interactions between migrants and military, police, or border control officers. Regarding the gender and age of the subjects, the majority of press photographs include men, women, and children (six pictures), followed by only men (four pictures), and only men and children (two pictures). In the ten photographs of the fifteen-​photograph sample in which children appear, they are mainly shown as an integral part of a group or crowd (six images), sometimes as the main character within the group (three images), and in only one case a child is the main and only character in the photograph. 4.1

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­f igure 10.1  Migrant caravan, human case: depiction in group or as individual by newspaper (%)

Regarding spatial proximity, eleven photos reflect a long shot (where at least the full body is visible), three photos are medium shots (depiction from knees up), and a single photo is a close shot where the people appear from the chest up. As for variables of recognizability, expression of emotions, and communication with the viewer based on eye contact, the results show only six cases (40%) that include clearly distinguishable faces. In six more photos (40%), nobody is fully recognizable. There is just one image with the face completely shown and two other images where the faces are partially shown. In seven of the photographs, there are expressions of emotions, followed by five photographs with no emotional expression whatsoever and three with some expressions by certain people portrayed in the image, mostly part of a crowd or large group (see Figure 10.2). The expression of emotions is mainly manifested through body language and facial expressions, frequently the reflection of interactions between the people in the image. In 40% of the photos where the face of the subjects is visible, there is no eye contact. In total, just two photos provide an opportunity for eye contact between the migrants and the viewer. Migrants are not represented as victims in the 53.33% of the pictures (eight in total). In five photographs we could say that they are victims of oppression and represented as such. This category includes those images where no direct violence is presented but where confinement and poverty are highlighted. The representation of migrants as victims is strengthened with captions that explain their living conditions or problems. In only one case are people represented as victims of violence (where they are being attacked on the US border).

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­f igure 10.2  Migrant caravan, human case: expressions of emotions by newspaper

In another single case, a child is grieving the loss of a relative who was killed in Honduras after their return from the migrant caravan when the US denied them entry. The main visual themes in The New York Times, The Guardian, and El País regarding the 2018 caravan are mostly (73.33% of the sample, eleven pictures) scenes from the migrant journey. Two pictures display the border and people’s wish to cross it, one picture portrays people who are hurt, killed, or arrested and another depicts people grieving fallen relatives. I classify these themes in three different frames I call the migrant journey frame (representing 60% of the sample, nine images), the border frame (20%, three images), and the personal story frame (20%, three images) (See Figure 10.3). 4.1.1 The Migrant Journey Frame This frame is the most representative frame in the sample of human migrants (nine pictures). It includes photographs where Central American migrants are on their way to the US, mainly on foot, but also using collective transport, typically trucks (see Figure 10.4). Most migrants in the pictures occupy streets and highways, and the journey to their terminus is intertextually connected with biblical exodus scenes. In some cases, the pictures present the moments when migrants have stopped to rest, and the groups in these moments of rest are always portrayed as large. The photographs reflect scarcity and chaos, but also uncertainty and fear. Overall, the images suggest that the journey is a midpoint in an unresolved conflict for both migrants and (un)welcoming societies (see Figure 10.5).

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Frames in

El País

Frames in The Guardian

Frames in The New York Times

­f igure 10.3  Frames in the migrant caravan, human case (%)

4.1.2 The Border Frame The border frame appears in three of the photographs in the human sample. The border frame makes the political, social, and economic conflict more explicit. These images are symbolically charged and captions play an essential role in the framing process, presenting non-​positioned, “neutral,” and violent-​sanitized information, as we can see in this caption from El País: “Un trabajador refuerza la seguridad de la valla fronteriza de Playas de Tijuana, entre México y Estados Unidos” (“A worker reinforces the security of the border fence in Playas de Tijuana, between Mexico and the United States”).34 The US border is characterized as a fortress, reinforced by barbed wire and the US flag marking it as a territory for US citizens alone. In geopolitical terms, the US border can be considered one of the hotspots in the tensions between the Global North and the Global South. The two sides of the border then become also the two sides of the conflict. The border is the physical place where uncertainty dissolves: the American dream is denied to central American 34

Sonia Corona, “La Caravana Migrante Se Instala en la Frontera entre México y Estados Unidos,” El País, November 15, 2018, https://​elpais.com/​internacional/​2018/​11/​15/​mexico/​ 1542248692_​430241.html.

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­f igure 10.4  “There was little dispute that President Trump was exploiting the migrant caravan, above in Irapuato, Mexico, on Monday, for political purposes” source image: go nakamura/​r euters; credits: gtres

migrants, and human (particularly children) rights violations take place in order to “keep control.” The military presence intertwines with political discourses to stop “the invasion,” as US President Donald Trump has labelled the migrant caravan. Another explicit example of what I call here the border frame is the Kim Kyung-​Hoon’s picture in The New York Times (see Figure 10.6). In this case, the conflict becomes more apparent, since it shows a mother and her children running from tear gas on the border (Medina 2018). Here, the combination of the image (the spatial closeness, the expression of emotions, and the appearance of children in a violent situation) with a caption that mentions names and personal stories help the viewer to connect to the migrants emotionally rather than seeing them as the “other.” 4.1.3 The Personal Story Frame This frame appears in three pictures of the human sample (20%). It personifies individual refugees. By personification I mean that the individual is portrayed as a proper subject, worthy of respect due to their integrity, and part of a broader sentient community, but also with unique individual characteristics.

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­f igure 10.5  “Miembros de la caravana migrante en Sayula, Veracruz” (“Members of the migrant caravan in Sayula, Veracruz”) source image: á. h. (efe); credits: efe agency

To achieve this, the pictures use closer-​shots of single individuals or small groups. The three images that personify migrants reflect a deep sense of injustice, embodied in the experiences of the individuals. It is important to note that children appear in the three pictures within the personal story frame, and they take up central roles (see Figure 10.7). It is remarkable that The Guardian is the only newspaper that frames humans in the migrant caravan in this way. Representation of Anymals: Hurricane Irma, Hurricane Florence and the Ebro Floods In this section, I use the coding variables to examine the sample of pictures, including anymals who seek refuge after climate catastrophes. First, I classify the subjects and the geographical locations of the images. Then, I analyze the presence of individuals or groups, the status of subjects as victims, and how the photograph is positioned with respect to the audience (e.g., recognizability and expression of emotions). I analyze the main themes along with the captions. Three main frames emerge from this analysis: anymals as commodities, threatened anymals, and anymals as a threat. 4.2

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­f igure 10.6  “Maria Meza and her twin daughters, Cheili and Sandra, ran from a tear gas canister at the United States-​Mexico border in November” source image: kim kyung-​h oon/​ reuters; credits: gtres

The majority of the subjects portrayed in the fifteen images that comprise this sample are farmed anymals (40% of the sample, including chickens, cows, and pigs in six pictures), followed by companion anymals (20%, three pictures, including cats and dogs), “wild” anymals (20%, three images, including flamingos, a crocodile, a python, and a turtle), and pictures including human and anymals together (see Figure 10.8). Three pictures show humans with their companion dogs and in one photograph a cheetah exploited in a zoo is depicted with her guard. The geographical location of the images is mainly the US (thirteen pictures), while the two other pictures cover the Ebro river flooding in Spain. As for anymal representation, the individual and group presence is more balanced than in the case of human migrants: five pictures show just one anymal person, another five show a group with a few anymal people, and the remaining five, a big group with ten or more individuals. In six cases, anymals are not represented as victims, but generally as living their daily lives in free, natural habitats or under human care. Of the remaining nine photos, four show anymal suffering due to climate causes (a cat and a group of pigs swimming, trying to survive in a flood, a group of cows seeking

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­f igure 10.7  “A child touches the coffin of Nelson Espinal, who was shot dead outside his home on 18 December 2018 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras” source image: jorge cabrera/​ reuters; credits: gtres

refuge after a flood), three of the images show dead anymals (chickens and pigs dead due to human negligence on farms after a flood), and two images display anymals under human exploitation (captive anymals in zoos being moved while a hurricane is taking place). Remarkably, the whole anymal sample shows long shots with full bodies, even those of anymal climate refugees where there are more pictures of individuals or small groups. As for recognizability (referring to the proportion of the face shown by the picture), more than 50% of the photographs show unrecognizable anymals, three pictures portray partially shown faces, and two pictures completely shown faces, with another two cases where some faces are recognizable, while others within groups are not. Eye contact is established in just three of the fifteen images. In terms of anymal relations, five press photographs show anymal individuals as a central character within a larger group, while another four show anymals as the central and only individual character in the photograph. Four photos show anymals as part of a same-​species group and the remaining two photos show them as part of an inter-​species group.

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Animal subjects in El País (%)

Anymal subjects in The Guardian (%)

Anymal subjects in The New York Times (%)

­f igure 10.8  Anymal climate refugees subjects, anymal case (%)

The images have four themes: “anymals helped during climatic adversity” (33.33%, five pictures), “scene of anymals affected by climate issues in the moment” (26.66%, four pictures), “anymals living their usual life” (20%, three pictures), and “anymals that are dead, hurt, or being killed” (20%, three pictures). The photos’ captions play a pivotal role in othering anymals. They create an “aseptic” and linear description that does not promote individuality or adopt the animal standpoint and interests. For example, anymals are not named, and this contributes to deindividualization and depersonalization (see Table 10.2). There is one exception in The New York Times, where the caption promotes anymal agency by explaining how a group of cats entered the

364 Fernández table 10.2 Examples of captions that promote deindividualization and depersonalization in the case of anymal climate refugees

Newspaper “Un tractor recoge decenas de cerdos muertos por la riada del Ebro” (“A tractor collects dozens of dead pigs by the Ebro flood”). “A flooded farm in North Carolina”. “In the floods that followed Hurricane Florence, 3.4 million chickens have been confirmed killed”. “Some conservationists worry that exotic species like the Nile crocodile, left, could escape during Hurricane Irma. The number of Burmese pythons, right, boomed in Florida after Hurricane Andrew destroyed a reptile breeding warehouse in 1992”.

El País The Guardian The Guardian The New York Times

Hemingway Home and Museum for shelter when the hurricane was about to hit.35 In order to generate frames from this sample, I have considered the relation among theme, species, and anymals’ status in the images. From these, I drew three main frames: anymals under human exploitation as commodities, companion and free-​living anymals threatened by environmental adversity, and anymals depicted as dangerous (framed as a threat to human animals) (see Figure 10.9). 4.2.1 Life as a Resource: Anymals as Commodities In 53.33% of the sample, a total of eight images, anymals are commodified. Over a third (37.5%) of these images show dead individuals from two different species (chickens and pigs) confined in farms while flooding was taking place in the US and Spain (see Figure 10.10).36 35 36

Maggie Astor, “Hemingway’s Six-​Toed Cats Ride Out Hurricane Irma in Key West,” The New York Times, September 11, 2017, https://​www.nytimes.com/​2017/​09/​11/​us/​hemingway-​ cats-​irma.html?searchResultPosition=51. Michael Graff, “Millions of Dead Chickens and Pigs Found in Hurricane Floods,” The Guardian, September 22, 2018, https://​www.theguardian.com/​environment/​2018/​sep/​21/​ hurricane-​florence-​flooding-​north-​carolina; EFE, “Más de 9,000 Animales Muertos por la

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Frames in El País (%)

Frames in The Guardian (%)

Frames in The New York Times (%)

­f igure 10.9  Frames in the anymal climate refugees case (%)

The images framing anymals as commodities are highly charged symbols, which normalize captivity with high walls, fences, and chains, and with the restriction on anymals’ corporal mobility, mainly for human interests. In some pictures, horrific flood damage helps viewers relate to the painful end of all individuals who drowned after a desperate struggle to survive on their own. Those are the instances where anymals are not portrayed as mere economic loss for farmers. Nonetheless, as a whole this set of pictures uses long-​shots, eschews emotions, and denies anymal agency through the portrayal of captivity and exploitation as the norm. This is the case with the image from The Guardian in the zoo where a cheetah is walking with her guard (see Figure 10.11).37 The guard has all

37

Crecida del Ebro Retirados en Zaragoza,” El País, March, 7 2015, https://​elpais.com/​politica/​2015/​03/​07/​actualidad/​1425760043_​156416.html. Haroon Siddique et al. , “Florida Awaits Full Impact of Irma as Storm Makes Landfall—​As It Happened,” The Guardian, September 11, 2017, https://​www.theguardian.com/​world/​ live/​2017/​sep/​09/​hurricane-​irma-​florida-​evacuate-​landfall-​cuba-​live-​latest?page=with:block-​59b4dfbee4b0e3ccf89ec167.

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­f igure 10.10  “In the floods that followed Hurricane Florence, 3.4 million chickens have been confirmed killed” source image: jo-​a nne mcarthur, we animals/​ the guardian credits: jo-​a nne mcarthur, we animals archive

the power in the relationship to decide the tied cheetah’s destiny and control her movements. The caption—​“In Miami zoo, Jennifer Nelson walks a cheetah to a shelter before the downfall of Hurricane Irma”—​frames the human as a keeper and caregiver, providing shelter from the hurricane. However, the newspaper makes no attempt to delve into the zoo worker’s complicity and active collaboration in this anymal’s deprivation of freedom (see Figure 10.11). With similar implications, in another image, a group of flamingos, also property of the zoo, have been moved to safety in a hurricane-​resistant structure.38 A number of images avoid othering anymals and represent them more fairly as individuals who have personal interests in life and avoiding suffering. These examples are Jo-​Anne McArthur’s photographs published in The Guardian, particularly one representing cows taking refuge on a porch (see Figure 10.12),39 as well as Aitor Garmendia’s picture in El País that shows a 38 39

Jacey Fortin, “Dolphins, Flamingos and Pigs: The Animals Rescued From Hurricane Irma,” The New York Times, September 9, 2017, https://​www.nytimes.com/​2017/​09/​09/​us/​ hurricane-​irma-​animal-​rescue.html?searchResultPosition=26. Graff, “Millions of Dead Chickens and Pigs.”

