This open access book offers an innovative account of how relief organizations' visual
depiction of Syrian displacement contributes to reproduce and reinforce a securitized account
of refugees. Through visual analysis the book demonstrates how the securitization process
takes place in three different ways. First of all even if marginally it occurs through the
reproduction of mainstream media and political accounts that have depicted refugees in terms of
threats. Secondly and more consistently through a representation of Syrian displaced people
that despite the undeniable innovative aesthetic patterns focusing on dignity and empowerment
continue to reinforce a visual narrative around refugees in terms of victimhood and passivity.
The reproduction of a securitized account takes also place through the dialectic between what
is made visible in the pictures and what is not. At the same time the book identifies visual
glimmers and minor displacements in the humanitarian discourse that have the potentiality to
produce alternative discourses on refugees and displacement beyond the mainstream securitized
ones. By showing how relief organizations' visual representation contributes to the
securitization of the refugee issue this book provides a great resource to students and
academics in migration visuality humanitarianism and securitization as well as social
scientists and policy-makers.
