The Politics of Refugee Labelling: Reimagining Refugees’ Struggles in Host Lands

Abstract

The treatment of refugees in host lands and their belongingness play a critical role in literary texts concerned with refugees’ experiences. Merging literary texts with political theory, this thesis explores the endless struggles that refugees go through in their new states in the West, especially in the U.S. Despite the fact that they are supposed to be given shelter and protection in the host states under international rule, these displaced groups of people, who are forcibly driven out of their countries of origin, face the same fear of violence and persecution in the host countries. Through a close scrutiny of the refugee experiences depicted in four selected literary texts, I argue on the ambiguity of refugee-citizenship in the host states where refugees, losing their own roots are brought into the paradigm of global politics that further complicates their belongingness into political, social and economic arena because of being labelled as refugees.