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­f igure 10.11  “In miami zoo, Jennifer Nelson walks a cheetah to a shelter before the downfall of Hurricane Irma” source image: adrees latif/​r euters; credits: gtres

flooded pig farm where six pig individuals are swimming and fighting for their lives (see Figure 10.13).40 Their faces show the acute stress and horror they are experiencing in the ensuing disaster. 4.2.2 Anymals as Threatened by Environmental Disaster Anymals appear as threatened individuals in 40% (six images) of the hurricane and flood sample (where one image portrays free-​living anymals and five portray companion anymals). These images depict companion anymals as integrated members of interspecies groups that include human animals. Some photos show dogs and cats as companions together with their human families in search of refuge (see Figure 10.14). In other photos humans save cats and dogs, transporting them to safer places where they can later be reunited with their family or adopted into a new one.

40

Constanza Lambertucci, “Mil Cerdos, Atrapados por la Crecida del Ebro,” El País, April, 28 2018, https://​elpais.com/​politica/​2018/​04/​17/​actualidad/​1523966579_​383938.html.

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­f igure 10.12  Cows take refuge from floodwaters on a porch in Wallace, North Carolina source image: jo-​a nne mcarthur, we animals credits: jo-​a nne mcarthur, we animals archive

A number of free-​living animals are also framed as threatened, even when the photograph portrays the daily life of an individual before the climate catastrophe, as is the case with the loggerhead turtle in one press photograph in The New York Times (see Figure 10.15).41 Although not apparent at first sight, this image still conveys that the turtle individual is in danger. She is alone and has embarked upon a long trip to the sea fraught with challenges, such as predators, weather adversities, etc., significantly aggravated by the hurricane. This frame and the caption make it easier for the viewer to build an emotional connection with the individuals affected by the hurricane: “A loggerhead turtle hatchling headed for the sea. Hurricane Irma wiped out large numbers of leatherback and loggerhead turtle nests in Florida last month, significantly denting this year’s projections for a healthy population.”

41

Karen Weintraub, “Many of Florida’s Sea Turtle Nests Were Destroyed by Hurricane Irma,” The New York Times, October 6, 2017, https://​www.nytimes.com/​2017/​10/​06/​science/​ hurricane-​florida-​sea-​turtle-​nests-​irma.html?searchResultPosition=49.

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­f igure 10.13  “Seis cerdos en su corral inundado en Zaragoza, en una foto cedida por pacma” (“Six pigs in their flooded farmyard in Zaragoza, in a picture ceded by pacma”) source image: aitor garmendia (pacma); credits: aitor garmendia, tras los muros

4.2.3 “Dangerous Animals”: Anymals as a Threat Only two pictures of the hurricane and flood sample frame anymals as dangerous, showing a Nile crocodile and a Burmese python breeding warehouses placed side-​by-​side in The New York Times. The retouched background color highlights the individuals with a green and grayish blue filter respectively, which unifies the background and focuses attention away from it. The caption reads: “Some conservationists worry that exotic species like the Nile crocodile, left, could escape during Hurricane Irma. The number of Burmese pythons, right, boomed in Florida after Hurricane Andrew destroyed a reptile breeding warehouse in 1992.”42 Both anymals stand alone in a long shot in each photograph, but neither make eye-​contact nor express any emotion. The editing of the images and the caption amplify the stigma these species already endure as dangerous, distant, cold, and violent beings, but now the threat is

42

Livia Albeck-​Ripka, “Conservationists See a Hurricane Risk: Florida’s Exotic Pets Could Escape,” The New York Times, September 8, 2017. https://​www.nytimes.com/​2017/​09/​08/​ climate/​hurricane-​irma-​florida-​exotic-​species.html?searchResultPosition=10.

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­f igure 10.14  “Varias personas y sus mascotas son rescatadas por un tractor al desbordarse el río Cape Fear en Burgaw, Carolina del Norte” (“Several people and their pets are rescued by a tractor after the flooding of the Cape Fear River in Burgaw, North Carolina”) source image: jonathan drake/​r euters; credits: gtres

imminent—​if they escape, they could attack human animals. Again, the newspaper makes no attempt to reflect on human animals’ role in breeding and trading these “wild” anymals as companion anymals. 5

Discussion

The visual content analysis of the photo sample has important limitations. First, although the dailies included in the sample are representative, the sample size is small. Second, all selected newspapers come from the geopolitical Global North. A comparison with newspapers from the Global South might make for more nuanced results, but the purpose of this chapter is to focus on dailies with vast global impact, which are all located in the Global North due to their imperialistic power. Therefore, future research on outlets from the Global South would help us gain a fuller understanding of how visual meanings are

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­f igure 10.15  “A loggerhead turtle hatchling headed for the sea. Hurricane Irma wiped out large numbers of leatherback and loggerhead turtle nests in Florida last month, significantly denting this year’s projections for a healthy population” source image: gustavo stahelin/​u niversity of central florida credits: gustavo stahelin, ucf marine turtle research group—​m tp-​1 86

made.43 Finally, further research into the production and consumption of the images would also improve and complement this chapter’s findings.44 In spite of these limitations, this chapter aims to contribute to the discussion of the representation of displaced beings, which bears great relevance because of the social effects of framing sentient beings as “others” on their everyday lives. As Rose notes, “there are different ways of seeing the world, and the critical task is to differentiate between the social effects of those different visions.”45 With this in mind, I aimed to discover how the media frame human and anymal migrants in press photographs. The six main frames I identified summarize the results of the whole sample from The Guardian, The New York Times, and El País. Three frames show how the Honduran migrant caravan coverage 43 Rose, Visual Methodologies, 67. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid, 9.

372 Fernández visually represented human animal migrants and three other frames unveil the representation of anymal climate migrants in reports on Hurricane Irma, Hurricane Florence, and the Ebro Floods. 5.1 On Human Animals The collective and mass character of the migrant caravan most likely explains the representation of migrants in large groups under the migrant journey frame. Honduran people traveled together to make the journey safer. This decision may have also reinforced the political nature of these events and promoted frames that construct migration as a social and political issue instead of an individual one. It might be tempting to think that such frames reinforce values like tenacity, family, collective strength, and mutual support. However, previous studies underline that group depictions, especially of oppressed collectives, “overshadow individuality and attribute common characteristics to all members.”46 As much as three quarters of the human migrant sample includes long shots, and this spatial representation modality was the norm in the migrant journey frame. According to Batziou, spatial photographic distance corresponds to the emotional distance between the represented and the viewer: “[P]‌reference to medium and long distance highlights the otherness of the depicted persons and makes them look distant, alien.”47 In addition, the lack of emotions in many of the pictures also prevents the public from establishing a connection with the human animal migrants, since expressionless faces fail “to offer decoding ‘keys,’ such as recognizable expressions and manifestations of emotions.”48 The lack of interaction between the civilian population and central American migrants in the photos also promotes the division between “us” and “them” as well as the perception of migrants as “strange others” or “foreign masses” that makes it difficult for Western viewers already biased white gaze to connect the dots and transcend the stereotyping and othering of racialized migrants (see Figures 10.4 and 10.5). The border frame reflects the separation between the Global North and the Global South within the colonial/​modern world-​system with its charged images a physical border. Here, the captions condition to a large extent readers’ interpretation of the images, weakening social response and commitment to refugee aid, while promoting feelings of helplessness and indifference towards the migrants. In this context, the photograph where Maria Meza and her children 46 47 48

Batziou, “Framing ‘Otherness’ in Press Photographs,” 51. Ibid, 52. Ibid, 48.

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are running away from tear gas on the Mexico-​US border is an exception to the more conflict-​neutral and violence-​sanitized approaches of the rest of the pictures, because it focuses on the subjects’ emotions (see Figure 10.6). However, this frame runs the risk of being neutralized by the othering of the immigrants in the rest of the sample. Military and border control officers in the images reinforce observers’ fear and the portrayal of the migrants as “others”—​delinquents or invaders who pose a threat to US national security. Images that show migrants’ interactions with military, police, or border control officers depict emergency situations outside the scope of the local population’s daily interactions. As Batziou observes, “the depicted contact of immigrants with such representatives of the State categorizes them as belonging outside the sphere of normality of everyday life, in which ‘we’ belong; it categorizes them as ‘others.’ ”49 Of all human migrant frames, the personal story frame has the potential to challenge ideologies such as classism and colonial racism by looking at individuals and their personal stories. In these cases, individuals are not depicted as passive victims alone and their suffering is not turned into a spectacle. On the contrary, their decision to migrate for survival is framed as agency even when that decision has led to a relative’s death, as in the case of Nelson Espinal and the child with his hand on the coffin (see Figure 10.7).50 The visual storytelling and the captions that name and introduce people help viewers empathize, connect, and identify with refugees as equals. Children take up a central role here since, as Kędra and Sommier argue, representations of children “help reduce distance between ‘us and them’ because of the use of visual oxymoron and the archetype of a child as innocent victim.”51 This portrayal “seems to be a powerful visual strategy to conjure up feelings of pity and compassion in viewers.”52 5.2 On Anymals The anymals as commodities frame perpetuates the normalized exploitation of anymals by human animals with images of exploited anymals during hurricanes and floods, and in so doing shows their socially accepted moral status as mere resources. The unquestioned negligence of farmers who leave anymals 49 50 51 52

Ibid, 55. Jeff Ernst, “ ‘A Death Sentence’: Migrant Caravan Member Killed in Honduras after US Sent Him Back,” The Guardian, January 13, 2019, https://​www.theguardian.com/​world/​ 2019/​jan/​13/​nelson-​espinal-​death-​deported-​migrant-​caravan-​us-​border-​honduras. Kędra and Sommier, “Children in the Visual Coverage,” 51. Ibid, 53.

374 Fernández for dead reinforces the notion that anymals are a source of income rather than sentient individuals who deserve respect, care, and freedom from exploitation. The depiction of dead bodies can help promote a sense of injustice, atrocity, compassion, sadness, anger, or moral shock 53 in the viewer. At the same time, they may reinforce the already commodified perception of anymals, as some authors have noted, especially in news where speciesist values are not questioned (see Figures 10.10 and 10.11).54 A few images within this frame represent exploited farmed anymals more fairly as victims of speciesism and as individuals who have suffered and resisted their oppression when they were still alive. Most likely the credit for such depiction does not go to the newspaper itself but to anymal advocates with a track record of covering issues that affect anymals (including farmed anymals) like independent photojournalists Jo-​Anne McArthur and Aitor Garmendia who took these photos introducing a critical and ethical viewpoint. That’s why the newspaper broke the silencing55 in their coverage of refuge-​seeking farmed individuals (see Figures 10.13 and 10.14). In the anymals as threatened frame, we can see several photographs portraying an interspecies bond that reinforce values such as family, care, and respect (see Figure 10.15). This frame has great potential to depict anymals as sentient beings rather than things, whose bodily integrity is threatened by the hurricane. Take for instance the picture from El País in which a cat is holding on to a structure to avoid drowning. She makes direct eye contact with the viewer, making it easier to emotionally connect with her suffering and desperation (El País, 2018). The frame, then, challenges speciesism because it suggests that humans have the duty to assist anymals not only to cease exploiting them.56 Unfortunately, such assistance is never automatically granted to individuals from species other than so-​called companion anymals, free-​living anymals in

53 54

55 56

James Jasper and Jane Poulsen. “Recruiting Strangers and Friends: Moral Shocks and Social Networks in Animal Rights and Anti-​Nuclear Protests,” Social Problems 42, no. 4 (1995): 493–​512. Elisa Aaltola, “Animal Suffering: Representations and the Act of Looking,” Anthrozoös 27, no. 1 (2014): 19–​31; Nik Taylor, “Suffering Is Not Enough: Media Depictions of Violence to Other Animals and Social Change,” in Critical Animal and Media Studies: Communication for Nonhuman Animal Advocacy, eds. Núria Almiron, Matthew Cole, and Carrie Freeman (New York: Routledge, 2016), 42–​55; Lauren Corman, “Ideological Monkey Wrenching: Nonhuman Animal Politics Beyond Suffering,” in Animal Oppression and Capitalism. Volume II: The Oppressive and Destructive Role of Capitalism, ed. David Nibert (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2017), 252–​269. Taylor, “Suffering Is Not Enough.” Faria and Paez, “Animals in Need”; Donaldson and Kymlicka, Zoopolis.

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danger of extinction, or those protected by conservation policies, as is the case with the loggerhead turtle (see Figure 10.15). In the anymals as a threat frame, the caption under the Nile crocodile and Burmese python provides the viewer with negative information to read the image.57 The article too depicts the two individuals neither as refugees nor as subjects affected by Hurricane Irma. Instead, they become a “monster” bent on threatening and attacking human society.58 The frame reproduces the human/​ animal binary as crocodiles and snakes are two culturally stigmatized and highly symbolic species associated with biblical evil, horror films, and nature documentaries.59 It is a culturally loaded representation that indirectly contributes to already existing fear-​mongering, whose roots arguably go back to our ancient primate past.60 As a result, such representation could promote “control” and extermination policies that would affect the embodied lives of anymal individuals and collectives. 5.3 A Comparison In general, the migrant journey frame in the human case tends to represent migrants as foreign masses, the border frame tends to depict them as criminals, and only the personal story frame sees them as individuals. In the case of anymal climate migrants, the anymals as commodities frame represents anymals as human property or resources, the anymals as threats depicts them as social danger, and only the anymals as threatened frame sees them as individuals. Regardless of some differences, the similarities among these frames allow us to group them in three pairs. The first pair of frames—​the border frame for Honduran migrants and the anymals as threat frame—​represents its subjects as a threat to the establishment. The “exotic,” illegal, and delinquent pests and invaders stand for the dangerous inferior “other” to the ideal human-​white-​Western society. Their mere existence as migrants entails a threat to “our” species, society, state, and nation. Even Kim Kyung-​Hoon’s otherwise sympathetic picture shows María Meza’s and her children’s repressive expulsion (see Figure 10.6). Metaphorically, the material border works here as a simile of the moral boundary behind which

57 Albeck-​Ripka, “Conservationists See a Hurricane Risk.” 58 Claire Molloy, Popular Media and Animals (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 59 Ibid. 60 Daily Mail, “Is EVERYONE Secretly Scared of Snakes? Primate Brains Are Hard-​Wired to Notice the Reptiles before We Even Know We’ve Seen Them,” Mail Online, October 29, 2019, https://​www.dailymail.co.uk/​sciencetech/​article-​2479100/​Primate-​brains-​hard-​wired -​notice-​snakes-​know-​weve-​seen-​them.html.

