Playing the Victim: NGOs and Narratives of Victimization

• In Event: Gendered Political Economy

Abstract

Neoliberal reforms have created novel structures of governance. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and states are now entangled in complex relationships with local governments and international entities to execute their program missions. At times, these actors have conflicting motivations and complicated relationships with each other. This phenomenon is apparent in states that are seen as corrupt. How do NGOs balance these conflicts and tensions amongst these actors, especially when they are distrusting of each other?

I argue that emotions are central to navigating these complex relationships. NGO actors construct victim narratives, which place the NGO as the protagonist that battles enemies on the international and state level. These narratives elicit affective responses from both international and local audiences by drawing on anxieties about state corruption and Global North dominance. This allows NGOs to strategically distance themselves from the state and international entities while, simultaneously, working in concert with them.

I evaluate this argument using data from participant observation at two NGOs and eighteen interviews with government and NGO workers from anti-human trafficking NGOs in the Philippines. I find that NGOs construct three main antagonists in their victimization narratives: the corrupt Global South bureaucratic system, terrorist traffickers, and a “pimp lobby” from the Global North. NGOs personify these groups and describe them using stereotypes associated with men from the Global South and men of color from the Global North-- perverse, dangerous and culturally backwards. These narratives elicit fear and anxiety in order to garner support for their cause while obscuring the ways in which NGOs work with state and international entities. Ultimately, their usage of this racialized and gendered rhetoric reifies problematic stereotypes. This novel empirical framework allows us to evaluate how NGOs navigate complex forms of governance and how they may inadvertently widen power differentials in the process. Without taking seriously the role of these emotional narratives, we risk missing an important way that inequality is reinforced in the larger humanitarian landscape.

Author

• Marcy Quiason, University of Kansas