Other, a refugee – contemporary forms of strangeness

Abstract

The present paper attempts to reveal who constitutes the group of excluded people in the contemporary
world. Since within the Western culture one can witness a significant increase of hostility
towards outlanders, i.e. refugees, in this paper I attempt to shed some light on the problem of
otherness and thereby disclose the reasons for treating refugees as unwanted and malevolent others. Through invoking the ideas of scholars such as Will Kymlicka, Aleksander Betts, Amin
Maalouf, and Benjamin Barber, I reveal how the language of prejudice and a certain myth of
otherness contribute to our way of thinking and our attitude towards exclusion. The reality of
the contemporary world demands from us to understand the other, to build dialogue and create
inclusion.