376 Fernández those racialized and animal(ized), “not-​quite-​human”61 subjects are located, differentiated, and abused. Another interesting parallel between frames emerges in the second pair of frames—​the migrant journey frame and the anymals as commodities frame. With their reliance on commodification and objectification, the two frames promote othering in a different way than the first pair. Here, the objectified status of certain humans and anymals in our societies is captured by the physical and emotional distance conveyed in the pictures. In the case of anymals, for example, all analyzed photographs depict them in long shots where the lack of spatial proximity transmits emotional distance to the viewer. By contrast, in the case of human migrants, a smaller number of individuals facilitates familiarity and connection absent from depictions of large groups and crowds.62 However, in these cases it is important to consider how the species difference can become a barrier to empathy and moral consideration, as anymals are still regarded as property in our societies.63 Importantly, the newspaper coverage of anymal experiences during environmental crises is meager, as is that of other aspects of anymals’ lives. Poor reporting is another symptom of a deeply rooted speciesist ideology, which is based on human supremacy, the instrumentalization of other animals, the reproduction of the human/​animal binary and the distorted representation of anymals and their relations with humans.64 Nik Taylor directly refers to this absence of coverage as the silencing of anymals in the media.65 The scarce or nonexistent moral consideration given to anymal individuals appears to be inextricably connected with anthropocentric speciesism and the instrumental value assigned to each species in relation to the use humans make of them. For instance, in the case of farmed anymals, they are mainly considered objects of consumption, and processing their flesh and fluids into meat and other products is widely normalized. This is what psychologist Melanie Joy calls carnism—​the invisible belief system that makes humans consider some anymal species edible.66 “Wild” anymals, on the other hand, are exploited for entertainment and profit, as in the case of zoos and aquariums. 61 62 63 64 65 66

Ko and Ko, Aphro-​ism. Batziou, “Framing ‘Otherness’ in Press Photographs.” Corey Wrenn, A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). David Nibert, Animal Rights, Human Rights (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002); Khazaal and Almiron, “An Angry Cow.” Taylor, “Suffering Is Not Enough.” Melanie Joy, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows (San Francisco: Conari Press, 2010).

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These free-​living anymals tend to be considered more distant from human animals in a spatial, cultural, moral and emotional sense. Although human animals find companion anymals closer, the latter also experience speciesism and are frequently considered property destined to provide company or safety to human animals. In the end, the second pair of frames illustrates certain subjects’ already degraded or commodified status in the collective imaginary, in alignment with animality as a continuum of otherness where anymals are considered inferior while humans “lesser” than the white, male, young, high-​class, able-​bodied human-​subject ideal.67 The pair, therefore, perpetuates migrants’ othering by not challenging the assumed animal(ized) status of the represented subjects. However, we can broaden the discussion of this pair of frames if we consider the exceptions. As cracks, exceptions have the potential to challenge the status quo by combining the status quo with its subtle critique. For example, Á. H’s photograph represents human migrants as masses of people, but at the same time focuses on their facial expressions and proximity, facilitating a closer connection with the viewer (see Figure 10.5). In the case of anymals, Jo-​Anne McArthur’s and Aitor Garmendia’s pictures represent anymal individuals who are still alive, trying to survive while facing indifference and human inaction (see Figures 10.13 and 10.14). Therefore, while the pictures using these frames can reinforce the already commodified status of Honduran migrants and exploited anymals exposed to environmental disaster, they also play an essential role by documenting the realities of systemic oppression and violence towards these beings, emphasizing also their resistance and agency—​ their own fight for survival. The third pair of frames—​the personal story frame in case of Honduran migrants and the animals as threatened frame for anymals—​shares a focus on the individuality and personality of the depicted subjects. This group of pictures underlines individuals and their emotions, and therefore is more likely to awaken in the audience the perception that certain individuals do suffer, are in need of help, and are worthy of support and solidarity. These images are characterized by spatial proximity, the depiction of individuals or small groups, and the expression of emotions of the represented subjects. Anthropomorphism is not problematic for “expression of emotions” in anymal cases. Human animals can no doubt easily anthropomorphize the face and body language of anymals, as anthropomorphism can also be useful when reporting other species’ behavior since in many cases anymals are cognitively 67

Ko and Ko, Aphro-​ism; Taylor, Beasts of Burden; Fernández, Hacia Mundos Más Animales.

378 Fernández and physically similar to human animals. Nevertheless, anthropomorphism can lose its power as journalists fail to see similarities when reporting on anymals outside of the mammalian class. In this case, experts in cognitive ethology and zoology could be useful by providing journalists with broader knowledge of anymal emotions.68 As Carrie Freeman, Marc Bekoff, and Sarah Bexel observe: “Nonhuman animals cannot adapt to fit the human model for how a source is interviewed and featured, so journalism must adapt to their ways of life.”69 Despite its benefits in presenting anymals as full emotional beings and moral actors, anthropomorphism has two hidden dangers. For one, the Eurocentric visual focus on individuals has the potential to draw our attention away from larger structural problems like the human supremacy of the colonial/​modern world-​system. Since, images of multitudes are essential to convey the idea of massive harm and the scale of oppression, the number of affected individuals is an important resource for triggering emotions. Therefore, although long shots deindividualize, they are necessary to depict the magnitude of the harm, while close shots are essential to individualize it. The second danger comes from forging ironic spectatorship of the suffering of others. This type of distant witnessing of others’ suffering as a form of entertainment promotes satisfaction in white privileged Western audiences instead of material, critical solidarity toward migrant human populations.70 This same criticism can be equally applied to our relationship with anymals, as Núria Almiron argues in Chapter 2 of this volume. Ironic spectators’ human gaze71 satisfies anthropocentric curiosity and aesthetic pleasure without a broader concern for the actual lives of anymals and without dismantling the problems of human supremacy and speciesism. On the other hand, if we consider the pre-​existing emotional distance of Western white human audiences toward human migrants and anymals, the fact that visual representation does not include spatial proximity, emotions, or even visual contact reinforces the idea of both groups as radically different “others,” instead of highlighting our diverse, but common, animality. In this sense, underlying eye-​contact and 68 69 70 71

Corman, “Ideological Monkey Wrenching.” Carrie Freeman, Marc Bekoff, and Sarah Bexell, “Giving Voice to the ‘Voiceless’: Incorporating Nonhuman Animal Perspectives as Journalistic Sources,” Journalism Studies 12, no. 5 (2011): 590–​607. Lilie Chouliaraki, The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of Post-​Humanitarianism (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2013). Randy Malamud, “Looking at Humans Looking at Animals,” in Critical Animal and Media Studies: Communication for Nonhuman Animal Advocacy, eds. Núria Almiron, Matthew Cole, and Carrie Freeman (New York: Routledge, 2016), 154–​68.

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individual approaches beyond suffering can help represent anymal subjectivities and empower the fact that animal liberation goes beyond the absence of suffering.72 We can apply these insights also to cases of human migrants where we need intercultural efforts beyond similarity to white-​Western cultures and paradigms and “integration” models, as decolonization efforts must truly empower critical epistemological diversity, not just an aesthetic one.73 In summary, the most problematic is the first pair of frames—​the border frame and the anymals as a threat frame. They perpetuate racism and classism, in the case of human migrants, and speciesism, in the case of anymals, by stigmatizing and othering their subjects as delinquents or pests. This visual approach implies that delinquents and criminals must be punished, and pests must be exterminated. The second pair of frames—​the migrant journey frame and the anymals as commodities frame—​have the potential to document and expose the way certain beings like racialized humans and anymals are portrayed as inferior in the human supremacist colonial/​modern world-​system. However, when explicit critical discussions are missing from the images, captions, and text, these frames only perpetuate the already commodified or degraded status of their represented subjects. Finally, the third pair of frames—​ the personal story frame and the anymals as threatened frame—​represent the individuals affected by structural inequalities and climate disasters more fairly and therefore can communicate social, political, and moral problems more strategically and ethically, as well as promote audience engagement. The danger is that, in isolation, this individualized approach could lead to overlooking broader structural discussions and become a superficial visual approach to deep-​rooted problems such as racism, classism, and speciesism in the context of the human supremacist colonial/​modern world-​system. 6

Final Remarks

6.1 Common Places and the Animal “Continuum” of Otherness In spite of the good intentions behind the majority of photojournalists’ work, visual representation can become a tool for reproducing the idea of human and anymal migrants as “others.” When this happens, journalists reinforce the inherited speciesist-​colonial binarist tradition of understanding difference as inferiority and open the door to domination and exploitation, while

72 73

Corman, “Ideological Monkey Wrenching.” Ko and Ko, Aphro-​ism.

380 Fernández avoiding a deeper understanding of systems of oppression and global inequalities. Merskin suggests that “typically nonhuman animals in media function as boundary objects, as the limit test, between what humans are and are not. As we learn more about them the line is continuously drawn and redrawn to maintain difference.”74 In this sense, degrading all things anymal (animalization) intertwines with coloniality and other systems of oppression such as hetero-​patriarchy or ableism, among others.75 As we have seen in the analysis of the sample of press photographs in the international Global North dailies El País, The New York Times and The Guardian, human and anymal migrants become the other through similar mechanisms of visual representation that frequently settle pre-​existing schemata and reinforce the ideologies of colonial racism, classism, and anthropocentric speciesism against displaced individuals and communities. This can in turn promote indifference to the experience of these individuals and inaction in the face of social, economic, and political problems. Seeking a Place for Hope: the Visual Power to Challenge Harmful Ideologies Images have a huge potential to challenge the status quo, as they “elicit a necessary condition of moral response—​belief that a problem exists” and also “[transform] abstract ideas into knowledge that is felt and absorbed.”76 But whether they fulfill this potential or not is a matter of choice.77 The creators of some of the photographs in my sample made this chosen. They avoid representing human and anymal refugees as part of a distant, stigmatized, and depersonalized crowd. The strategies they use depict individuals’ personal stories, represent their agency and resistance, and create spatial proximity between the represented subjects and the viewer. A fair representation of refugees and other oppressed collectives, both human and anymal, is a necessary step in decolonialization and decentering humanity. As a matter of justice, images ought to tell the stories of those who experience systemic oppression and must provide keys to understanding the global social, political, and economic challenges we face in the current human 6.2

74 75 76 77

Merskin, “Media Theories and the Crossroads,” 17. Belcourt, “Animal Bodies, Colonial Subjects”; Ko and Ko, Aphro-​ism; Taylor, Beasts of Burden; Fernández, Hacia Mundos Más Animales. Kathie Jenni, “The Power of the Visual,” Animal Liberation Philosophy and Policy Journal 3, no. 1 (2005): 2–​3. Batziou, “Framing ‘Otherness’ in Press Photographs,” 41–​60.

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supremacist colonial/​modern world-​system. The problems of representation identified in this chapter are also problems of borders, farms, laboratories, prisons, slaughterhouses, and immigrant detention centers. In all these places, representation will have to make conscious decisions not to normalize speciesism and racism that cause the suffering of human and anymal migrants who never stop searching for a place to live. Otherwise, the still socially acceptable speciesism and racism will make these choices for them. 7

Funding

Research for this paper was conducted with the support of Generalitat de Catalunya (Department of Universities and Research) and the European Social Fund.



Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Aitor Garmendia, Jo-​Anne McArthur, and Gustavo Stahelin, for ceding their pictures for this publication and to Núria Almiron and Natalie Khazaal, for their invaluable help on the revision of this chapter.

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Chapter 11

Bordering

Brexit and Human-​Nonhuman Entanglements in UK Press Coverage of Romania Claire Parkinson Abstract Contextualised by Brexit reports about UK dependency on Romanian nationals in the UK animal agriculture and slaughter industries, Claire Parkinson’s chapter discusses animal-​human entanglements in media discourses that narrativize the movement of human and nonhuman animals between Romania and the UK. It argues that animal bodies are transformed through bordering processes, where borders are taken to be the material and symbolic markers that organize power relations and bordering is the process by which boundaries are established and maintained. This chapter examines bordering in relation to anti-​immigration rhetoric and nationalistic discourse and proposes that critical animal studies approaches can further interrogate bordering and highlight its entanglements with the culturally constructed borders between human and nonhuman animals that fundamentally underpin speciesism.

