Reading The Good Deed Through Biopolitical Governance: Rethinking the Refugee Narrative Beyond Humanitarianism

ABSTRACT This article develops a biopolitical reading of Helen Benedict's The Good Deed (2024) and argues that the novel presents the refugee camp not as an exceptional humanitarian space but as a dispersed apparatus of governance that operates through documentation, biometric capture, translation procedures, and humanitarian interventions. By analyzing scenes of waiting, interviews, and evidentiary tests, the article shows how refugees are made continuously visible as administrative cases although their political standing remains suspended. It further argues that humanitarian action functions as a relay of border power, and that benevolence is converted into selective privileges that ease passage without changing structural constraints. By situating the novel within debates on border governance and contemporary refugee literature, the article concludes that contemporary refugee fiction can generate theoretical insight into the everyday infrastructures that regulate mobility, credibility, and the distribution of vulnerability and protection.