Paper short abstract:

Based on fieldwork in Tel Aviv and media reports in Germany, this paper interrogates whether new forms of sustained solidarity have emerged in reaction to the contemporary refugee crisis or whether we predominately experience a deepening of the white-saviour complex.

Paper long abstract:

A number of years before the contemporary 'refugee crisis' in Europe, a country on the continent's imagined fringes, Israel, perceived by many then refugees as 'the Europe we can walk to', experienced an unprecedented movement of non-Jewish refugees from Eritrea and Sudan. In fact, in terms of media and public representations, and political responses, the whole scale of the contemporary European response, from Budapest to Berlin, could be observed in sharp focus in the reaction of different sections of Israeli society, from hostile rejection to warm welcome.

This paper interrogates both dynamics based on fieldwork in Tel Aviv and subsequent analysis of media representations in Germany. It argues that while indeed new forms of solidarity have emerged, the majority of responses across the whole spectrum has been shaped by similar perceptions of the 'stranger' as a projection of either people's hate and fear, or an urge to 'do good' that in essence represents a version of the white-saviour-complex. The latter easily turns to the former once the 'deserving stranger' acts in ways that contradict certain normative settings. New forms of sustained solidarity have emerged mainly in spaces where professional expertise guided engagement with refugees and migrants, or where people literally welcomed refugees into their homes and lives, and it is here that new conceptions of citizenship that transcend a global order that enforces divisions between 'them' and 'us' has come to the fore. These dynamics raise some important questions about volunteering and its impact on public perceptions and welcoming cultures.