Keywords bordering –​Brexit –​Romania –​horsemeat scandal –​dogs

Migration was a major issue in the UK referendum on membership of the European Union in June 2016. Across various polls conducted after the referendum, it was widely reported that amongst leave voters, the top two reasons for wanting to leave the EU were issues of immigration and sovereignty. A moral panic about immigration that had been centralised by the leave campaign compounded an already vitriolic mass media discourse on EU migrants, particularly Romanians. Following Romania’s entry to the EU in 2007, the UK media focused on Romanian migrants as a national, symbolic and economic threat, a result of which was to create a discourse that made the migrant issue synonymous with Eastern European nationals. Tabloid newspapers reports constructed, and perpetuated stereotypes of Romanians

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004440654_013

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involved in anti-​social behaviour and criminal activity and used metaphors such as “flood” and “flock” to describe the movement of Romanian migrants to the UK.1 Less than one month before the referendum, The Sun newspaper reported an “80% surge in Romanian crime suspects” and claimed that “a Romanian in the UK was six times as likely to be in jail than a migrant Pole, or eight times as likely as a Briton.”2 In addition to the pejorative discourse on human movement from Romania to the UK in 2016, British newspapers also reported on the movement of dogs across the same borders. An article in the popular press that gave an account of an 88 percent increase in dogs arriving from Romania into Britain between 2014 and 2015, asked, “Britain may well have a need for plumbers and builders, doctors, and dentists as well as labourers and fruit pickers from behind the rusty old Iron Curtain but do we really need these countries’ dogs?”3 The question posed by the newspaper article illustrates ongoing entanglements between nationalistic rhetoric and human-​animal relationships within the UK media discourse. Yet, since 2007 UK media coverage of nonhuman animals being rescued by UK nationals from Romanian zoos and kill shelters have also framed their movement in terms of a pro-​refugee discourse; the animals escaping certain death and finding safety in the UK. Such discursive manoeuvres force us to contemplate how nonhuman animals are symbolically and materially enmeshed in human concerns with border crossings. This chapter examines how human and nonhuman animals have been depicted after 2007 by the UK press as migrants and refugees and how these representations interlock with issues of capital, labor, and consumption. In doing so, the chapter draws together the political economy concerns of Critical Animal Studies with media discourse analysis and the concept of bordering. It takes the concept of bordering and places it in dialogue with speciesism to examine how these processes of ascribing difference, asserting power formations, regulating movement in space, and ascribing identity reproduce the politics of migration as ideologically and materially significant for the lives of human and nonhuman animals. This discussion is set against government 1 Dora-​Olivia Vicol and William Allen, “How has the UK National Press Described Bulgarians and Romanians?,” The London School of Economics and Political Science Blog, August 26, 2014, blogs.lse.ac.uk/​politicsandpolicy/​how-​uk-​press-​describe-​bulgarians-​and-​romanians/​; Vicol and Allen’s study looks at Bulgarian and Romanian representation in the UK press. In this chapter, I focus on Romanian representation. 2 Neil Syson, “Bucharrested: UK’s 80% Surge in Romanian Crime Suspects,” The Sun, May 29, 2016, 21. 3 Sunday Express, “Cruel Breeders Traffic Infected Pups into UK,” Sunday Express, January 31, 2016, 58.

388 Parkinson and sector reports on migrant labour and the UK dependency on Romanian nationals in the UK animal agriculture and slaughter industries. Such work has been deemed “unattractive” to UK nationals and the discourse positions Romanian migrants as better suited to the slaughter and “processing” of UK nonhuman animals, the bodies of whom are then exported to the EU. In exploring how Romanian humans and nonhumans are constructed within UK media discourses this chapter argues that the focus on such framing is necessary to reveal important intersections between speciesism and processes of bordering within the Brexit debate. 1

Brexit and the UK Media Discourse of Movement across Borders

Understanding the British media’s representation of Romanian human immigrants relies,4 Florentina Andreescu has argued, on the ongoing conflation of Roma and Romanian identities.5 “The lack of clear distinctions between Roma and Romanian identities” Andreescu writes, “is usually invoked as the main cause for generating the overtly aggressive attitude toward Romanian immigrants found within Europe.”6 As a Sunday Express article from 2010 illustrates, the conflation of “gypsy,” “Roma,” and “Romanian” was regularly deployed to reinforce stereotypes of Romanian migrants being involved in illegal activities and to highlight perceived weaknesses of UK immigration policy compared with that of other countries. Describing how “thousands of gypsy families kicked out of France and other European countries are set to flock to Britain,” the Sunday Express article referred without distinction to “repatriated Roma,” Romanian migrants seeking jobs in the UK, Romanians on trial for “trafficking 181 gypsy children to London to beg and steal” and included a quote that stated “the attitude is that the UK is a bit of a soft touch.”7 The same year, The Sun newspaper carried headlines such as “£3m scam gipsy jailed.”8 “Jail for Gipsy activist who ran benefits racket worth £610m,”9 and “£114k benefits 4 Unless otherwise noted, Romanian immigrants or migrants, refers to humans. 5 Florentina C. Andreescu, “The Romanians Are Coming (2015): Immigrant Bodies through the British Gaze,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 22, no. 5–​6 (2019): 885–​907. 6 Ibid, 888. For an in-​depth discussion of the distinctions between Romanian and Roma identities see Irina Diana Madroane, “Roma, Romanian, European: A Media Framed Battle over Identity,” Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines 5, no. 2 (2012): 102–​119. 7 James Fielding, “Gypsy Families ‘Flock to UK,’ ” Sunday Express, October 3, 2010, 42. 8 The Sun, “£3m Scam Gipsy Jailed,” The Sun, November 9, 2010, 33. 9 Nick Fagge, “Jail for Gipsy Activist who Ran Benefits Racket Worth £610m,” Daily Mail, November 9, 2010.

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gipsy built a 9-​bed home.”10 The articles referred to individuals as both “Roma gipsy” and “Romanian gipsies” and belonging to groups described interchangeably as “Roma community,” “Romanian nationals,” and “Romanian immigrants.” References to the trafficking of children, welfare and identity fraud, and nouns such as “beggars,” “pick-​pockets,” and “smugglers” in the same articles connected moral, economic and national threats in a vitriolic anti-​immigration discourse. Andreescu and others point out that UK media representations of the Roma community have repeatedly presented the group as “mostly composed of thieves and beggars,”11 a discourse which was amplified when Bulgaria and Romania were included as EU member states in 2007 and restricted entry to the UK granted to Romanian and Bulgarian migrants. In January 2014, the restrictions were lifted giving Romanian workers unrestricted access to the UK, a move that was preceded by months of tabloid press warnings about the numbers of Romanian immigrants expected to arrive in the UK. In July 2013, The Daily Mail reported under the headline “Romanians are flocking out of their homeland”12 that “More than 100,000 Romanians and Bulgarians have come to live in this country” and claimed that “8.2 percent of Romanians … are ready to consider travelling to Britain as a migration destination this year or next.”13 Use of the terms “flock” and “flood” to describe the inward movement of Romanian and Bulgarian migrants to the UK was notable in tabloid newspapers which also employed a nationalistic rhetoric that reoriented free movement as a problem of “us” and “them.”14 This organisation of identity politics revealed the extent to which free movement in the EU after 2007 was continually being rewritten in UK media as a symbolic and material threat; a process of bordering which Scott describes as the “production and reproduction of boundaries in response to shifting relations between nation, state, territory and identities.”15 After 2007, the numbers of migrants both already in the UK and anticipated to arrive varied widely across both tabloid and broadsheets with assessments running from thousands to projected figures in the millions.16 In 2009, The Sun newspaper ran a lengthy article under the headline “Migrate Britain: UK 10 Mike Sullivan, “£114k Benefits Gipsy Built a 9-​Bed Home,” The Sun, November 20, 2010, 45. 11 Andreescu, “The Romanians Are Coming,” (2015), 888. 12 Steve Doughty, “Romanians Are Flocking out of their Homeland,” Daily Mail, July 5, 2013. 13 Ibid. 14 Vicol and Allen, “How has the UK National Press Described Bulgarians and Romanians?” 15 James Wesley Scott, “European Politics of Borders, Border Symbolism and Cross-​Border Cooperation,” A Companion to Border Studies, ed. Thomas Wilson and Hastings Donnan (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2012), 87. 16 Between 2007 and 2018 the peak in total EU net migration was 218,000 in 2015. Total EU net migration in 2008 was 63,000 (source: Migration Watch UK).

390 Parkinson faces crisis over foreigner tide” which claimed that three million migrants had “flooded into the UK” in the preceding twelve years, over half a million of whom had arrived in 2008.17 The crisis-​laden hyperbole used in the article referred to “fears … that cash-​strapped Britain will be unable to cope as immigration swells its population to massive new levels” which would in turn “heap impossible pressure on schools, hospitals and housing.”18 Those entering the UK were described as “jobless asylum seekers,” “foreigners,” and “immigrants” and the article suggested typical examples included a Romanian man who “was caged indefinitely this year for raping a woman of 21-​so he could learn English in jail.”19 Articles such as these—​and there were many—​pitched the UK as an attractive destination for Eastern European immigrants who would take advantage of a welfare system that was already under immense pressure and laid the blame on weak immigration policy that meant the UK was unable to cap the numbers of migrants entering the country. What was perceived an unsustainable growth in the UK population due to uncontrolled immigration attracted increasing media and public concern about the impact it would have on public services after 2007. The discussion about Romanian migration to the UK was framed by the press as a threat to public goods, predominantly social benefits (welfare), as well as medical care, education, and housing with the tabloid press in particular repeatedly calling for immigration controls as a means of protecting national citizen’s access to housing, hospitals, and schools.20 Concern about immigration policy and the protection of public goods and services was heightened by UK welfare reforms that were instituted as a response to the 2007 financial crisis and under the aegis of ruthless austerity measures that successive governments argued were necessary for economic recovery. Borders define belonging as well as entitlement to national welfare systems and given the timing of Romania’s entry to the EU in 2007, tensions in the UK between state and society engendered by austerity politics were noticeably displaced onto Romanian migrants in political and media discourses. In this way, the pressures on an underfunded national health service and a severely reduced welfare benefits system—​the outcomes of UK government decisions—​were positioned as being close to collapse due

17

Tom Dunn, “Migrate Britain: UK Faces Crisis over Foreigner Tide,” The Sun, November 27, 2009, 6–​7. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Alex Balch and Ekaterina Balabanova, “Ethics, Politics and Migration: Public Debates on the Free Movement of Romanians and Bulgarians in the UK, 2006–​2013,” Politics 36, no. 1 (2016): 24–​27.

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to unrestrained growth in the number of EU migrants entering the UK, particularly from Eastern Europe. National sovereignty was continually called into question as the tabloid press and right-​wing commentators positioned UK borders as being under threat, insecure, and outside of the control of the state. In 2013 and one month prior to the derestriction of access to the UK, The Sun newspaper, following a series of long-​form articles on immigration, reported the results of a YouGov poll under the headline “We welcome people from the west of Europe … not east.”21 “Seventy percent of those surveyed believe this will be bad for Britain” the paper claimed with the main concern being that “a new wave of migrants will heap further strain on our already stretched public services … and worsen the national housing shortage” in addition to driving down wages and would “result in Britain becoming less British.”22 As in many other articles that sought to enflame public debate over immigration policy, migrants and asylum seekers were presented as a singular group of foreign invaders, the numbers of whom were reported by the newspaper’s political columnist to have reached five million.23 The problematic conflation of migrants and asylum seekers as unwanted foreigners pushing the country into social and economic crisis, in the context of the lifting of access restrictions for Romanians in 2014, reinforced a discourse of European control over UK borders and constructed the situation as an example of rapidly diminishing sovereign power brought about by the mandate of EU directives governing the rights of free movement. Set against the already pernicious media rhetoric on immigration, the right-​wing United Kingdom Independence Party (ukip) was catapulted from a minor single-​issue party in the early 2000s to being granted “major party status” in 2015 by the broadcasting and telecommunications regulator, Office of Communications (OfCOM). Major party status, secured through OfCOMrecognized public support, ensured parties’ inclusion in tv election leader debates and pushed the debate over Britain’s exit from the EU higher up the mainstream political agenda. It is thus important to acknowledge that the media discourse on immigration policy, which had reached feverish heights by 2013, was irrevocably tied to nationalistic sentiment about border sovereignty; a relationship that was expressed by the then-​leader of ukip in an article on public opposition to Eastern European migrants in the following way: “We say mass immigration is irresponsible, therefore we should stop having an open 21

Kara Dolman and Harriet Hernando, “We Welcome People from West of Europe … Not East,” The Sun, December 6, 2013, 36–​7. 22 Ibid. 23 Kavanagh in Ibid.

392 Parkinson door to Europe” and asserted “I’m not a politician, I’m a crusader, and I want my country back. I see the European questions being the absolute key to sorting everything out. And I make no bones about it, I’m fiercely patriotic. I believe in this country, I really do.”24 In this manner, jingoistic language was granted greater legitimacy and normalized through the mainstreaming of ukip by the UK media and this in turn continued to normalize the xenophobic binaries of belonging and exclusion that had been part of right-​wing political discourse since the financial crash. The ukip position on the EU was shared by Eurosceptics in the Conservative Party. In 2013, as a concession to the Eurosceptic wing of the party, the Conservative leader gave the Bloomberg Speech which called for reform of the UK relationship with Europe and stated his support for a referendum. The Conservative Party manifesto included the promise of a referendum and following the party’s 2015 election win, the European Union Referendum Act 2015 was passed. Prime Minister, David Cameron endorsed the Britain Stronger in Europe group while the Vote Leave campaign was fronted by Conservative mp, Boris Johnson. The key focus of the Vote Leave campaign was immigration and the group rode the wave of anti-​immigration rhetoric claiming on a campaign website: “EU law demands that the UK has an open door to European countries. This has resulted in large numbers of people from across Europe coming to our country. We have very few powers to stop people entering who we think can’t contribute to our economy or have a criminal background.”25 Playing to the established media narratives of economic and material threat posed by migrants, the Vote Leave campaign was able to capitalize on the normalization of anti-​immigration rhetoric. 2

Animal-​Industrial Complex and Migrant Labour

Media stereotypes of Eastern European migrants presented the imagined threat of an invasion of criminal activity to the UK in press articles which continued to press for changes to immigration policy. With ukip given mainstream media coverage and voices from other political parties, particularly the Conservatives and the party’s associated European Research Group (erg), the key issues of the Brexit debate prior to the referendum revolved around notions of sovereign power particularly in relation to 24 25

Farage in Ibid. Vote Leave Take Control, “The EU Immigration System is Immoral and Unfair,” voteleavetakecontrol.org, 2016, http://​www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/​briefing_​immigration.html.

