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Reconfiguring Refugees: The US Retreat from Responsibility-Sharing

Online ISBN:
9781479828029
Print ISBN:
9781479827961
Publisher:
NYU Press
Book

Reconfiguring Refugees: The US Retreat from Responsibility-Sharing

Alise Coen
Alise Coen

Associate Professor of Political Science

University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
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Published online:
23 January 2025
Published in print:
20 August 2024
Online ISBN:
9781479828029
Print ISBN:
9781479827961
Publisher:
NYU Press

Abstract

After decades of acting as a core contributor to global refugee resettlement, why did the United States dramatically retreat from refugee protection following the 2016 U.S. presidential election? Reconfiguring Refugees offers an in-depth case study illuminating a pivotal moment in refugee responsibility-sharing and migration governance. The discriminatory policies and drastic cuts to refugee admissions after the 2016 election were not exclusively wedded to the particularities of the Trump administration but innovated and built upon the foundations laid by previous discourses and policy trajectories. Examining narratives that embed refugees within racial hierarchies, gendered binaries, and partisan logics, the book shows how divergent and evolving meanings of refugeehood in domestic politics shape interpretations of international “refugee crises,” constrain refugee policy debates, and influence possibilities of bipartisan support. In tracing the reconfiguration of meanings around refugees among political elites and civil society actors in the U.S. context, the book describes multiple layers of threatening representations which have worked together to cast Syrian and other predominantly Muslim refugees as terrorist infiltrators, dangers to white Christian hegemony, and symbols of liberal Democratic values. The book shows how local political actors harness assumptions around gender, religion, and racial difference, using refugees to bolster partisan identities. More broadly, Reconfiguring Refugees advances our understanding of how (sub)national identity forces intervene in global migration governance and shape responses to displacement.

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