Africans” vs. “Europeans”: Humanitarian Narratives and the Moral Geography of the World

Moving from the assumption that borders are not mirror-like reflections of the divisions existing in the physical-cultural landscape but are fabrications people and institutions make to legitimate distinctions between them, the paper begins by identifying discourses and the ways in which humanitarian narratives usually represent Europe and Africa as “imagined meta-communities” and construct borders at imaginary levels. The article focuses on humanitarian organizations’ fundraising and awareness campaigns, the public communication of the European border control agency Frontex, and other public communications, which construct imaginaries of “Africans” and “Europeans” in different contexts through text and visual images. Finally, the paper explores how humanitarian discourse reduces vulnerable and suffering populations to voiceless victims by reifying their condition of victimhood while ignoring their history and muting their words.