CHAPTER ONE Supporting Refugees and Asylum Seekers in an Era of Backlash An Introduction Kathryn R. Libal and S. Megan Berthold The Precarious Quest to Support Refugees and Asylum Seekers One of the most profound aspects of globalization in the early 21st century has been efforts of individuals and families to migrate across borders seeking refuge, safety, and corresponding economic stability. The “Global North,” or the so-called receiving countries of this migration, continues to dominate the formal politics of opening or closing borders and defining the rules for who can be admitted or excluded. Since what is known as the “European migration crisis” began in 2015, European states, the United States, and other countries have vacillated between welcoming and exclusionary policies, increasingly shaped by public attitudes toward immigrants and refugees (Vollmer and Karakayali 2018). Images of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants are deployed in mainstream media outlets and on Facebook and Twitter, both by those who support developing strong humanitarian and human rights–based responses to forced migration and by those who oppose admissions (Krzyżanowski, Triandafyllidou, and Wodak 2018). It is challenging to stay abreast of the global politics of migration—the scale of political reaction in many countries is profound and rapidly
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