A threat to cosmopolitan duties? How COVID-19 has been used as a tool to undermine refugee rights

The outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020 provided cover for some states to take strict and hostile measures against refugees and asylum seekers, thereby privileging self-regarding over other-regarding or cosmopolitan-oriented policies. The hostile measures, which have included detentions, pushbacks and other refugee deterrence actions not only appeared to shake the refugee system, but they increased the vulnerability of asylum seekers and refugees who continued to be exposed to torture, drownings at sea, trafficking and sexual violence. This development, which included a fine-tuning of some measures that had been hatched before the emergence of COVID-19, appeared to set back efforts to nurture the bonds of global human solidarity and expand moral and ethical boundaries beyond state borders. However, the international refugee regime continues and is supported by many states and other international actors that seek to emphasise cosmopolitan and other-regarding policies. The resilience of the refugee system underlines the fact that international society has a practical and moral basis to challenge exclusionist policies towards asylum seekers and refugees, prevent future harm that might result from asylum deterrence policies and develop more humane forms of international refugee governance.

International Refugee Regime: An Alternative Form of Protection for Human Rights Defenders?

Human rights defenders (HRDs) are subjected to serious human rights violations through legal and extralegal actions. Notably, most of the abuses against them remain unpunished, perpetuating a vicious cycle of violence against them. There is room for doubt that international human rights law has failed to provide efficient protection for HRDs, and this article considers the international refugee regime as an alternative system of protection. In this sense the article first discusses the intersection between the terms ‘refugee’ and ‘human rights defender’ to establish that defenders fall within the protection of the 1951 Refugee Convention. Following an inductive reasoning, the article considers the most well-trodden defects of the refugee regime and the reluctance of HRDs to adopt refugee status; it concludes that this alternative may not be suitable for defenders. Besides a doctrinal approach, the article employs a socio-legal approach, which is enhanced by interviews with HRDs.

Accessing the Border: The Mobility Rights of Asylum Seekers with Precarious Status

The mobility rights of migrants have been presented as universal and non-discriminatory in United Nation declarations, protocols and conventions. These inherent rights are often placed in opposition to states’ sovereign right to control their borders. The international refugee regime has faced challenges to the defence and advocacy of human rights. The right to seek asylum has faced questions of security, and terrorism. Politicians have successfully re-framed asylum seekers as active ‘threats’ to the social, cultural and economic security of the state and campaign to enforce the protection of the state. By de-linking the border from the territorial boundaries of the state, Canadian officials have excluded, deterred and halted the movement of asylum seekers seeking refuge in Canada, adding to the surmountable geographic barriers the state holds to resettlement.

Accessing the Border: The Mobility Rights of Asylum Seekers with Precarious Status

The mobility rights of migrants have been presented as universal and non-discriminatory in United Nation declarations, protocols and conventions. These inherent rights are often placed in opposition to states’ sovereign right to control their borders. The international refugee regime has faced challenges to the defence and advocacy of human rights. The right to seek asylum has faced questions of security, and terrorism. Politicians have successfully re-framed asylum seekers as active ‘threats’ to the social, cultural and economic security of the state and campaign to enforce the protection of the state. By de-linking the border from the territorial boundaries of the state, Canadian officials have excluded, deterred and halted the movement of asylum seekers seeking refuge in Canada, adding to the surmountable geographic barriers the state holds to resettlement.

The Implications of Selective Sovereignty for Refugee Rights

This concluding chapter uses the empirical evidence presented in previous chapters to reflect on the influence of foreign policy and ethnic politics on countries’ approaches to refugees. It considers the implications of these findings for a reconceptualization of the relationship between sovereignty and rights. The chapter also addresses the consequences of selective sovereignty for the international refugee regime. In so doing, it suggests some policy implications, such as attempting to identify when and where the international community can fruitfully exert pressure on states to welcome refugees. Selective sovereignty shapes the experiences of growing numbers of refugees around the world and, as a result, has consequences for long-term processes related to conflict, peacebuilding, and post-conflict reconstruction. Recent events underscore the importance of understanding why states sometimes assert their sovereignty and at other times uphold refugee rights.

Refugeehood and Rights: A Theoretical Debate

To which rights refugees are entitled? In this paper, I analyze the many challenges that two interrelated theoretical traditions of Refugee Studies have implicitly posed to one another. First, I examine the analytic philosophers’ assumption that we cannot understand the nature of a refugee claim until we know what entitles an individual to make it – i.e., what root cause for displacement could explain, and justify, such status. Second, after examining Critical Citizenship Studies, I mainly discuss a renewed Arendtian tradition whose cosmopolitan claim has advocated granting the right of citizenship to all forced displaced persons. By demonstrating why each response leaves room for strong rebuttals from the other side, I make clear the urgency of rethinking today’s international refugee regime as well as the place of political theory in it.

THE GUISE OF U.S. NATIONAL REFERRAL AUTHORITY TO “OTHERING” REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS: A TWAIL APPROACH

President Trump’s issuance of Executive Order 13769 titled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States” restricts and even bans access to refugees and asylum seekers from seeking international protection in and from the United States. It is done by creating narratives that refugees and asylum seekers are capable of committing “potential threats” under the umbrella of terrorism. This study aims to dismantle the paradoxes the Executive Order conveys. It focuses on the international refugee regime under the ambit of international law and a broader context of immigration debates—socially, economically, and culturally. This study uses theThird World Approach to International Law (TWAIL),making it possible for academic legal discussionto correspond in cultural context. The findings show that Trump’s Executive Order 13769 functions as the tool for the United States to “othering” refugees and asylum seekers as foreign terrorists in order to wage its national interests while ruling out humanity and the regime.