Shaming Narratives and the Reconstruction of Vulnerability

• In Event: Narrative Criminology #2: Power and Resistance in Intersecting Institutional and Personal Narratives

Abstract

This paper examines Iraqi resettled refugees’ narratives of their experience of displacement and resettlement in the United States, in relation to a government that is perceived as shaming and hostile to their welfare needs. This paper is based on field observations and interviews of resettled Iraqi refugees as well as refugee resettlement support staff and case managers in Michigan. Research was conducted in Wayne County and Mccomb County, with 50 interviewees, 30 resettled refugees accessing various social welfare support programs including Cash Assistance, and 20 staff members at a community organization who assisted resettled refugees with meeting federal and state welfare mandates. In this paper, I highlight the ways in which refugee self-narratives are impacted by the institutional narrative that characterizes welfare as shameful and suspicious. The paper examines narratives of self and vulnerability which reproduce and resist the strategic narrative of entitlement and fraud that characterizes welfare recipients in the United States but which come to afflict resettled refugees upon arrival in the country.

Author

• Sara Salman, Victoria University of Wellington