Open AccessUnpacking Refugee Flight: Critical Content Analysis of Picturebooks Featuring Refugee Protagonists
Author(s) -
Ekaterina StrekalovaHughes
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
international journal of multicultural education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.472
H-Index - 16
ISSN - 1934-5267
DOI - 10.18251/ijme.v21i2.1871
Subject(s) - refugee , persecution , agency (philosophy) , power (physics) , unpacking , identity (music) , representation (politics) , narrative , sociology , bureaucracy , political science , gender studies , law , social science , aesthetics , linguistics , politics , literature , art , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics
In this paper, I analyze representations of refugee flight in children’s literature to extrapolate related assumptions about power and agency. The findings suggest that picturebooks tend to adhere to refugee flight as a bureaucratic process and refugee as an institutionally imposed standardized identity. Specifically, stories canonically mirror the legal UNHCR definition of a refugee, establishing forced-to-flee narratives, centering persecution, and corroborating well-founded fear. Collectively, stories mask what leads to persecution and distribute power to essentialized “safe” countries resettling refugees. The implications call for diversity of representation and invite teachers to critically unpack contexts of refugee flight.