Citizens' Auto-Affection in the Pedagogy of "Playing Refugee": Simulating the Experience of Others from Oneself, for Oneself

abstract:Education campaigns about refugees in states of refuge increasingly involve experiential learning components known as "refugee simulation exercises." These simulations aid citizens in the pedagogy of their own citizenship by providing opportunities for them to feel their own legal personality as inclusive of those displaced persons seeking such emplacement on those terms. Refugee simulation exercises function in the form of "auto-affection," permitting citizens to feel the supposed globality of their position through another as self. Consequently, rather than developing a true understanding or appreciation for how the self as citizen stands with respect to others displaced from that position, these simulations promote the internalization of refugee "problems" as those of the citizens, permitting no actual confrontation with experiences of refugees, the objectification of refugees, and the substitution of auto-affective performance for experience of the relations between citizens and refugees that are always already available to and troubling for citizens.