In this thesis, I investigate how three European citizen aid groups (Collective Aid, Refugee Women’s Centre, and No Name Kitchen) handle the asymmetrical power relationships between Western volunteers and non-Western people on the move. Inspired by postcolonial international relations literature and previous research on power asymmetries in humanitarian aid, I conduct a discourse analysis guided by the four categories “assuming equality through horizontal discourses”, “reconstituting social subjects”, “putting minds into motion”, and “civil disobedience”. I analyze the citizen aid groups’ online content, mostly social media posts, along with semi-structured interviews which I conducted with representatives from all three citizen aid groups. I conclude that two out of three Western citizen aid groups try to mitigate the interactional power inequalities between themselves and non-Western people on the move through their practices of humanitarian aid. Yet, all three groups show awareness of power hierarchies and attempt to mitigate them on a structural level by being openly political and denouncing the injustices facing people on the move in Europe.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mau-54844 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Dahl, Martine |
| Publisher | Malmö universitet, Institutionen för globala politiska studier (GPS) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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