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immigration and the control of UK borders. Following the EU referendum in 2016 in which 51.9% of votes were to leave the EU, the Migration Advisory Committee (mac) was commissioned by the UK Home Secretary to report on future patterns and impacts of European Economic Area (eea) migration. The report informed the design of a new immigration system, presented in December 2018 in a government White Paper: The UK’s future skills-​based immigration system.26 In the period of consultation that preceded the publication of the White Paper, the mac received reports from various sectors. In a report that collated responses to the mac consultation from organisations involved in food and beverage manufacture, of the thirteen companies and organisations listed, ten referred to some requirement for migrant labour in relation to the UK animal-​industrial complex, primarily for slaughterhouse work. An analysis of the sector responses illustrates the dependence of the UK animal-​industrial complex on migrant workers, and Romanian migrants in particular. In what might be read as direct opposition to the stereotypes of Romanian migrants as thieves or “freeloaders” that populated the media discourse, the food sector reports made clear that Romanian migrants were considered cheap and effective labour, willing to do work that UK nationals refused to undertake. Moreover, when the work ethic of Romanian migrants was compared with that of UK nationals, there was a clear industry consensus that Eastern European workers were considered more reliable. It was noted by one employer with a workforce in excess of 10,000 that since the referendum, “Romanian labour is more accessible than any other nationality,”27 and the number of Romanian workers recruited via labour providers had increased across all the company sites by up to 31 percent.28 Elsewhere the report stated: “Many meat processors undertake recruitment drives … but with very little success … UK nationals failing to complete even a week’s work are depressingly familiar.”29 Low unemployment in areas where meat processing plants are located was cited as one reason for the lack of UK nationals working in the industry. However, the primary reasons for low numbers of UK nationals employed in the animal

26

27 28 29

H. M. Government, The UK’s Future Skills-​Based Immigration System. White Paper, London: Crown, 2018, accessed February 27, 2020, https://​assets.publishing.service.gov. uk/​government/​uploads/​system/​uploads/​attachment_​data/​file/​766672/​The-​UKs-​future-​ skills-​based-​immigration-​system-​accessible-​version.pdf. Migration Advisory Committee, EEA-​Workers in the UK Labour Market: Interim Update, London: mac report, 2018, 26. Ibid, 33. Ibid, 7.

394 Parkinson industrial complex were described by the meat processing industry’s main association in this way: Unfortunately, despite most people being keen to eat meat, few UK nationals are prepared to be involved in its production. The work does not have high social cachet—for reasons of food safety the sites are kept cold, workers wear a significant amount of food and personal safety equipment, the work is physical and it is shift work.30 Alongside the reported reluctance of UK nationals to be involved in meat processing at the industrial level, a rising demand for “boneless fresh meat” indicated that consumers were less willing to spend time preparing animal body parts in the domestic environment. “Boneless meat” is labour intensive and cannot be easily automated the reports highlighted: The slaughter line is not prone to automation because the machines are not dextrous enough to adapt quickly and efficiently to the different shapes and sizes of the animal, particularly in lamb and cattle abattoirs. For example, a trained human eye can understand immediately where to start and stop the cut to eviscerate a cow according to the animal’s physique. A machine is not so adaptable, and any mistakes could lead to the whole carcass being condemned if the stomach is pierced and the contents spill out. That is an expensive loss to the abattoir and the farmer.31 In this way, the realities of the bodies of dead animals—​bones, sinews, muscle, blood, stomach fluids and so forth—​are continually moved further up the supply chain and away from the consumer. Animal body parts are sanitized and as far as possible stripped of any signifiers of their origins, a process that requires increased human labour at the point of the animals’ death and in the practices that dismember their bodies. That this labour is displaced from a UK workforce and consumers to Eastern European migrants, and increasingly since 2016, onto Romanian migrants, reveals the extent which the industrialization of animal death on a large scale is bound up with practices of othering. The labour of animal slaughter is described as having low social capital and considered by the industry to be too physically demanding for UK nationals, although it is notable that the work is not described by the same as emotionally, psychologically,

30 31

Ibid, 8. Ibid, 10.

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or ethically challenging. Indeed, the work is constructed as being socially unattractive by the industry because of the physical requirements and shift patterns. This downplays or perhaps misrepresents the nature of slaughterhouse work which falls within the group of occupations labelled “dirty work;”32 that is work which is stigmatized by being “tainted”—​physically, socially or morally,33 which attracts social disapproval and deals with some form of pollutant. As Darren McCabe and Lindsay Hamilton argue, slaughterhouse workers “are ‘physically’ tainted because their work is associated with ‘death’” and because work “ ‘involves the dismemberment of animals, tasks that require visceral contact with ‘pollutants’ like blood.”34 Baran et al.35 distinguish slaughterhouse work from other types of killing. They argue that slaughterhouse work is routinized killing—​“systematic, organized methods for slaughtering massive numbers of animals”—​and in being “up front and personal” the act of killing is more psychologically and physically salient.36 Thirdly, Baran et al. propose, “animals killed in the slaughterhouse are nurtured by humans (external to the slaughterhouse) and may even learn to trust humans until that final moment of death.”37 At the same time, animal bodies are, the industry reports contend, unsuited to mechanized industrial processes due to their variability, a point that makes clear that despite the efforts of the animal-​industrial complex to rationalize and regulate the breeding of animals and deny their individuality, each nonhuman animal who is slaughtered is a discrete being and not an easily dissected unit of production. Thus, the othering of migrants within the context of “dirty work” sits at an intersection between labour value, social capital, and the industrialization of animal death. To understand how this process of othering of migrant workers has been shaped by the economic forces of capitalism, it is important to consider how butchery practices are constructed in relation to notions of skilled and 32

Blake E. Ashforth et al., “Normalizing Dirty Work: Managerial Tactics for Countering Occupational Taint,” Academy of Management Journal 50, no. 1 (2007): 149–​174; Blake E. Ashforth and Glen E. Kreiner, “Dirty Work and Dirtier Work: Differences in Countering Physical, Social and Moral Stigma,” Management and Organization Review 10, no. 1 (2014): 81–​108. 33 Benjamin E. Baran, Steven G. Rogelberg and Thomas Clausen, “Routinized Killing of animals: Going beyond Dirty Work and Prestige to Understand Well-​Being of Slaughterhouse Workers,” Organization 23, no. 3 (2016): 351–​369. 34 Darren McCabe and Lindsay Hamilton, “The Kill Programme: An Ethnographic Study of ‘Dirty Work’ in a Slaughterhouse,” New Technology, Work and Employment 30, no. 2, (2015): 95–​108. 35 Baran, Rogelberg and Clausen, “Routinized Killing of Animals,” 351–​369. 36 Ibid, 356. 37 Ibid.

396 Parkinson non-​skilled labour. At the end of the twentieth century, butchery practices were publicly visible on high streets in the UK. Butchers were predominantly white and male, and butchery considered to be a skilled trade albeit that the occupation still had the characteristics of “dirty work.” In this context however, butchers had a high degree of autonomy, and the masculine culture of butchery valued the physicality of the work.38 Butcher shops were commonplace in UK towns and cities where animal carcasses would be displayed and butchered on site according to the requirements of the consumer who was able to watch the process of producing “their” specific “cut of meat” before completing their purchase. In the UK in 1990 there were over 15,000 butcher shops.39 By 2018, the number had reduced to less than 5,000, a consequence in large part of supermarkets driving sector changes, expanding packaged meat ranges and pushing the practices of cutting and packing down the supply chain. This meant that industrial plants replaced the work previously done in butcher shops and the cutting and slicing of animal corpses within the context of an industrial plant was no longer recognized as skilled work. In 2018, the British Meat Processing Association (bmpa) reported that the red meat processing industry was worth £8.2 billion per year with a total workforce of around 85,000 of which between 69% and 80% of staff on the plant floor were mainly from Central and Eastern Europe.40 Changes to the meat processing industry after the introduction of EU food production hygiene legislation in 2006 led to the closure of small abattoirs and further contributed to the concentration of large industrial plants in rural locations. The need for additional labour could not be met through UK recruitment and the largescale structural changes to the industry were only “possible because of EU labour availability.”41 In 2018 the bmpa called for a change in the understanding of what constitutes skilled employment. It claimed that knife skills “are not an academic subject, but they are nevertheless a skill” and stated that “it takes six weeks to train someone up from no knife skills to a level of skill in one cut, but to train someone to full skills where they can work anywhere on the line, which is essential to avoid repetitive strain injuries (rsi) and to accommodate shift patterns, takes a couple of years.”42 Slaughter line work in the UK, according to bpma is not low skilled work but does, due to the length of time it takes to become skilled, require 38

Darren McCabe and Lindsay Hamilton, “The Kill Programme: An Ethnographic Study of ‘Dirty Work’ in a Slaughterhouse,” 104. 39 Migration Advisory Committee, EEA-​Workers in the UK Labour Market: Interim Update, 5. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid, 6. 42 Ibid, 9.

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high levels of commitment to both the job and to staying in one location. The amount of time it takes to become proficient in cutting animal bodies to avoid injury to the human relies on having workers who are willing to stay in a job for years. Much of the work is however through agencies and on temporary contracts which means that for migrant workers who are in short-​term positions in slaughterhouses, the precarity of employment increases the potential for injury. Added to this, slaughterhouse work in general is poorly paid to keep the overall costs down; a situation that readily exploits migrant workers from countries with high unemployment and low wages.43 The lack of UK nationals working as vets in slaughterhouses demonstrates that the stigma of “dirty work” undercuts any prestige afforded to the educational capital and occupational prestige of vet work in the UK. Estimates suggest that 90-​95 percent of the veterinary workforce in the meat hygiene sector are overseas graduates.44 A 2019 report from the Migration Advisory Committee states “working in UK slaughterhouses is not generally considered attractive to UK citizens qualified as veterinarians” and notes that “there is a shortage of people being trained in universities to carry out these roles and those that do veterinary science, do not choose abattoirs for their career route.”45 In a study of UK meat hygiene workers, McCabe and Hamilton noted that many of the vets working as meat inspectors are Romanian, poorly paid in comparison to UK vets, work in crowded conditions “and are denied appropriate facilities such as showers.”46 Indeed, the dirtiness of slaughterhouse labour is compounded by the increased use of migrant labour where migrant groups are already socially and culturally constructed as a stigmatized population. Migrant labour is doubly “tainted” by the exclusionary discourses of jingoistic nationalism and by the dirty work that exploits their migrant status. In this way, the oppression and exploitation of migrant workers intersects with the exploitation, cruelty, and routinized deaths of millions of nonhuman individuals every year and the 43

44

45 46

Deborah Sporton, “ ‘They Control my Life’: The Role of Local Recruitment Agencies in East European Migration to the UK,” Population, Space and Place 15, no.5, (2013): 443–​458; Alexandra Voivozeanu, “Precarious Posted Migration: The Case of Romanian Construction and MEAT-​INDUSTRY WORKERS in Germany,” Central and Eastern European Migration Review 8, no.2 (2019): 85–​99. House of Lords European Union Committee, Brexit: Farm Animal Welfare. House of Lords 5th Report of Session 2017–​19, 2017, retrieved from: https://​publications.parliament.uk/​pa/​ ld201719/​ldselect/​ldeucom/​15/​15.pdf, Migration Advisory Committee. Full review of the Shortage Occupation List. London: mac report, 2019, 83, https://​www.gov.uk/​government/​ publications/​full-​review-​of-​the-​shortage-​occupation-​list-​may-​2019. Migration Advisory Committee, Full Review of the SHORTAGE Occupation List, 83. McCabe and Hamilton, “The Kill Programme,” 104.

398 Parkinson dirty work of preparing body parts for consumption is pushed further and further away from the UK consumer. 3

Moving Animal Bodies across Borders

Vicol and Allen note a link between Romania and slaughterhouse work in their study of the UK media reporting between 2012 and 2013.47 Their study shows that in news reporting for the period, the top twenty nouns used to refer to Romanians centred around criminality (criminal, thief), economic poverty (beggar) and words linked to the animal-​industrial complex, specifically: abattoir, slaughterhouse, and horsemeat. The authors note that the horsemeat scandal which was linked to Romanian abattoirs drove the peak in articles during the period of the study and an increase in the mentions of key terms by the broadsheets. The horsemeat scandal—​a discovery that food products which were labelled as containing body parts taken from cows actually contained body parts from horses—​was widely reported in the UK media during 2013. A slaughterhouse in Romania was named as the origin of the horsemeat which was then shipped via the Netherlands to France where it was used in bolognese and lasagne meals that were sold in the UK. By the end of 2013, it was revealed that the horsemeat scandal also included companies and products in Switzerland, Cyprus, British Virgin Island, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Sweden. The passage of the horses’ bodies across multiple borders and their relabelling as “beef” demonstrated the complex supply chains that operated across the European animal-​industrial complex. Moreover, the cheaper the product, the more likely that it had a longer supply chain to capitalize on a globalized weakly regulated marketplace that enabled the purchase of ingredients for processed foods from the cheapest source. The UK press reported two positive outcomes from the horsemeat scandal: consumers were encouraged to buy meat from animals reared in the UK and that small independent British butchers who dealt with locally supplied meat were seeing a 50 percent increase in sales.48 The horsemeat scandal highlights again the intersections between economic poverty, bordering, and the animal-​industrial complex. The risks associated with mislabelled meat were borne mainly by economically deprived groups who rely on cheap 47 48

Vicol and Allen, “How Has the UK National Press Described Bulgarians and Romanians?” Anna White, “Local Butchers Benefit from Horsemeat-​Gate,” The Daily Telegraph, January 21, 2014, 8; The Scotsman, “Horsemeat Scandal: Consumers Urged to Eat Scotch Beef,” The Scotsman, February 11, 2013, 4.

