The End of Refugee Protection?

Abstract

We are in an era of increasing intolerance of forced migration, with the movement of peo-ple framed as an unprecedented crisis and their needs as an impossible burden. States are adopting ever more inventive ways to avoid accepting refugees—and this practice includes historical defenders of human rights and international law, such as the United States and the European Union. New situations of conflict and violence in Syria, Yemen and South Sudan have forced millions of people to leave their homes, while long-standing situations of displacement (including those of Palestinians, Somalis and Afghans) have proven impossi-ble to resolve. These dynamics, combined with rising populism fuelled in large part by anti-immigration rhetoric, present a direct challenge to the post-1945 refugee protection regime. This is the backdrop for our collection of articles by leading refugee researchers, who explore the contours of international refugee protection at a critical political moment. David Cantor focuses on legal regimes, identifying a problematic insularity of international refugee law and consequent need to engage with related legal regimes; Martin Jones elabo-rates upon this concern in the particular context of the Middle East and Asia, which host a majority of refugees flowing out of Syria. Cathrine Brun and Anita Fá bos consider refugee protection in relation to its conceptual underpinnings as a state-based regime which has de-fined protection in terms of sovereignty and law rather than from the perspective of refu-gees. Dallal Stevens explores a regional perspective in relation to the changing meaning of asylum in the EU, where refugee protection today is 'not necessarily " dead " , but it is deeply circumscribed'. Some of the dynamics identified by our contributors are new or relatively recent, such as the mainstreaming of political bargaining and consequent marginalization of core obliga-tions of refugee protection (Kirsten McConnachie), or the prevalence of dehumanizing atti-tudes towards refugees and asylum seekers which are reflected in national policies for status determination and the granting of protection (Michael Kagan). These dynamics of political disinterest and dehumanization have had significant consequences in undermining principles of refugee protection and have established the conditions to make long-term dis-placement 'the new normal' (Brun and Fábos). However, other challenges facing the