What is a Refugee?

Description

With the arrival in Europe of over a million refugees and asylum seekers in 2015, a sense of panic began to spread within the continent and beyond. What is a Refugee? puts these developments into historical context, injecting much-needed objectivity and nuance into contemporary debates over what is to be done. Refugees have been with us for a long time -- although only after the Great War did refugee movements commence on a large scale -- and are ultimately symptoms of the failure of the system of states to protect all who live within it. Providing a terse user's guide to the complex legal status of refugees, Maley argues that states are now reaping the consequences of years of attempts to block access to asylum through safe and 'legal' means. He shows why many mooted 'solutions' to the 'problem' of refugees -- from military intervention to the warehousing of refugees in camps -- are counterproductive, creating environments ripe for the growth of extremism among people who have been denied all hope. In a globalised world, he concludes, wealthy states have the resources to protect refugees. And, as his historical account shows, courageous individuals have treated refugees in the past with striking humanity. States today could do worse than emulate them. 'This timely, informative and highly accessible book tackles with the thorny issue of real people in the real world who move out of environments marked by pervasive fear and repression in search of places where they and their children can enjoy safe and more meaningful lives. Maley cuts through much technical jargon and legal terminology to bring to the lay reader an account of how some of the key challenges of refugee protection are being managed in the 21st century. The clarity of the writing and the use of extensive first-hand testimony gives the book a liveliness not often found in work of this nature. Highly recommended for anyone puzzled by the way in which rights of refugees seem to be acknowledged by Western States, but simultaneously criminalized in their search for asylum.'-- Dawn Chatty, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Forced Migration and former Director of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford Cover......Page 1 Half-title......Page 3 Title......Page 5 Copyright......Page 6 Contents......Page 9 Preface and Acknowledgements......Page 11 1. Introduction......Page 15 Some categories and distinctions......Page 20 Some recurring themes......Page 23 The objectives and structure of this book......Page 26 2. Defining ‘Refugees’......Page 29 International refugee law: origins......Page 30 The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)......Page 32 The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees......Page 34 Broader legal definitions......Page 38 Refugee protection under other branches of law......Page 42 Status determination by states......Page 45 Ordinary language understandings of ‘refugee’......Page 51 Philosophical definitions of ‘refugee’......Page 54 3. Exile and Refuge: A Brief Overview......Page 57 Political violence, marginalisation and the human experience......Page 58 Exile and ideology from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries......Page 62 Russian and German refugees between the World Wars......Page 70 Postwar refugee resettlement......Page 76 Internal conflict and refugee movements in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries......Page 82 4. States and Refugees......Page 89 The Westphalian system......Page 90 Bureaucracy and its failings......Page 95 Individual initiatives......Page 103 People smuggling: a product of state inaction......Page 108 5. Roots of Refugee ‘Crises’ in a Globalised World......Page 115 State disruption and violent conflict......Page 116 The fear of ‘terrorism’......Page 125 Transport, the wherewithal to travel, and human mobility......Page 131 Globalisation and its impacts......Page 134 6. Diplomacy and Refugees......Page 141 Frameworks for negotiation over refugees......Page 142 ‘Burden sharing’ and its dilemmas......Page 149 The temptation of ‘easy options’......Page 155 Refugees as agents......Page 162 7. Refugees, Intervention and the ‘Responsibility to Protect’......Page 169 The use of force......Page 170 The idea of humanitarian intervention......Page 175 The Responsibility to Protect......Page 181 ‘Intervention’ as a solution......Page 188 8. ‘When Adam Delved and Eve Span …’: Some Reflections on Closing and Opening Borders......Page 195 The costs of controlled borders......Page 196 The moral costs of refugee exclusion......Page 202 Confronting the ‘Birthright Lottery’......Page 207 A final word......Page 209 Notes......Page 213 Index......Page 267