(Dis)placing the Law: Lessons from South Africa on Advancing U.S. Asylum Rights

Amit, Roni

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3409250

Cited by 2 publications

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“…As elsewhere in the Global South, the majority (84%) originate from within the region-mostly from Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo-escaping poverty, political violence and war (Masuku 2020). Whilst the laws protecting those seeing protection in South Africa are among the most progressive in the world, in practice, they are hard to access and associated with long procedural delays (Amit 2019;Masuku 2020;Mukumbang et al 2020). As a consequence, many refugees remain entirely undocumented and without access to rights, including opportunities to work (Crush et al 2017) or access healthcare (Alfaro-Velcamp 2017) and education (Willie and Mfubu 2016).…”

Section: The Politics Of Refugee Protectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Politics of Refugee Protection in a (Post)COVID-19 World

Crawley

2021

Social Sciences

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The COVID-19 pandemic is not a “great equaliser” as some have claimed, but rather an amplifier of existing inequalities, including those associated with migration. Perhaps not surprisingly, it is refugees, often the most marginalised of all migrants, who have had the most to lose. Refugees and displaced populations living in crowded and unhygienic conditions have often been unable to protect themselves from the virus, face increasing economic precarity and often find themselves excluded from measures to alleviate poverty and hunger. The threat to refugees comes not only from material (in)security, but from increasing exclusion and exceptionalism associated with the politics of protection. Evidence from the first nine months of the pandemic suggests that some governments, in Europe and US but also the Global South, are using COVID-19 as an excuse to double-down on border closures and/or dip into their migration policy toolboxes to demonstrate the robustness of their response to it. Refugees are increasingly prevented from accessing the international protection to which they are potentially entitled or used (alongside migrants more generally) as scapegoats by populist leaders exploiting the pandemic for political mileage. Some states have used the pandemic to push through controversial policies that further limit access to protection and/or institutionalize the marginalization of refugees. In this context, it seems likely that COVID-19 will accelerate the course of history in relation to refugee protection, rather than changing its direction.

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Section: The Politics Of Refugee Protectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Politics of Refugee Protection in a (Post)COVID-19 World

Crawley

2021

Social Sciences

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“…Not that it did not happen before. In South Africa, for example, although the asylum laws are among the most progressive in the world, in practice, limitations in access to asylum procedures and administrative delays have meant that many refugees remain in irregular situations (Amit, 2018, Masuku, 2020Mukumbang et al, 2020) and, accordingly, with no access to basic rights (Crush et al, 2017;Alfaro-Velcamp, 2017;Willie and Mfubu, 2016). With the pandemic, the state's omission of, or retreat from its 5.…”

Section: Reception Under Conditions Of Confinementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Immobile, stranded and excluded: the effects of COVID-19 on the international asylum system

Mascareñas¹,

López-Sala²

2021

rcai

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Disruptions to patterns of international mobility caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have affected refugees particularly severely. This article analyses the impact of the health crisis on international protection, particularly its effects on specific phases of the process: access to the territory, access to the procedure, and reception and its conditions. Using comparative analysis that incorporates the dynamics observed in different geographies, the article takes an in-depth look at the pandemic’s effects on the consolidation of a new international asylum system whose roots lie in transformations observed since the 1990s. It argues that the pandemic has accelerated certain trends that are symptomatic of an even more exclusionary and restrictive turn in the global system of so-called protection.

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(Dis)placing the Law: Lessons from South Africa on Advancing U.S. Asylum Rights

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

The Politics of Refugee Protection in a (Post)COVID-19 World

The Politics of Refugee Protection in a (Post)COVID-19 World

Immobile, stranded and excluded: the effects of COVID-19 on the international asylum system

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