What is it about?
This article examines how U.S. humanitarian activists depicted Salvadoran refugees, who fled the violence of Salvadoran civil war in the 1980s. It demonstrates that activists portrayed Salvadoran refugees as feminine and in need of rescue. Activists focused on the stories of refugee women and children, even though the majority of Salvadoran refugees entering the United States at the time were men. Depictions of refugee women and children as innocent and vulnerable allowed activists to elicit empathy from the mainstream American public and navigate longstanding anti-Latina/o fears.
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Why is it important?
By approaching Salvadoran refugees historically, my work shows illuminates the complexity of humanitarian aid to refugees. In trying to assist refugees, humanitarians employed essentialist rhetoric while ignoring certain realities of the refugee experience.
Perspectives
I hope this article makes people question the way the ways in which humanitarian organizations depict refugees in current refugee crises. This discourse has a long history and it's important to question it.
Rachael De La Cruz
University of California Irvine
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: No Asylum for the Innocent: Gendered Representations of Salvadoran Refugees in the 1980s, American Behavioral Scientist, September 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0002764217732106.
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