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food, the numbers of whom had increased since the financial crash due to the impacts of austerity politics. In the UK, human consumers of low priced or economy meals were more likely to have purchased products that included the bodies of horses. In Romania, people, described in press reports as “peasants,”49 in rural areas of high deprivation sold the horses for slaughter. The dead bodies of horses were caught up in the politics of bordering, reproducing the ideological connotations that UK meat was superior, safer, and had better welfare standards compared to “foreign” meat. Despite Romanian slaughterhouse workers being exploited in the dirty work of animal slaughter in both Romania and in the UK, press reports about the link between Romanian slaughterhouses and the horsemeat scandal far exceeded, by an overwhelming margin, the few mentions of Romanian migrants working in UK slaughterhouses. In the UK, cultural norms preclude horsemeat from human diets and therefore press reports of Romanian horse slaughter compounded the stigma attached to the dirty work of animal death by presenting the slaughter of horses—​animals considered as companion or working animals—​as routine and industrialized in Romania. Moreover, press reports highlighted the involvement of Romanian criminal gangs in the horsemeat trade and the poor welfare standards in Romania, stating for example “the horses are not fed properly, given no stable, and they are treated appallingly. They are often beaten and whipped, and transported to abattoirs in illegal double-​deck lorries,”50 and under the headline “Nabbed, stabbed, beaten … wild horses go in our beef: Great British horsemeat scandal: Hell of food animals” another newspaper described “cruelly abused wild horses […] Some had wounds from being stabbed and beaten with sticks and crowbars. They were denied food or water for days before a 28-​hour journey to the abattoir.”51 UK media coverage of the treatment of horses in Romania reveals much about the moral and emotional value afforded to different species at a cultural level as well as how such values play out in relation to exclusionary notions of othered foreignness, and discourses of migrants and migration. While the horsemeat scandal highlighted the plight of horses in Romania, there was little in the way of intervention suggested by the press, other than in the context of

49 50 51

Nick Parker, “A Load of Old Pony: Inside Romanian Horse Plant,” The Sun, February 12, 2013, 13. David Collins, “The Wild Bunch. Mirror Special Investigation: Romanian Gangs Buy Horses for Just £10 and Send Them to Slaughter: Illegal Meat Wrongly Labelled Beef May End up on UK Dinner Plates,” Daily Mirror, February 11, 2013, 5. Nick Parker, “Nabbed Stabbed Beaten: Wild Horses To Go in Our Beef: Great British Horse Mean Scandal: Hell of Food Animals,” The Sun, February 10, 2013, 7.

400 Parkinson proper food labelling. Two years prior to the horsemeat scandal, the EU had banned the export of live horses from Romania in efforts to halt the spread of equine infectious anaemia. This meant that horse welfare issues had to be dealt from within Romanian borders and horses could not be rescued to other countries. Even with the EU ban in place, there was little UK public support to help Romanian horses, especially when compared with the response to coverage of the welfare of dogs in Romania. 4

Dogs and the Discourse of Canine Migrants

In January 2014, new legislation was introduced, designed to reduce the number of stray dogs in Bucharest. Estimates of the free roaming dog population in the city put the numbers at around 64,000. The Stray Dogs Euthanasia Law found public support following the death of a four-​year-​old boy and the UK media were quick to pick up the story of mass dog slaughter in Romania. At the time of the vote on the legislation, which had gained public support following the media coverage in Romania of the young boy’s death, The Sunday Express in the UK ran an article on “Romania’s animal welfare nightmare” and describing two dead dogs in a rusting skip asked “what horrors they suffered before they were killed can only be imagined as the country wages warfare on unwanted strays” and cited a petition which claimed that dogs were killed by being “beaten to death, clubbing, injecting paint thinner or other cheap toxins into the lungs, burning, drowning and poisoning with substances including anti-​freeze.”52 The Independent covered the story in 2014 when it was revealed that the four-​year-​old boy had not been killed by stray dogs but by dogs owned by a private company. Under the legislation, free roaming dogs were captured and if not adopted or rehomed within two weeks, euthanized. On the front page of the newspaper, The Independent reported that while parts of the law were suspended in June 2014, 16,000 dogs had been killed in the months from January to June, a further 8,000 had been admitted to the Bucharest Authority for Surveillance and Protection of Animals for euthanasia between June and September and more than 2,000 dogs were held in public dog pounds.53 In 2015, the Mail on Sunday ran a lengthy article about UK officials calling on 52 53

Stuart Winter, “The Angels Vowing to save Romania’s Stray Dogs,” Sunday Express, September 29, 2013, 40. Stephen McGrath, “Ionut Anghel: Romanian Boy, 4, Mauled to Death by Pack of Privately-​ Owned Dogs: Death Used to Justify Putting down Thousands of Stray Dogs,” Independent, September 17, 2014, front page.

Bordering

401

leaders in Bucharest to “deal humanely with the crisis of the million strays that roam the streets” noting that “300,000 dogs have been rounded up and slaughtered […] with reports of dogs being clubbed to death in the streets and caged in horrendous shelters.”54 As a swathe of articles about the treatment of free roaming dogs in Romania continued to appear across the UK press, a discernible trend for stories about UK women who rescued dogs from Romania to the UK also emerged. Reports referred to “The angels vowing to save Romania’s stray dogs,”55 “Teacher Michelle using holidays to save condemned dogs,”56 “Mum on a mission to save the world’s most savagely treated dogs,”57 “Mission to help dogs escape cull: woman to rescue stray animals from Romania,”58 “Barking up the right tree: Cerian is helping stray Romanian dogs,”59 “Jean takes the lead to help dogs in Eastern Europe,”60 “More than 300 dogs given a new home thanks to Kelly’s efforts,”61 and “Sharleen backs bid to save stray dogs.”62 Romanian shelters were repeatedly referred to as “kill shelters” in press reports about the impact of the legislation and in articles about the UK nationals who were rescuing the dogs. Terms such as “angels” and “mission” were repeatedly used in tabloid press articles about UK rescuers while stories of rescued dogs gave graphic details of their suffering before rescue. In 2019, it was reported that imports of dogs from Romania to the UK had increased from none in 2013 to 15,548 in 2017 and that the UK “had the higher number of dog imports from Romania than any other country in the world in 2017.”63

54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

Michael Powell and Matthew Davis, “End Your Stray Dog Cull, UK Tells Romania,” Mail on Sunday, June 21, 2015, 6. Stuart Winter, “The Angels Vowing to Save Romania’s Stray Dogs,” Sunday Express, September 29, 2013, 40. Ben Ireland, “Teacher Michelle Using Holiday to Save Condemned Stray Dogs,” Nottingham Evening Post, October 17 2013, 24. Tessa Cunningham, “Mum on a Mission to Save the World’s Most Savagely Treated Dogs,” Daily Mail, August 24, 2017, 4. Scott Smith, “Mission to Help Dogs Escape Cull: Woman to Rescue Stray Animals from Romania,” Grimsby Telegraph, October 5, 2013, 7. Emma Flanagan, “Barking up the Right Tree: Cerian is Helping Stray Romanian Dogs,” Bristol Post, October 28, 2015, 24. Lily Pattinson, “Jean takes the Lead to Help Dogs in Eastern Europe,” Gloucestershire Echo, May 31, 2017, 7. Melanie Bygrave, “More Than 300 Dogs Given a New Home Thanks to Kelly’s Efforts,” Evening News, July 22, 2014, 8. Angela McManus, “Sharleen Backs Bid to Save Stray Dogs,” Evening Times, September 14, 2013, 3. bbc, “Disease Threat Row over imported Romanian Dogs,” October 14, 2019. https://​www. bbc.co.uk/​news/​uk-​england-​49980851.

402 Parkinson It was not without comment from UK based rescue organisations that the UK had a domestic issue with stray dogs and that the number of dogs being imported from Romania could impact on the number rehomed in the UK. Figures show that an estimated 56,043 stray dogs were handled by local authorities between April 2017 and March 2018 and 66,277 handled during the same period the previous years.64 Of that number, in the 2017–​2018 period, around 57 percent were reunited with their owners and approximately 1,462 dogs were euthanised. In the previous year, an estimated 2,213 UK stray dogs had been euthanised.65 The status of the dogs as “migrants” was also brought into question with one tabloid, for example, asking ‘‘Britain may well have a need for plumbers and builders, doctors and dentists as well as labourers and fruit pickers from behind the rusty old Iron Curtain but do we really need these countries’ dogs?”66 However, the rapid growth in numbers of dogs moving from Romania to the UK was not solely due to dogs being rescued from kill shelters. One newspaper highlighted that Government figures do not distinguish between different categories of “canine import” and reported in 2019 that the total number of dogs imported from Romania was in excess of 17,000 and included “commercially imported dogs and puppies, rescue dogs, ‘research dogs’ and unaccompanied pets.”67 Romania, the report noted “now accounts for 46 percent of all commercial dog imports” and was a key player in a shameful “puppy trade.”68 The international trade in puppies was widely condemned in the UK press which highlighted that there was a booming legal and illegal movement of puppies from the EU to Britain, the latter of which was responsible for bringing under-​age puppies to the UK without vaccinations or other health treatments. Concerns from UK canine welfare organisations focused on low welfare standards and the poor health of imported puppies. Romanian breeders were, one article asserted, more concerned with commercial gain than animal welfare and able to “cash in on the demand for certain breeds in the UK.”69 A representative from the UK Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs was quoted in a Times article saying “Leaving the EU gives us

64

Dogs Trust, Stray Dogs Survey Report 2017–​2018, 2018. https://​www.dogstrust.org.uk/​about-​ us/​publications/​stray%20dogs%20report%202017–​18%20final.pdf. 65 Ibid. 66 Sunday Express, “Cruel Breeders Traffic Infected Pups into UK,” Sunday Express, January 31, 2016, 58. 67 David Williamson, “Vile Trade in Puppies Bred in Romania for Sale in Britain,” Sunday Express, May 26, 2019, 27. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid.

Bordering

403

an opportunity to look at how we can strengthen our controls to crack down on animal traffickers.”70 5

Bordering

The UK Brexit discourse enmeshed nonhuman animals in material and symbolic ways with human concerns about borders and border crossings. This chapter has sought to explore how animal bodies are transformed through bordering processes and how they have been represented in the UK press. Moral panics over nonhuman animals—​whether alive or dead—​moving from Romania to the UK have both reinforced and been shaped by anti-​immigration rhetoric and nationalistic discourse. Nonhuman animal disease and death figure strongly in these narratives where sick and dying puppies are moved across borders and the dirty work of killing animals is displaced onto Romanian migrants who are considered “better suited” to such labour. The economics of death in the animal-​industrial complex exploits low paid migrant workers but at the same time reproduces the output of their labour-​meat-​in terms of British “quality.” The nationalistic meanings that are applied to nonhuman animal bodies and body parts obscure the realities of a consumer market for meat and puppies that drive commercial trade and the treatment of other species as products. The borders that occupy humans are routinely imposed onto the bodies of nonhuman animals. If borders are taken to be the material and symbolic markers that organize power relations then bordering is the process by which these boundaries are established and maintained. Popescu writes, “Today, our lives are spatially ordered by a maze of borders that often have no clear or stable hierarchy.”71 Borders impact everyday life, are deep rooted and the bordering processes that produce them are dynamic, connecting politics, bodies, economics, and space in changing configurations. Culturally constructed borders between human and nonhuman animals fundamentally underpin speciesism, they articulate forms of difference that are used to justify exploitative practices and to license violence towards whoever is deemed to exist on the wrong side of an imagined boundary. Histories of human exceptionalism are histories

70 71

Dominic Kennedy, “Smugglers Wrap Newborn Puppies in Clingfilm for 30-​Hour Journey,” The Times, July 18, 2017, 15. Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering the Twenty-​First Century: Understanding Borders (New York: Rowman and Littlefield: 2012), 10.

404 Parkinson of bordering, a process that is constituted of knowledge-​power formations. Critical Animal Studies draws attention to the different forms of intersectional oppression experienced by human and nonhuman animals. From this perspective, borders are not binary, not single lines that can be easily followed, they do not exist in silo or parallel, they are entangled, messy, complex, and bordering is shaped by a speciesist politics.

