Xenophobia and the political Refugee
Xenophobia: fear of foreigners or foreign things. (Merriam-Webster) A man from Uganda, say, expresses objections to the actions of a cruel, dictatorial regime and is marked for death by the state police. As he feels the danger coming ever closer, he makes a run for the border and is in Kenya ... illegally, of course. He ends up in a UN supported refugee camp where conditions are appalling, and the future looks bleak. Tortured by the possibility that his family in Uganda will be punished for his escape, he lies awake at night and considers going back and turning himself in. It’s possible that there’s no better way to share the earth equitably than to divide it into nations with borders and to create laws surrounding the crossing of those borders. But at the same time, it makes difficult the necessary accommodation for natural disasters—and the natural world generally—which knows no borders. Tragically, it provides handy justification for racism, religious xenophobia and the es...