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      State Crime Journal

      Volume 11, Issue 1
       
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      Making Their Lives Miserable: Structural Violence and State Racism towards Asylum Seekers from Sudan and Eritrea in Israel

      research-article
      Author(s):
      Publication date Pub:
      Journal: State Crime Journal
      Publisher: Pluto Journals
      Keywords: Asylum seekers, detention, exclusion, Israel, racism, structural violence.

            Abstract

            This article examines state racism and structural violence inflicted upon Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers in Israel by surveying various exclusionary policies and their harmful effects. It situates exclusionary state practices of migration control in Israel’s racialized social dynamics, contextualized in Israel’s origins as a settler society and subsequent national ordering. Israel’s treatment of African asylum seekers is conceptualized as structural violence through an examination of unnecessary, preventable, or avoidable harms that were differentially inflicted upon this distinct, racialized migrant group both directly and indirectly. Claims in the article are based on ethnographic research conducted with asylum seekers who had been detained in Israel’s Holot detention facility. In contrast to Israel’s purported adherence to international commitments to human rights, including asylum protections, understanding asylum seekers’ destitution through the lens of structural violence enables us to place the onus and responsibility for human suffering upon the state.

            Content

            Author and article information

            Journal
            Journal ID (doi): 10.13169/statecrime
            Title: State Crime Journal
            Abbreviated Title: SCJ
            Publisher: Pluto Journals
            ISSN (Electronic): 2046-6056
            Publication date Pub: 18 June 2022
            Publication date Collection: 2022
            Volume: 11
            Issue: 1
            Pages: 128-148
            Author notes
            Article
            DOI: 10.13169/statecrime.11.1.0128
            SO-VID: c0c0a7f6-e6f0-47c7-8d21-6f58edcc5213
            Copyright © © INTERNATIONAL STATE CRIME INITIATIVE 2022
            License:

            All content is freely available without charge to users or their institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission of the publisher or the author. Articles published in the journal are distributed under a http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

            History
            Page count
            Pages: 21
            Categories
            Subject: Articles

            ScienceOpen disciplines: Criminology
            Keywords: structural violence.,Asylum seekers,detention,Israel,racism,exclusion

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