The wave of unrest that encapsulated the entire Middle East provided us with grave crisis of war and engendered the number of victims fleeing from war zones to other countries as Refugees. In the status quo, Syrian refugees make all the headlines due to their movement to other countries on a mass scale. An image like that of a toddler wearing casual clothes on a dull day and lying dead on a Turkish shore revealed how Refugees are drowning each day in their attempt to flee Syria. Such images in the media reflect upon the anguish of these victims and urge us to understand the need of Syrian refugees to flee war-stricken areas. At the same time, videos like that of dozens of young, middle-eastern men causing a mayhem in Frankfurt, a German city, and harming the public infrastructure depicts Syrian refugees as a catalyst to already exacerbating security situation. This type of media representation instills anger and fear among the natives of the respective host countries, and calls into question their decision to uphold moral values considering the implications.
Such media representations portray Syrian Refugees in two ways: one, as a moral responsibility of the host country and the other, as an undesirable burden on them. Sources discussing the obligations of countries to accept a free refugee inflow argue from a moral standpoint the need to demand cultural integration and eradicate xenophobia, which is prejudice against people from other countries. The sources labeling refugees as an undesirable burden attempt to persuade their readers of the ways refugees cause chaos and instability. This paper will work to go through the varying media representations of the Syrian Refugees, stating the different ways people look at these refugees, to unveil a thorough image of the crisis at hand.
Syrian refugees get a lot of sympathy from multiple media outlets, which highlight the calamity in Syria and how innocent people are affected by it. In an academic article named “Double Vision: Refugee Crisis and the afterimages of Endless War”, published by Johns Hopkins University, writer Angela Naimou closely analyses the ongoing refugee crisis. Writer’s primary perception of the Syrian Refugees is of a set of people who are deprived of their right to live in both their war-stricken home and the much safer Europe. As a result of this, the Refugees become subject to hazardous conditions in their desperate attempt to move to a safer place. In order to justify the need of the Syrian Refugees to flee Syria, Naimou writes “The refugees are subject to violence both spectacular and banal…” Such vocabulary adds intensity to her sympathetic representation of the Syrian Refugees. In order to draw an image of refugee’s journey to their target countries, Naimou writes “Breaking the rules they know are impossible to follow in order to survive, they gamble on smugglers, buy fake passports, cross more borders”. By saying that the rules present in the status quo make it harder for refugees to survive, she uses a pitying tone to depict Syrian Refugees as people who face human rights violations.
Soon after describing the miserable condition of these refugees, Naimou shifts her focus to the criticism of the host countries who are denying these refugees to be their moral responsibility. With this intention, she writes “Refugees are evidence of the need for flight from the very war zones that the United States and Europe have helped establish” Targeting Europe further, Naimou labels Europe as the “Europe Fortress” that she writes is divided into three parts- “in Zone One are the wealthier states of northwestern Europe, Zone Two the poorer EU states to the south and east, and Zone Three the countries just outside the periphery such as Ukraine, Morocco, Turkey, and Libya, the zone in which the majority of Middle Eastern and African migrants and refugees had been managed before the crisis.” Her use of the word “Fortress” to describe Europe sends out an impression of how some European Countries try to ‘protect’ themselves against Refugees by labeling them as an undesirable burden. Consequently, she enables the reader to draw a picture of Europe as a secured castle that only accommodates chosen people and little follows the ideals of a cosmopolitan society. Her well-structured arguments help her create a sympathetic image of the Syrian refugees; describing the plight of the Syria Refugees and then describing how the supposedly host countries are somehow responsible for the condition of Syrian Refugees.