SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Further developing Stephen McCloskey’s argument that the war on Ukraine has revealed a hierarchy of victims that is rooted in racial and other forms of prejudice, we show how refugees from the Muslim world and Africa are stereotyped as potential criminals, rapists, and terrorists. European and North American responses to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reveal a stark and highly consequential double standard. Whereas Ukrainians receive sympathetic international attention and support, Palestinians are portrayed as terrorists and their lives are ignored due to international, specifically Western, indifference to their plight. We use Agamben’s concepts of homo sacer and bare life, Butler’s notions of vulnerability, precarity, and precariousness, and Kristeva’s abject identities to probe the limits of European and North American solidarity with war refugees and other victims of conflict.