I have focused in a bit with “Statelessness” and the actual figure of the refugee. I read a portion of the Yen Le Espiritu work on Refugees/Statelessness and it really helped put the whole idea into a unique context for me.
 Relational Analysis (Statelessness/Islam(Yazidi))
A refugee camp is a space of “Bare Life,” according to Yen Le Espiritu, it is a place that can all too quickly transform from a benevolent place of shelter to a prison unbeknownst to its’ captives. In the Greek Yazidi camp, freedoms still exist; but, in a distrusting world, how can a group of stateless refugees ever be accepted anywhere? The circumstances that landed the Yazidis in their current situation as stateless refugees can unequivocally be tied to their being a religious minority.
To be a refugee is a tragic circumstance, but to be a stateless refugee is by far a greater predicament. We can define a stateless refugee as one who was displaced by conflict or persecution from a place, and that by the law of that very place, they can no longer call it home. For examples of such a conflict one must look to a place like Israel, or even California, places where the indigenous land owners were displaced in favor of a different people. These conflicts set a historical precedence of disavowal and can lead to future problems. For instance, the Yazidis are ethnic Kurds, their religion is a combination of Islam, Christianity and Judaism; hence, they were considered separate from the traditionally Islamic nation they lived in. As a result, ISIL forces displaced this minority; and, the tenuous locale the Yazidi’s once existed in vanished indefinitely. The Yazidis’ identification as a religious minority occasion a déjà vu effect when one reflects on similar predicaments in history.
To see what I mean, we must once again look to Espiritu who made many acute observations about exactly what refugees were and what statelessness looked like. Specifically, as was pointed out, refugees can fall into different categories based upon what their goals are. In the case of Vietnamese, as Espiritu points out, those displaced were looking for a better place to raise families and work during the Vietnam War. The Yazidis fall into a similar category now, as they are just looking for a place to live peacefully and find subsistence without having to fear for the safety of their families.
An interesting distinction is that the Vietnamese were perceived as “good” refugees by countries like the USA who took and relocated them throughout their country. If a group as a whole can be idealized as having the potential to benefit the country in which they are being resettled, then they are deemed as “good” refugees.  In 80s America, the “good” refugees were those happy and willing to work low wage dead end jobs and happily, as it was a greater alternative to war-torn Vietnam. This narrative of the “good” refugee ran in tandem with the ideal that America was doing a service to the global community by taking these people in and sheltering them. The reality was that the United States was putting them in advantageous low-income resettlements that, in addition, the Vietnamese inherently excelled at by the United States’ definition of what a refugee should do. This “good” refugee ideal brings up an important question in relation to the Yazidi religious and stateless minority: are they a “good” minority and will they be “good” refugees?
This question is an unfortunate one, mainly due to the fact that the Yazidi population is largely interpreted as Islamic. This facet of their culture should not be a significant deterrent towards countries resettling these stateless people; but, it is the most important aspect in being considered, because it stirs the most pots. Once again, considering the work of Espiritu, we can look at how the figure of the refugee was developed before looking to the modern era. In the early refugee camps that were put together in Southeast Asia to temporarily harbor those looking for eventual resettlement, problems arose. These problems were due to the fact that the countries with the camps did not want a large population of foreign people to be part of their seemingly exclusive society. Thus, in order to keep the refugees separate, the camps ambitions for temporary asylum became more and more permanent and eventually began denying these people basic fundamental rights in order to keep them from “mingling”. In other words, these bastions of peace and hope for the refugee became prisons from which there was no real escape, unless, however, some benevolent government decided to allow these condemned people a chance at a new life. These conditions caused “prisoner” uprisings where these refugees would rise up against their would-be overlords in attempt to seize the rights that were unjustly removed from them. These uprisings, which one would hope would be accepted as justified by the public, were universally looked down upon. These acts of rebellion occasioned the development of refugees becoming adjudged as “brutal killers”.
This dramatic definition of people looking for safety from conflict was just the beginning. In our contemporary era, developed nations now look upon minorities as hostile and dangerous people to be treated with caution and not immediately welcomed. If one needs example, look no further then the executive orders targeting religious minorities, specifically Muslims, from even traveling to and from the United States. The Islamic refugee has undergone bedevilment due to radical Islamic groups that were the ones that initially drove groups like the Yazidis into Europe.
Thus, we come full circle to the stateless refugee in Greece. These people who now have no home to go to are considered for resettlement; not, however, for the value of the humans they are, rather, for the political capital they may be worth. Some peoples’ misinformed prejudice of the past now causes refugees to be publically perceived as troublesome interlopers. Consequently, rather than refugees being seen as fellow human fleeing hopeless violence, they are assumed to be the very harbingers of death and destruction that drove them from their homes in the first place. Â