References

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Index 9/​11 263–​264 Abattoir; see Slaughter house Accumulation Theory 134–​135 Accusation Trope 103, 119 Activism “Point-​and-​Click” 61–​62 Apolitical 69 Discussing 61–​62 Online 66–​67 Adaptation 233, 234–​237, of Humans 233, 234–​237 of Nonhumans 198–​199, 200–​201, 206–​207 Advocacy Human Campaigns 67 Humanitarian 61 Nonhuman Campaigns 67 Agamben, Giorgio 1, 2–​3, 7–​8, 32 Agency 62, 63–​64, 363–​364, 365–​366, 373, 377, 380 of Nonhumans 80, 96 Agricultural Revolution 21–​22 Akhbar, al-​ 294, 296t, 307 Alden, Edward 262n9 Androcentrism 59, 72 Animal-​Industrial Complex 393–​399, 403 Animal Advocacy 67 Animality 13–​14, 15–​16, 19–​20, 34, 37, 79, 82, 88, 91, 92, 94–​96 Animalization 56–​57, 58–​59, 63, 65, 72, 115–​ 117, 118–​119, Direct 287–​288, 297, 298, 301–​302, 304, 306–​307, 310, 311 Indirect 287–​288, 291, 298, 300, 301–​302, 306, 307, 308, 310, 311 Animals; see Nonhumans Anthropocene 8, 269–​270 Anthropocentrism 7, 15, 16–​17, 25–​26, 29–​30, 35–​36, 38, 78–​79, 86–​88, 90–​91, 92–​94, 95, 257–​258, 324, 334–​335 Anti-​Immigration 388–​392, 403 Anymal Trafficking 347 Anzaldúa, Gloria 79–​80, 81, 88, 92, 94, 95–​97 Arar, Maher 213

Arendt, Hannah 7–​8, 28–​31, 32 Aristotle 29–​30, 56–​57, 64; see also Great Chain of Being, Nature’s Ladder Asylum 190–​191, 202–​203, 208–​209n176, 209–​210, 227–​228, 237–​238, Right to 209–​210 Seekers 389–​391 Audience 52, 60–​61, 68–​69 Austerity 390–​391, 398–​399 Australian Wildfires (2019–​2020) 51–​52, 53, 66–​67 Barclay, Eliza 268–​269n25, 273–​274n41 Bare Life 3–​4, 32, 33 Benesch, Susan 9–​10 Bentham, Jeremy 130–​131 Best, Steven 5–​6n19, 21–​22, 21–​22n68, 23–​24, 23–​24n75, 35–​36n118, 36, 36n120, 39, 41, 257n3, 259–​260n5, 260n6, 276n46 Białowieża Forest 4 Binaries 79–​80, 90–​91, 92, 95–​96, 97 Biopolitics 1–​2, 4, 5, 31, 32, 33 Bios 32, 33 Bison-​cow 1, 4, 5 Boeing 265 Border 27, 38, 78–​79, 81, 89–​90, 92–​96, “Zone of Irreducible Indistinction” 1–​2 as Practice 7–​8 Biopolitical 32–​33 Border Zone 1–​2 Communities 259–​260 Critical Border Studies 5–​6, 7–​8, 29–​ 30, 33, 40 International 30 Militarization of 264–​265 National 81, 92–​94 Rabit (Rapid Border Intervention Team) 27–​28 Security 258 State 27–​28 Studies 3–​4, 5–​6, 7–​8, 33–​35, 36, 92–​93, 256–​257, 258–​259, 260 Bordering 387–​389, 398–​399, 403–​404 Bowman, Michael 206n157 Bracero Program 228–​229, 262

410 Index Brexit 392–​393, 403 British Meat Processing Association (bmpa) 395–​397 Burnett, John 270–​271n31 Bush, George W. 263–​264, 267–​268 Butchery 395–​397 Butterball 1–​2 Cameron, David 392 Canada 290–​291, 309 Capitalism 21–​25, 61–​62, 67–​68, 69–​70 Care Movement; see Social Movements Care Work 171–​172, 175–​176 Carnism 19 Carswell, Cally 268–​269n24 Carter, David B. 275n43 Cartesian Thought 57; see also Descartes, René Center for Biological Diversity 263–​264n14 Chalfant, Morgan 266–​267n20 Charlottesville, Virginia 266–​267 Children 350, 351t, 355, 358–​359, 360, 372–​ 373, 375–​376 Chinese Exclusion Act 189–​190 Chomsky, Noam 344 Christianity 55, 128–​129, 131, 135, 137, 143, 146 Citizenship 78, 86, 92–​94, 95 Clark, Jamie Rappaport 271–​272n35 Classism 59, 72 Climate Migrants 51–​53 Refugees 348, 362, 363f, 364t, 365f Climate Change 183–​185, 196–​204, 230–​231, 233, 234–​237, 259, 275–​276, 346–​348, Adaptation; see Adaptation and Nonhuman Migration 198–​202, 205–​208 and Human Migration 198, 203–​205 and Mitigation 234–​237 Global Warming 183, 184, 196–​199, 196–​ 198n97, 201–​202 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc) 198, 233 Temperature Change or Rise 183, 184, 196–​198, 196–​198n97, 201–​202 Clinton, Bill 90–​91, 256–​257, 262, 267 Clinton, Hilary 87 Cold War 275–​276

Colonialism 54, 58, 59, 72 Domination or Colonization 119–​120 Modern World System 342, 343, 346, 347, 348, 349, 372–​373, 378, 379, 380–​ 381; see Quijano, Aníbal; Wallerstein, Immanuel Complaint/​Form of Resistance Trope 101–​ 103, 110–​111, 113–​114, 115–​116 Conceptual Metaphor 317–​318, 321, 325–​326 Conservative Party 392 Convention on Biological Diversity (cbd) 194, 222–​223, 234, 234n336, 234–​237nn337-​338 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (cites) 194 Convention on Migratory Species (cms) 194–​195, 205–​207, Working Group on Climate Change 206 CoreCivic 265 Coronavirus Pandemic 1–​2, 3, 6–​7 Cosmopolitanism 54, 62, 71–​73 Costello, Kimberly 229–​230, 286–​287, 286–​ 287n2, 287n4, 287–​288n5, 287–​288nn7-​ 10, 289n13, 291, 291n20, 291n23, 292n24, 292nn26-​27, 292, 310–​311, 310–​311n49 Critical Animal Geography 5–​6, 7–​8, 34–​35 Critical Animal Studies 5–​6, 7–​8, 18, 19–​20, 21, 33–​34, 37–​38, 40, 53, 65, 66–​67, 68–​ 70, 72–​73, 101–​103, 115, 120, 184–​185 Critical Border Studies; see Border and Migration Studies 184–​185 Critical Discourse Analysis 101–​103, 111–​112 Critical Metaphor Analysis 317–​318, 324, 329, 336 Cummings, Elijah 225 Cushing, Simon 16–​17, 16–​17nn53-​54, 17–​18n57 Daily Star, the 294, 296t, 306 Dangerous Speech 9–​12 Dariknews 294, 296t, 298, 299–​301 Darwin, Charles 16, 16n50, 58–​59, 258–​259 Davis, Julie Hirschfeld 265n18 Dayen, David 276–​277n47 Defenders of Wildlife 268, 271–​272 Dehumanization 62–​63, 64–​66, 72, 77–​78, 89, 90–​91, 112, 115–​117, 119, 285–​286,

411

Index 286–​287n2, 287–​288, 287–​288nn5-​10, 290–​291, 290–​291n19, 304, 305, 309 Definition 9–​10 Effects 9–​12 Humanist Theories of 12–​16, 28–​ 29, 30–​31 Language of 266 Political-​Economic Perspectives of 21–​27 Rehumanization 19–​20, 27–​28; see Rehumanization Resistance Against 3–​4 Slurs 9–​11 Speciesist Roots of 16–​21, 35–​36 Strategy 130, 137 Study of 5–​6, 7, 8 Deregulation 207–​208, 209–​211, 213–​214, 215–​218 Derrida, Jacque 5, 33 Descartes, René, 55, 130; see Cartesian Thought Deutche Welle Bulgaria 284, 284n1, 292n28, 294, 296t, 297, 297n37, 298n39, 301, 311 Diamond, Jared 22–​23 Dirzo, Rudolph 268–​270 Disasters 198, 234 Environmental 198, 198n108, 204–​ 205, 234 Exxon Oil Spill 216–​217 Natural Disaster 196–​198, 203–​204 Disgust 286, 291–​292, 292nn24-​26, 293, 300–​301, 311 Distant Sufferers 53–​55, 59–​62, 65–​66, 68–​71, 73 Dogs 318, 325–​327, 328–​329, 330, 331–​332, 334–​335, 337 Import of 400–​403 Slaughter of 400–​401 Stray 327 Dualism 54, 55–​56, 59, 66, 72 Dunayer, Joan 18 Durkheim, Emile 25–​26 Duty of Admission; see Right to Admission Ecofeminism 80–​81, Chicana 78–​79, 81, 82, 83, 86–​87, 90–​91, 94, 96, 97 Edwards, Rebecca 266n19 Eilperin, Juliet 271–​272n36, 272n38

El Mundo Zurdo 96–​97 El Paso, Texas 76–​77, 78–​79, 81, 87, 88, 255–​256, 262–​263, 266–​267, 268–​269, 272–​277 Endangered Species 268–​271; see also Nonhumans, Endangered Endangered Species Act (esa) 216, 217–​218 Enlightenment 56, 57–​58, 64, 257–​258, 274, 275–​276 Environmental Migrants; see Climate Migrants Erikson, Lindsay 263–​264n14 Esposito, Roberto 29–​30, 31 Ethics Communication 53, 54–​55, 59–​61, 65–​ 66, 70–​71, 72–​73 Media 66 Nonhuman 7, 16–​19, 40, 53, 69–​70 European Union 285–​286, 295–​297, 301–​ 302, 311 Facebook 82, 84 Far-​Right 329, 332, 336–​337 Farm 361–​362, 364t, 364, 366–​367, 380–​381 Fear 291, 292, 292n24, 294, 298–​299, 302–​ 303, 308, 311 Flagman 294, 296t, 297–​298, 299–​302, 311 Flood 341–​342, 349, 360, 361–​362, 364t, 365, 366f, 367, 369–​370, 371–​372, Ebro 342–​343, 348, 349, 360, 361, 364t, 371–​372 Forced Migrants 6–​7, 8–​9, 10–​11, 27–​28, 30–​31, 32 Ford, Henry 23–​24 Foucault, Michel 7–​8, 30–​32 Francione, Gary 18 Frankfurt School 257–​258 Fraser, Nancy 24–​25 Freeman, David 270n30 Frey, John Carlos 262–​263n11, 264n15, 264n17 Frostenson, Sarah 268–​269n25, 273–​274n41 Gaard, Greta 78, 80–​81, 92 Gaskill, Melissa 271–​272n33, 271–​272n34 Gaza 307–​308 Genocide 6–​7, 9, 11–​12, 16–​17 GeoGroup 265 Global Warming; see Climate Change

412 Index Grandoni, Dino 271–​272n36, 272n38 Great Chain of Being; see Nature’s Ladder Greco-​Latin World 54 Greece 285–​286, 297 Ancient Greece 55–​57, 58 Greenwald, Noah 262–​263n12, 263–​ 264n14, 269n27 Habermas, Jurgen 24–​25 Habitat 183, 184, 192, 194, 196–​200, 202–​203, 206–​207, 215–​216, 217–​218, Habitat destruction 256 Hall, Stuart 344 Harjo, Joy 96 Haslam, Nick 13–​14, 15–​19 Hayat, al-​ 294, 296t, 304, 305 Herman, Edward S. 344 Hero 1, 4–​5 Herwick, Stephanie 263–​264n14 Hierarchy, Logic of 261 Hodson, Gordon 229–​230, 286–​287, 286–​ 287n2, 287n4, 287–​288n5, 287–​288nn8-​ 10, 288–​289n11, 289, 289nn13-​14, 291, 291n20, 291n23, 292nn24-​27, 292, 310–​ 311, 310–​311n49 Holocaust 58–​59 Homo erectus 21–​22 Homo sacer 32 Horsemeat Scandal 398–​400 Horses 398–​399 Hribal, Jason 22–​23 Human-​Nonhuman Binary, Divide 16–​17, 54–​55, 56–​57, 58–​ 60, 62, 63–​64, 65–​66, 67–​68, 70, 72, 73, 286–​290, 295, 305–​306, 310–​311, 312 Borderland 184–​185, 225, 230–​231 Hierarchy 79, 81, 90–​91, 95–​96 Essentialism 56, 62–​63, 72 Exceptionalism; see Anthropocentrism Slavery 56–​57, 58 Supremacism 257–​258; see also Anthropocentrism Humanism 6–​7, 26, 35–​36, 57–​58, 62, 64, 65, 78–​79, 81, 87–​88, 90–​91, 92, 93, 95 Critique of 7, 12, 15–​16, 17–​21, 30–​31 Humanitarianism 28, 29–​31, 33, 37 Advocacy 61 and Solidarity 69–​70, 71

Articulation of 61 Assistance 52–​53 Celebrity 67–​68 Communication 63–​64 Field 65–​66 Organizations 54 Post-​Humanitarianism 61–​62, 69 Practices 61 Rhetoric 73 Infrahumanization 287–​288, 287–​288n7, 291, 300–​302, 308–​309, 310, 311, 312 Humanness 13–​20, 34 Hurricane 351t, 354, 361–​362, 363–​364, 365–​ 366, 367, 368, 369–​370, 373–​375, Florence 342–​343, 348, 349, 360, 364t, 366f, 371–​372 Irma 342–​343, 349, 360, 364t, 365–​366, 367f, 368–​370, 371f, 371–​372, 375 Hussein, Saddam 138–​139 Ibn Munqidh, Usama 10–​11 Ideology 6–​7, 6–​7n22, 8, 14, 14n43, 18–​19, 20–​21, 342–​343, 344, 345–​346, 348–​349, 373, 376, 380 Commitment 62 of Classification 58–​59 of Domination 101–​103, 110–​111, 115–​ 116, 119 of Racism 54–​55 of Rights 64 of Speciesism 54–​55 Illegal Alien 211–​212 Illegalization 211–​212, 218–​223 Immigration-​Industrial Complex 213–​215, 213–​214n207 Immigration 386–​387, 388–​393 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ice) 265, 276–​277 Immigration and Nationality Act (ina) 204–​205 Imperialism 58, 59, 63–​64 Industrial Revolution 21–​22 Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (idmc) 30 International Biosphere Reserve  270–​271 International Organization for Migration (iom) 186–​187, 198

Index Intersectionality 127, 135–​136, 141, 144–​145, 146, 323–​324, 329 of Racism and Speciesism 117–​120 Oppression 224–​225 Interspecies 54, 59–​60, 65 Justice 238–​239 Model of Prejudice 146–​147, 147f, 286–​ 294, 286–​287n2 Irish 126–​127, 138–​139 Islam 320n23, 327, 337 Islamization 311 Islamophobia 286–​287, 292n24, 306–​307 Italy 285–​286 Jacobs, Lynn 267–​268n21 Jennings, Francis 12–​13 Jew, Jewish 125, 127, 133–​134, 142–​143, 146 Jim Crow 10–​12 Jingoism 391–​398 Jordon, Rob 268–​269n26, 269–​270n28 Juarez, Mexico 266 Kant, Immanuel 257–​258 Keating, AnaLouise 80, 95–​96 Kessler, Rebecca 274n42 Ketcham, Christopher 267–​268n21 Keynesian (Policies) 257 Kim, Claire Jean 225 King, Martin Luther 6–​7, 6–​7n20 Ko, Alph and Syl 19–​20 Kolbert, Elizabeth 256–​257n2 Kress, Gunther 342–​343, 348–​350, 351t; see Visual Content Analysis Labor 1, 2–​3, 21–​26, 29–​30, 40, 387–​388, 392–​398 Laborers 22–​24 Lake Nyskie 4–​5 Leeuwen, Theo van 342–​343, 348–​350, 351t; see Visual Content Analysis Liberal Democracy 93 Lind, Dara 264n16 Linnaeus, Carl 58–​59 List, Rurik 274 Lockheed 265 London, Jack 2–​3 Lovell, Jeremy 275–​276n44 Lower Rio Grande Valley 271–​272, 273

