What Do We Owe to Refugees?. David Owen

us to return to the ethical and political challenges of refugee protection with a renewed understanding of the ground, justification and value of the international refugee regime – and of what it requires of us. The argument unfolds across four chapters.

Structure of the Book

The first chapter begins with an historical overview of the making of the modern refugee regime that aims to make sense of the grip that the humanitarian and political pictures of refugeehood hold on us by tracking their roots and the practical interactions between them. This historical reconstruction of the modern refugee regime provides the basis for the second chapter, which offers a conceptual reconstruction of the normative function of the institution of refugeehood that aims to move beyond the humanitarian–political opposition. Central to this account is the role of this institution in relation to the conditions of political legitimacy of the international order of states. Refugees, it is argued, are people for whom the international community must stand in loco civitatis, that is, as a substitute for their own state.¹⁵ What this relationship demands, it is proposed, can vary according to whether refugees require asylum, sanctuary, or refuge. The first is exemplified by the case of the people who have reasonable grounds to fear persecution by their home state (or by non-state actors from which their state is unwilling to offer protection); the second, by people fleeing generalised violence and the breakdown of civil order; the third, by people fleeing specific state failures such as famine or natural disasters such as floods (where the line between ‘state failure’ and ‘natural disaster’ is typically blurred). The argument distinguishes general obligations owed to all refugees and particular obligations owed to each of these three types of refugee.

In chapter 3 I turn from this conceptual reconstruction of the normative function of the institution of refugeehood to the question of responsibility for refugees, of who owes what to whom. This chapter may be viewed as an exercise in ‘ideal theory’, in the specific sense that it aims to lay out the responsibilities that states ought to acknowledge and act on, independently of their willingness to do so. Here I address the different responsibilities owed to each of the three types of refugees and their implications for the sharing of overall responsibility for refugees, before turning to consider the criteria that should govern the allocation of responsibility for refugee protection. The final chapter returns to reflection on the current refuge regime – its limitations and challenges – in a world in which many states don’t generally comply with their obligations. It asks what factors help to explain this non-compliance and considers how compliance might be encouraged, before turning to ask what implications this condition has for the duties of the international community, of non-cooperating states, of their citizens, and of refugees.

Notes

      1 1. Kelly Oliver (2017) refers to this warehousing as ‘carceral humanitarianism’.

      2 2. Parekh (2017) provides a detailed analysis of this problem.

      3 3. The case of the European Union – the regional body perhaps best placed to engage in such cooperative practices between states – demonstrates that securing such cooperation is extremely difficult to achieve. Rather than coordinated refugee protection, the EU has witnessed a crisis of integration and a resurgence of nationalist populisms, of which Italy’s Matteo Salvini is simply one manifestation.

      4 4. The final draft of the Compact can be found here: https://www.unhcr.org/events/conferences/5b3295167/official-version-final-draft-global-compact-refugees.html. This agreement was adopted on 17 December 2018. Only two states voted against it – the United States and Hungary.

      5 5. Cherem (2016), p. 185.

      6 6. Betts and Collier (2017), p. 99; this marks a significant contrast with Betts (2013).

      7 7. Cherem (2016), p. 191.

      8 8. Cherem (2016), p. 191, citing Walzer (1983), pp. 44–5 and 48.

      9 9. Visit https://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html.

      10 10. Visit https://www.unhcr.org/5baa00b24.

      11 11. Visit https://www.unhcr.org/globaltrends2017.

      12 12. See Fitzgerald (2019) for a detailed analysis.

      13 13. For some reflections on this topic, see Gibney (2015).

      14 14. My approach here is influenced by Shue (1995), Beitz (2009) and Sangiovanni (2016).

      15 15. This phrase trades off the analogy with in loco parentis; for an initial formulation, see Owen (2016b).