The current Syrian Civil War and the refugee crisis it has fueled is the latest in a long series of crises to affect the region, stretching back to the early twentieth century. Among the many terrible images generated by the conflict, it is scarcely possible to forget those of the refugee camps in Turkey and Greece. But most poignant of all is surely the photograph of the three-year-old Syrian-Kurdish refugee Alan Kurdi, whose body washed ashore near Bodrum on September 2, 2015. The anthropologist Miriam Ticktin has argued that Alan’s body, in its immobility, connotes the innocence and passivity that Western spectators look for when deciding on the “deserving” character of a refugee. She argues that compassion, an emotional surge, is required for the Western gaze to legitimize refugee status. By contrast, the greater the rationalization of the predicament of displaced persons and the more they are contextualized as active, sentient, rational human beings, the greater the risk that they will be perceived as problematic. The deserving refugee mutates, almost instantaneously, into a potentially undeserving economic migrant. In order, then, for refugees to maintain a constituency of public support in the states into which they would like to migrate, emotions need to be maintained. As Ticktin shows, the refugee crisis is located less in the refugees’ country of or-

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“接受他们是完全不可能的”：拯救穆萨达格难民和欧洲人道主义的帝国主义

当前的叙利亚内战及其引发的难民危机是影响该地区的一系列危机中的最新一次，可追溯到 20 世纪初。在冲突产生的许多可怕画面中，几乎不可能忘记土耳其和希腊的难民营。但最令人心酸的肯定是三岁的叙利亚库尔德难民艾伦库尔迪的照片，他的尸体于 2015 年 9 月 2 日被冲上博德鲁姆附近的岸边。西方观众在决定难民的“应得”性格时所寻求的纯真和被动。她认为，要使难民地位合法化，西方凝视需要同情心，一种情感的激增。相比之下，流离失所者的困境越是合理化，他们越是积极、有知觉、理性的人，他们被视为有问题的风险就越大。应得的难民几乎立即变异为潜在的不值得的经济移民。因此，为了让难民在他们想要移居的州中保持公众的支持，需要保持情绪。正如 Ticktin 所示，难民危机发生在难民所在国或—— 难民要想在他们希望移居的国家保持公众的支持，就需要保持情绪。正如 Ticktin 所示，难民危机发生在难民所在国或—— 难民要想在他们希望移居的国家保持公众的支持，就需要保持情绪。正如 Ticktin 所示，难民危机发生在难民所在国或——