Editing Refugee (section)

===Representation===
The category of "refugee" tends to have a universalizing effect on those classified as such. It draws upon the common humanity of a mass of people in order to inspire public empathy, but doing so can have the unintended consequence of silencing refugee stories and erasing the political and historical factors that led to their present state.<ref name="Malkki 1996">{{cite journal |last1=Malkki |first1=Liisa H. |title=Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization |journal=Cultural Anthropology |date=1996 |volume=11 |issue=3 |pages=377–404|doi=10.1525/can.1996.11.3.02a00050 }}</ref> Humanitarian groups and media outlets often rely on images of refugees that evoke emotional responses and are said to speak for themselves.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Feldman |first1=Allen |title=On Cultural Anesthesia: From Desert Storm to Rodney King |journal=American Ethnologist |date=1994 |volume=21 |issue=2 |pages=408–18|doi=10.1525/ae.1994.21.2.02a00100 }}</ref> The refugees in these images, however, are not asked to elaborate on their experiences, and thus, their narratives are all but erased.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Fiddian-Qasmiyeh |first1=Elena |display-authors=etal |title=The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies |date=2014 |publisher=Oxford University Press}}</ref> From the perspective of the international community, "refugee" is a performative status equated with injury, ill health, and poverty. When people no longer display these traits, they are no longer seen as ideal refugees, even if they still fit the legal definition. For this reason, there is a need to improve current humanitarian efforts by acknowledging the "narrative authority, historical agency, and political memory" of refugees alongside their shared humanity.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Malkki |first1=Liisa H. |title=Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization |journal=Cultural Anthropology |date=1996 |volume=11 |issue=3 |page=398|doi=10.1525/can.1996.11.3.02a00050 }}</ref> Dehistorizing and depoliticizing refugees can have dire consequences. Rwandan refugees in Tanzanian camps, for example, were pressured to return to their home country before they believed it was truly safe to do so. Despite the fact that refugees, drawing on their political history and experiences, claimed that Tutsi forces still posed a threat to them in Rwanda, their narrative was overshadowed by the U.N. assurances of safety. When the refugees did return home, reports of reprisals against them, land seizures, disappearances, and incarceration abounded, as they had feared.<ref name="Malkki 1996"/>