We are encouraged to think of refugees as resilient people with agency and capacity for flourishing, rather than passive victims needing help. This framing purports to uphold and celebrate refugees’ humanity. But some scholars worry that it problematically serves to demand resilience from refugees, normalize their displacement, and legitimate state bordering practices. This article builds on this critique by examining how powerful actors have long attributed resilience to vulnerable others to legitimate domination and control. I focus on the deployment of resilience-talk by white enslavers and their supporters to justify Black enslavement in the American South. Their philosophical, climatological, and epidemiological arguments about the resilient Black slave were supplemented with a claim that Black people could not survive liberation in the American North. I probe the resonances of this resilience-talk with contemporary invocations of the resilience of refugees in the Global South, and their supposed non-resilience in the Global North.

中文翻译：

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韧性与统治：种族奴隶制​​在难民排斥中的共鸣


我们被鼓励将难民视为有韧性的人，具有蓬勃发展的能力和能力，而不是需要帮助的被动受害者。这一框架旨在维护和颂扬难民的人性。但一些学者担心，它在要求难民恢复能力、使他们的流离失所正常化以及国家边界做法合法化方面存在问题。本文以这一批评为基础，探讨了强大的行为者长期以来如何将弱势群体的恢复力归因于合法的统治和控制。我重点关注白人奴隶主及其支持者如何部署复原力言论，以证明美国南部黑人奴役的合理性。他们关于黑人奴隶坚韧不拔的哲学、气候学和流行病学论点还补充说，黑人无法在美国北部的解放中幸存下来。我探讨了这种韧性谈话与当代对南半球难民的韧性以及北半球难民的不韧性的呼应。