Refugees

Distressing mental state people feel when they find themselves doing things that dont fit with their opinions or what they know. An aversive drive that goads us to be consistent (King 3).
Syrian refugees on their way to Great Britain

In Europe, many countries are treating refugees as second class people. Refugees from primarily northern Africa and the Middle East seek asylum in European countries but are met with sub human living standards. These displaced people risk their life to come to Europe to find work or a better life and are met with refugee camps and overcrowded housing options. These places are often unhygienic and riddled with crime. European countries such as Great Britain, France, Italy, Spain, and Greece, where these conditions are arent doing anything to increase aid towards asylum seekers(Asylum Policy/ Spiegel Online).

OConnors The Displaced Person

OConnor uses, in the Displaced Person, the work ethic of Mr. Guizac as a way to show the resistance and discomfort of change in the American South. Mr. Guizac proposes ideals that go against everything that Mrs. McIntyre knows and believes. Mr. Guizac brings the fact that one of the Black workers is stealing turkeys and when Mr. Guizac tries to marry off his niece. Mrs. McIntyre flawed sense of social decorum is upset by Mr. Guizac tampering with Southern racial code(Liste 46). Because Mr. Guizac is an international refugee who is challenging the ideals of Mrs. McIntyres southern mentality, She has a hate towards him that is caused by her cognitive dissonance. This led To Mrs. McIntyre not saying anything to Mr. Guizac about the tractor that killed him. If any of the other workers ha been under the tractor, she would have said something. Its is because the displaced person had gone against every fiber of southern social norms that he was killed by the tractor. Mr. Guizac was only showing Mrs. McIntyre that her was were flawed and could improve her farm if she changed her ways. Mrs. McIntyre and the Shortleys believe they are superior to the Guizacs because they are American while he and his family are Polish. Characters in The Displaced Person believe that moral superiority depends on the continued integrity of the setting (Bacon 18).

Smoking kills, yes, but people still do it. Even though a risk is known people still continue with a certain action. In a study at the University of Michigan, smokers that knew the health risks classified themselves as lighter smokers. This is a way to reduce the stress of cognitive dissonance (Tagliacozzo 1). Just as Mrs. McIntyre knew the tractor was going to kill Mr. Guizac, she didnt do anything about it because it would solve her problem with him working on her farm. It relieved the stress caused by her cognitive dissonance

This map shows the amount and location of different types of displaced people in Europe. Much of the displaced people in western Europe are refugees, much of these people live in substandard living conditions (UNHCR).

Overcrowded housing for Bahraini workers

Works Cited: [1]UNHCR Welcome." UNHCR Welcome. United Nations, n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2013. http://www.unhcr.org/ [2] Bacon, Jon Lance. Flannery O'Connor and Cold War Culture. Cambridge [England: Cambridge UP, 1993. Print. [3] "Civil Rights Issues in Maine: A Briefing Summary on Hate Crimes, Racial Tensions, and Migrant/Immigrant Workers." (1996): n. pag. Web. <http://www.law.umaryland.edu/marshall/usccr/documents/cr12m55.pdf>. [4] "Asylum Policy and Treatment of Refugees in the European Union." SPIEGEL ONLINE. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2013. <http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/asylum-policy-and-treatment-of-refugees-in-the-european-union-a-926939.html>. [5] Liste, Jose. "Strategies of Displacement in Flannery O'Connor's "The Displaced Person"[6] King, Judy, and Deanna Williams. Cognitive Dissonance Theory. Power Point. Weber University [7] Tagliacozzo, Renata. "Smokers' Self-categorization and the Reduction of Cognitive Dissonance." Addictive Behaviors 4.4 (1979): 393-99. Print. [8] O'Connor, Flannery. "The Displaced Person." The Complete Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971. N. pag. Print.

Twelve Bahraini workers share one room for housing. This is common for migrant workers all over the world. This kind of living is very common for agricultural migrant workers in the U.S. A panel on the status of migrants in Maine had many findings about the workers in Maine that are congruent with the substandard living situations of many migrant workers. Some of the panelists found instances of Workers living with up to 16 people in a room about the size of a common college dorm room. They also found that 70 % of migrant families lived in substandard housing(Civil Rights Issues in Maine 9).