Startseite Literaturwissenschaften Resettled Refugees in the American South: Discourses of Victimization and Transgression in Clarkston, Georgia
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Resettled Refugees in the American South: Discourses of Victimization and Transgression in Clarkston, Georgia

  • Sarah Ryniker
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The Aliens Within
Ein Kapitel aus dem Buch The Aliens Within

Abstract

Clarkston, Georgia, has become an unlikely home to refugees from over 50 countries in the last 30 years. While the city itself has evolved, so have its representations of refugees, challenging imaginative geographies and complicating the once black-white binary description of the US South. Within the South, which itself was once deemed an “internal spatial other” (Jansson 2003), there are representations of refugees and immigrants constructed as both assets and adversaries to local communities. This chapter analyzes 14 years of Clarkston City Council minutes to examine the multiple competing representations of refugees and immigrants constructed through local politics over time. Council members and residents construct refugees and immigrants as beneficial to the local economy and construe their “diversity” as an economic advantage; these members also use coded language to cast refugees as both racialized victims and transgressors. Inherent in the city’s representation of refugees is a neoliberal multicultural representation of the town itself. These findings highlight a need to include the marginalized communities’ voices within local decision-making, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a need for more scholarly attention to neoliberal multiculturalism at the local scale.

Abstract

Clarkston, Georgia, has become an unlikely home to refugees from over 50 countries in the last 30 years. While the city itself has evolved, so have its representations of refugees, challenging imaginative geographies and complicating the once black-white binary description of the US South. Within the South, which itself was once deemed an “internal spatial other” (Jansson 2003), there are representations of refugees and immigrants constructed as both assets and adversaries to local communities. This chapter analyzes 14 years of Clarkston City Council minutes to examine the multiple competing representations of refugees and immigrants constructed through local politics over time. Council members and residents construct refugees and immigrants as beneficial to the local economy and construe their “diversity” as an economic advantage; these members also use coded language to cast refugees as both racialized victims and transgressors. Inherent in the city’s representation of refugees is a neoliberal multicultural representation of the town itself. These findings highlight a need to include the marginalized communities’ voices within local decision-making, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a need for more scholarly attention to neoliberal multiculturalism at the local scale.

Kapitel in diesem Buch

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Table of Contents V
  3. The Aliens Within: Danger, Disease, and Displacement in Representations of the Racialized Poor 1
  4. Danger: Stigmatizing the Racialized Underclass
  5. Bong Joon Ho Meets Richard Wright: Spatialized Poverty in The Host and Parasite or ‘The Koreans Who Lived Underground’ 21
  6. “Holes Swarming with Human Beings”: Racing the Urban Underclass in the Antebellum City Mystery Novel 45
  7. The Black Body as Embodied Sound: Musicking as Personal and Communal Agency against the Othering of the Lettered Gaze in Puerto Rico in the Early Twentieth Century 67
  8. Representations of the “Aliens Within”: Romanian Jews and Roma in Radu Jude’s Cinema 85
  9. Alien Horrors: Lovecraft and the Racialized Underclass in the Age of Trump 113
  10. Disease: Pathologizing the Other
  11. Bounding Boukman: The Diseasing of Haitian Bodies in Representations of Race and Culture, from Zombies to Disaster Capitalism 135
  12. De-Pathologizing Diversity: A Critical Analysis of Racialized Discourses of Difference and Deviance in The Black Border and the Imperative of Reframing Approaches to Linguistic Variation 161
  13. Sowing the Seeds: Illness as Social Imbalance and Instrument of Social Change in Octavia Butler’s Speculative Fiction 187
  14. Aliens Without and Within: Abjection from Tetter to Tumor in Toni Morrison’s Novels 209
  15. African American Women and Stigma: Reactions to Medical Targeting for HIV and COVID-19 233
  16. Displacement: Constructing and Countering Collapse
  17. Spilling Over: Morality and Epidemiology in Ancient and Contemporary Contexts 255
  18. Socrates in the City of Bones: Plato’s Republic and August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean 277
  19. Displacement and Discipline: Refugees and the Unemployed in Living and Public Spaces in Greece 293
  20. Resettled Refugees in the American South: Discourses of Victimization and Transgression in Clarkston, Georgia 315
  21. Making the Beams of Architectural Poetry out of the Rubble of Displacement: Czesław Miłosz, Taha Muhammad Ali, and the Lyric of Constructed World Citizenry 337
  22. Notes on Contributors 351
  23. Index 355
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110789799-015

Kapitel in diesem Buch

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Table of Contents V
  3. The Aliens Within: Danger, Disease, and Displacement in Representations of the Racialized Poor 1
  4. Danger: Stigmatizing the Racialized Underclass
  5. Bong Joon Ho Meets Richard Wright: Spatialized Poverty in The Host and Parasite or ‘The Koreans Who Lived Underground’ 21
  6. “Holes Swarming with Human Beings”: Racing the Urban Underclass in the Antebellum City Mystery Novel 45
  7. The Black Body as Embodied Sound: Musicking as Personal and Communal Agency against the Othering of the Lettered Gaze in Puerto Rico in the Early Twentieth Century 67
  8. Representations of the “Aliens Within”: Romanian Jews and Roma in Radu Jude’s Cinema 85
  9. Alien Horrors: Lovecraft and the Racialized Underclass in the Age of Trump 113
  10. Disease: Pathologizing the Other
  11. Bounding Boukman: The Diseasing of Haitian Bodies in Representations of Race and Culture, from Zombies to Disaster Capitalism 135
  12. De-Pathologizing Diversity: A Critical Analysis of Racialized Discourses of Difference and Deviance in The Black Border and the Imperative of Reframing Approaches to Linguistic Variation 161
  13. Sowing the Seeds: Illness as Social Imbalance and Instrument of Social Change in Octavia Butler’s Speculative Fiction 187
  14. Aliens Without and Within: Abjection from Tetter to Tumor in Toni Morrison’s Novels 209
  15. African American Women and Stigma: Reactions to Medical Targeting for HIV and COVID-19 233
  16. Displacement: Constructing and Countering Collapse
  17. Spilling Over: Morality and Epidemiology in Ancient and Contemporary Contexts 255
  18. Socrates in the City of Bones: Plato’s Republic and August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean 277
  19. Displacement and Discipline: Refugees and the Unemployed in Living and Public Spaces in Greece 293
  20. Resettled Refugees in the American South: Discourses of Victimization and Transgression in Clarkston, Georgia 315
  21. Making the Beams of Architectural Poetry out of the Rubble of Displacement: Czesław Miłosz, Taha Muhammad Ali, and the Lyric of Constructed World Citizenry 337
  22. Notes on Contributors 351
  23. Index 355
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Heruntergeladen am 22.9.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110789799-015/html
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