413 Marketization 61–​62 Marx, Karl 22–​23, 25–​26, 29–​30 McCallum, James 270 Meat Processing 392–​395 Media Coverage 52, 69 Discourses 52–​53 Documentaries and Films 68–​69 Empathy of 52 News Media 54, 61–​62 Organizations 71 Post-​Television News 68–​69 Representation 53, 65 Spectacle 60–​61, 62, 66–​67 Storytelling Monopoly 68–​69 Technologized 61 Mediation 53–​54, 61–​62, 68–​69 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) 218, 218n239 Meretsky, Vicky J. 191–​192nn60, 216, 216–​217nn226-​227 Mesopotamia 275 Mexico 258 Migrant Caravan 342–​343, 347, 349, 351t, 354, 355, 356f, 356–​357, 357f, 358f, 358–​ 359, 359f, 360f, 360, 371–​372 Migrant Detention Industrial Complex 256–​257, 265, 274–​275 Migration, Human Climate Migrant 198, 198n108, 203–​205, 237–​238 Crisis 184–​185, 208–​209, 213, 230–​231 Definition of 185–​186 Environmental Migrant 198, 198n108, 203–​205, 237–​238 Involuntary Migration 185–​187, 185–​ 186n5, 193–​194; see also Smuggling, Trafficking Regulation of 187–​191 Voluntary 185–​186 Migration, Nonhuman 183, 230–​231, and Climate Change 198–​202, 205–​208 Assisted Migration 189–​190n73, 193–​194 Definition of 191–​194 Regulation of 194–​196 Migration Advisory Committee (mac) 392–​393 Migratory Bird Act (mba) 216–​217

414 Index Mill, J.S. 257 Miroff, Nick 272–​273n39 Mission, Texas 272–​273 Mitigation 234–​237 Morgan, J.P. 265 Morin, Karen 35 Moryson, Fynes 23–​24 Multiculturalism 259–​260, 274 Myanmar 8–​9 Nahar, al-​ 293, 294, 296t, 306–​307, 308 National Butterfly Center 272–​273 National Invasive Species Act (nisa) 220, 220n248 Nationalism 77–​79, 82, 92–​93, 96, 255–​256, 276, 336–​337, Turkish 328–​329 White Nationalism 78–​79, 82, 83–​84, 85–​86, 88, 89–​90, 91, 94–​95 National Security 212–​213, 256–​257, 263–​ 264, 266 Anti-​Terrorism 212 Terrorism 212–​213 Nature’s Ladder 15, 117–​118, 119, 128–​129, 129f, 288–​289, 308–​309, 311, 322–​323; see Great Chain of Being Neo-​Colonialism 69–​70 Neo-​Fascism 255–​256 Neo-​Liberalism 61, 67–​68, 69, 71, 257, 258 New World Order 275–​276 Nimmo, Richie 26 Nonhumans (Animals) Endangered 194–​196, 206–​207, 217–​218 Invasive 218–​221, 218–​220n241, 222–​223 Migratory 191–​195, 200, 215–​216, 223 Native 218–​220, 218–​220n241 Non-​Endangered 194–​196 Ontology 323 Sedentary 183, 191–​192, 201–​202, 205, 207 Slaughter 394–​397, 399, 400–​401 Threatened 217–​218 Trade 193–​194, 193–​194n76, 222 Non-​Refoulement, Principle of 190–​191, 190–​191n45, 203, 213 North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta) 225–​227, 255–​256, 258 North Atlantic Trade Organization (nato) 255–​256

Obama, Barack 77, 89–​90, 91, 138–​139, 267 Ocasio-​Cortez, Alexandria 76–​77, 82–​83, 84, 87, 88–​89 Operation Gatekeeper 262–​263, 270–​271 Operation Hold the Line 262–​263 Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument 94–​ 96, 270–​271 Othering 78–​79, 80–​81, 86–​87, 88, 90–​91, 94, 344, 350, 354, 363–​364, 366–​367, 372–​ 373, 376, 377, 379 Page Act 189–​190 Parasite 321–​322, 334 Parker, Noel 7–​8 Patterson, Charles 261 Pentagon 265 Peters, Robert 268n22, 270n29 Plato 55 Plumwood, Val 80–​81, 86–​87 Poast, Paul 275n43 Poland 284–​285 Posse Comitatus Act (1878) 264 Prejudice; see Xenophobia Press Daily 344, 345–​346 Photograph 342–​343, 344, 345, 348–​349, 350, 355, 362, 368, 371–​372, 380 Private Prison Industry 274 Proposition 187, 24–​25, 290–​291 Public Sphere, the 24–​25 Quijano, Aníbal 342, 346; see also Colonialism Modern World System Rabit (Rapid Border Intervention Team); see Border Race 54–​55, 58–​59, 65 Racism 6–​7, 8–​9, 10–​13, 15–​16, 18, 19–​20, 26–​ 27, 30–​31, 35–​37, 39–​40, 54–​55, 58–​59, 72, 127–​128, 140, 144, 146, 149–​150, 255–​ 257, 323–​324, 329, 336–​337 Raytheon 265 Reagan, Ronald 261–​262 real id Act (2005) 263–​264 Refuge; see Sanctuary Refugee 185–​188, 190–​191, 193–​194, 198, 203–​ 205, 207–​208, 207–​208n173, 218–​220, 225–​228, 232–​233, 237–​238,

Index Concept of 52–​53 Human 53, 54, 59–​60, 66–​67, 71 Nonhuman 51, 52–​53, 54, 59, 66–​67 Refugee Convention 30, 187–​188, 194–​195, 203–​204, 207, 210–​211, and Climate Change 183, 198 Regan, Tom 18 Rehumanization 19–​20, 184–​185, 231–​233; see also Dehumanization Relationality 96 Relocation 191, 193–​194, 222–​223 Representation of Human Suffering 54, 59–​60, 65–​66, 69–​70, 71, 73 of Nonhuman Suffering 53, 66–​67, 69–​ 70, 73 Resilience 230–​231, 234 Resistance 238–​239 Ricardo, David 257 Rifkin, Jeremy 22–​23, 267–​268n21 Rights Animal Rights 53, 70 Bearers of 72–​73 Concept of 70 Human Rights 63–​64, 69–​70 Right to Admission 188, 189–​191, 194–​195, 203–​204, 210, 211–​212 Right to Departure 188–​189, 194–​195, 196 Right to Sojourn 184, 185–​186, 188, 191, 194–​ 195, 196 Rohingya 8–​10, 11–​12, 30, 32 Roma 388–​389 Romanian Identity 388–​389 Stereotypes 386–​387, 388–​389, 392–​394 Rose, Gillian 342–​343, 344, 348–​350, 370–​ 371; see also Visual Content Analysis Rwandan Genocide 58–​59 Saadi vs. Italy 213 Sale, Kirkpatrick 261n8 Salinas, Carlos 262 Sanctuary 237–​239; see Refuge Santa Ana, Otto 108, 111–​112, 117–​118, 290–​ 291, 290–​291n18, 292 Schaeffer, Felicity Amaya 96 Schudson, Michael 24–​25 Schyler, Krista 262n10

415 Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (scope) 221 Scott, Nicol 263–​264n14 Secure Fence Act (2006) 263–​264 Securitization 184–​185, 192, 208–​209, 212–​ 215, 222–​224 Sexualization 83 Shear, Michael 265n18 Simianization 116–​117 Sinclair, Upton 2–​3 Singer, Isaac Bashevis 133, 142 Singer, Peter 18, 140, 143 Sixth Extinction Crisis 256 Slaughterhouse 289–​290, 289–​290n17, 393–​ 395, 398–​399, 403 Slave Trade 21–​22, 23–​24 Slessor, Catherine 273 Smith, Adal 257 Smith, Adam 22–​23, 61 Smith, David Livingstone 10–​11, 14–​16, 19–​20 Smuggling 186–​188, 193–​194, 222 Social Dominance Human-​Animal Relations Model (sd-​h arm) 288–​289n11, 289 Social Dominance Orientation (sdo) 289–​ 290, 289nn14-​15, 291 Social Movements Care Movements 163, 175–​177 Political Opportunity Structures 174–​175 Social Movement Theory 162–​163, 174–​175 Society of Professional Journalists 149 Solidarity as a Marketing Tool 67 as Care 65–​66 as Pity 61 as Salvation 61–​62 Communicating 60–​61, 63–​64 Concept of 53, 69–​70 Cosmopolitan 71 Critique of 63 Degree of 52 Discourses of 61–​62, 64 Flawed 53 Grand Narratives of 61 Utilitarian form 67–​68 Sommer, Will 272–​273n39 Sontag, Susan 345 Sovereignty 390–​391

416 Index Species Extinction 256 Speciesism 3–​4, 5–​7, 8–​9, 21–​22n65, 26–​27, 35–​37, 39–​40, 54–​55, 101–​103, 115, 116–​117, 119–​120, 127, 257–​258, 260–​261, 323–​324, 329, 336–​337, Critique of 69–​70 Definition 6–​7, 18 Divide 54, 65 Dualism 59 Intersected with 54, 55, 66 Language 57 Role of 5–​6, 8, 9–​10, 15–​16, 23–​24, 27, 30–​ 31, 36, 37–​38, 39 Speciesism-​as-​Framework 5–​7, 8–​10, 16, 26–​27, 35–​36, 39 Species Migration; see Migration, Nonhuman Species Overlap 16–​17 Species Traitor 127–​128, 150–​152 Spectacle 373 Springer, Simon 6–​7, 35 Statelessness 28–​30 Stephan, Walter G. 225–​227 Strandja Mountain 284 Structure of Violence 110–​111, 113–​114, 115, 116–​117, 118, 119 Subhuman 56 Taylor, Melinda 263–​264n14 Tayyar, al-​ 294, 296t, 306–​307 Threat 287–​288n10, 290–​291n19, 291, 291n20, 291n23, 292, 297, 298–​299, 311–​312 Threatened Species; see Nonhumans, Threatened Tohono O’odham Nation 270–​271 Total Liberation 276 Trafficking 186–​188, 193–​194, 222–​223 Trans-​Species Social Justice 101–​103, 120 Tripoli Zoo 27–​28 Trouwborst, Arie 205 Trudeau, Justin 231–​232 Trump, Donald 1–​2, 39, 77–​78, 82, 83, 84–​85, 86–​87, 88–​89, 90–​91, 95, 216–​218, 225, 261, 262–​263, 265–​267, 272–​273, 277 Truncated Narratives of Dominance 120 Turkey 285–​286, 295–​297 Turkic Cosmology 327 Tylenol 1–​2, 6–​7 Tyson 1–​3

UK Referendum 386–​387, 392–​393 Underground Railroad 237–​238 United Kingdom Independence Party (ukip) 391–​392 United Nations United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (unfcc) 203–​204 United Nations General Assembly (unga) 203–​204 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (unhcr) 52–​53, 187–​188, 203–​204, 232–​233 United States 1–​3, 10–​12, 18–​19, 21–​22, 24–​25, 27–​28, 30, 39, 258 Border 341–​342, 356–​357, 358–​359, 372–​ 373; see Border US-​Mexico Border Wall 256–​257, 258, 259, 261–​265, 267, 269–​270, 271–​272, 273–​275, 276–​277 War with Mexico (1846‚ 48) 261–​262 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (udhr) 188–​189 usa patriot Act 263–​264 US Departments Customs and Border Protection (cbp) 264 Department of Department 265 Department of Interior (doi) 216–​217 Fish and Wildlife Service (fws) 217–​218, 220, 270–​271, 272 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ice) 213–​214 Immigration and Naturalization Service (ins) 228–​229 National Marine Fisheries Service (noaa) 217–​218, 220 Valet, Elizabeth 275, 276n45 Van Dijk, Teun 101–​104, 105 Vaughan-​Williams, Nick 7–​8, 33–​34 Vegan 15 Veterinary Work 397–​398 Visual Content Analysis 342–​343, 348–​350, 355, 370–​371; see Kress, Gunther; Leeuwen, Theo van; Rose, Gillian Culture 344; see Rose, Gillian Voyeuristic Disposition Towards Suffering 66–​67

417

Index Vulnerability 202–​203, 206, 207–​208, 233, 237–​238 Wagner, Richard 10–​11 Wallerstein, Immanuel 342, 346; see also Colonialism Modern World System War 57 on Drugs 264 on wildlife 267–​268 Weber, Max 25–​26 Weingarten, Debbie 270–​271n32 Wells Fargo 265 White, Richard 6–​7, 35 White Nationalism; see Nationalism White Supremacism 256–​257, 266–​267 Wildlife 256

Wolfe, Cory 31, 32 World Trade Organization (wto) 222 World War ii, 63–​64, 258 Xenophobia 261, 267, 276, 293, 301–​302, 306, 310, 391–​392 Xenophon 56–​57 Zapatistas 262 Zoe 32, 33 Zone of Irreducible Indistinction 1–​2, 3; see Border Zoo 229, 347, 361–​362, 365–​366, 367f, 376–​377 Zoopolitics 5, 33