The Ethics Of Refugee Policy

What duties do liberal democratic states owe to refugees? Does international refugee law impose unfeasible demands on states? This highly original contribution explores what theories of international ethics have to say about refugee policy. It advances an innovative critique of prevalent liberal approaches, showing how their assumptions about moral agency create unfeasible expectations about international justice. It sets out an alternative theory, showing how this could be more adept at mobilizing commitment to refugee rights. The volume will be of interest not just to scholars and students of applied ethics, but also to those more generally interested in debates on refugee and migration policy. It presents a clear and thorough discussion of liberal political theory and its application to questions of international justice, and provides insights into the philosophical sources of debates on liberal versus restrictive approaches to refugee policy.

The refusal or reception of refugees has had serious implications for the social policies and social realities of numerous countries in east and west. Exploring experiences, interpretations and practices of 'refugees,' 'the internally displaced' and 'returnees' in or emerging from societies in violent conflict, this volume challenges prevailing orthodoxies and encourages new developments in refugee studies. It also addresses the ethics and politics of interventions by professionals and policy makers, using case studies of refugees from or in South Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and the Americas. These illustrate the dynamic nature of situations where refugees, policy- makers and practitioners interact in trying to construct new livelihoods in transforming societies. Without a proper understanding of this dynamic nature, so the volume argues overall, it is not possible to develop successful strategies for the accommodation and integration of refugees.

This book advocates for the philosophical import of care in re-evaluating problems of humanitarianism in the context of the ongoing international refugee and forced migration situation. In doing so, it rethinks the human capacity to care about the suffering of distant others. At a time when emotional resources are running low, there is a need to recast what it means to care, with the aim of generating a productive movement against the rise of value fundamentalism globally—embraced in mantras of ‘good and evil’ and ‘us and them’—and to confront xenophobia and oppressive politics. The author draws upon a wide array of rich traditions, including historical and contemporary writings on self-care and care of the other, to re-examine the intersection of care ethics and justice. She also rethinks the relationship between care and contestation, here analyzed in the aesthetic, ethical, political, and religious domains of human experience. From within the context of this contingent historical repetition of political oppression, the book constructs a reminder not only of what it feels like to care, but how and why we should act upon our care. Care Ethics and the Refugee Crisis is an important contribution to the growing literatures on care ethics and immigration/forced migration in philosophy. It will also appeal to scholars and advanced students working in other disciplines such as political science, refugee and migration studies, and social anthropology.

An examination of the ethical and political issues raised by the responses of Western states to refugees.

This book is a philosophical analysis of the ethical treatment of refugees and stateless people, a group of people who, though extremely important politically, have been greatly under theorized philosophically. The limited philosophical discussion of refugees by philosophers focuses narrowly on the question of whether or not we, as members of Western states, have moral obligations to admit refugees into our countries. This book reframes this debate and shows why it is important to think ethically about people who will never be resettled and who live for prolonged periods outside of all political communities. Parekh shows why philosophers ought to be concerned with ethical norms that will help stateless people mitigate the harms of statelessness even while they remain formally excluded from states. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315883854, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

The Ethics and Politics of Immigration provides an overview of the central topics in the ethics of immigration with contributions from scholars who have shaped the terms of debate and who are moving the discussion forward in exciting directions. This book is unique in providing an overview of how the field has developed over the last twenty years in political philosophy and political theory. The essays in this book cover issues to do with open borders, admissions policies, refugee protection and the regulation of labor migration. The book also includes coverage of matters concerning integration, inclusion, and legalization. It goes on to explore human trafficking and smuggling and the immigrant detention. The book concludes with four topics that promise to move immigration ethics in new directions: philosophical objections to states giving preference to skilled laborers; the implications of gender and care ethics; the incorporation of the philosophy of race; and how the cognitive bias of methodological nationalism affects the discussion.

This Handbook draws together leading and emerging scholars to provide a comprehensive critical analysis of international refugee law. This book provides an account as well as a critique of the status quo, setting the agenda for future research in the field.

Drawing from extensive, eye-opening first-person accounts, No Refuge puts a spotlight on the millions of refugees worldwide who have to leave home but find nowhere to resettle. As political philosopher Serena Parekh argues, this is not just a problem for politicians. Citizens also have a moral duty to help resolve the global refugee crisis and to end the suffering and denial of human rights that refugee are forced to endure, often for years. While the mediausually focus on the challenges that Western states have with the arrival of large numbers of asylum seekers and refugees, the real problem is that millions are stuck in inhumane conditions in refugee camps and urban centers, with little chance of finding a more permanent solution. Grounded in powerfultestimony from refugees and meticulous research on the conditions in which so many suffer worldwide, No Refuge shows why, as states but also as citizens, we cannot afford to wait any longer to end this crisis.