The contributors of Like an Animal challenge most fundamental concepts in the fields of racism, dehumanization, borders, displacement, and refugees that rest on the assumption of humanism. They show how we can bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice at the border. The goal of this interdisciplinary collection is twofold. First, to invite border/migration studies to consider a broader social justice perspective that includes nonhuman animals. Second, to start a discussion if nonhumans maybe refugees of a kind and how humans can address nonhumans’ interests and needs from the perspective of addressing refugee issues. As capitalism and the climate crisis are taking a catastrophic toll on the planet, this timely volume exposes the alternative origins of violence that lie at the heart of the planet’s destruction.
Natalie Khazaal is an assistant professor at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, USA. She is a 2019-20 American Council of Learned Societies fellow and the author of Pretty Liar: Television, Language, and Gender in Wartime Lebanon (Syracuse, 2018).
Núria Almiron is an associate professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) in Barcelona, Spain. She is the co-editor of Critical Animal and Media Studies (Routledge, 2016) and Public Relations and Climate Change Denial (Routledge, 2020).
List of Figures and Tables
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Natalie Khazaal
PART 1 Deconstructing the Human/Nonhuman Divide
1 Communicating Solidarity: The Ethics of Representing Human and Nonhuman Distant Suffering
Núria Almiron
2 Inferiority by Association: Animals, Migrants, and Chicana/Ecofeminist Possibilities
Garrett Bunyak
3 “Like an Animal”: Tropes for Delegitimization
Atsuko Matsuoka and John Sorenson
4 Species Traitor?: Foundations and Tensions in Human/Animal Scholarship and Advocacy
Debra Merskin
PART 2 Insights into the Politics, Advocacy, and Laws Related to the Divide
5 Care Movements, Climate Crisis, and Multi-Species Refugees
Erin M. Evans
6 Global Migration Crises, Nonhuman Animals, and the Role of Law
Charlotte E. Blattner
7 The Costs of a Wall: The Impact of Pseudo-Security Policies on Communities, Wildlife, and Ecosystems on the US-Mexico Border
Steven Best
PART 3 Media Representations of the Divide and the Potential Points of Its Disruption
8 The Press outside the West: Displacement, Refugees, and Nonhuman Animals in Bulgaria and Lebanon
Natalie Khazaal
9 Parasitic Breeding Herds: The Representation of Syrian Refugees on Turkish Social Media
Sezen Ergin Zengin
10 Seeking a Place to Live: Visual Representations of Human and Anymal Migrants in Images from the International Daily Press
Laura Fernández
11 Bordering: Brexit and Human-Nonhuman Entanglements in UK Press Coverage of Romania
Claire Parkinson
Index
All interested in integrated approaches to social justice, human rights, animal rights, animal ethics, communication for peace, ecology and environmental activism, displacement, migration, borders, and international relations.