International Law and Administrative Insulation: A Comparison of Refugee Status Determination Regimes in the United States, Canada, and Australia

Abstract

<jats:p>International law provides nations with a common definition of a refugee, yet the processes by which countries determine who should be granted refugee status look strikingly different, even across nations with many institutional, cultural, geographical, and political similarities. This article compares the refugee status determination regimes of three popular asylum seeker destinations—the United States, Canada, and Australia. Despite these nations' similar border control policies, asylum seekers crossing their borders access three very different systems. These differences have less to do with political debates over admission and border control policy than with the level of insulation the administrative decision-making agency enjoys from political interference and judicial review. Bureaucratic justice is conceptualized and organized differently in different states, and so states vary in how they draw the line between refugee and nonrefugee.</jats:p>

Reconfiguring the Deserving Refugee: Cultural Categories of Worth and the Making of Refugee Policy

“…The Refugee Act of 1980 was not intended as a revolutionary change (Hamlin ). Quite the contrary, policy makers involved in the drafting of the Act believed it to be “an extension of the Cold War by other peaceful means.” Policy makers viewed the enactment of the new law as a symbolic gesture that showed the United States' commitment to the UN Convention and to international human rights law; most lawmakers at the time shared the assumption that the United States would continue to be a country of overseas resettlement (rather than a country of first asylum, permitting refugees to enter its territory), and that the majority of refugee admissions would continue to predominantly be from communist‐dominated countries.…”

“…The first time the BIA set to define the meaning and scope of the category particular social group was in Matter of Acosta (). Acosta is one of the most cited decisions in asylum law, setting the shape of particular social group jurisprudence not only in the United States but also, in other asylum‐receiving countries (Dauvergne and Millbank ; Hamlin ) . The case involved a claim filed by a native of El Salvador who was persecuted by guerrillas on account of his profession as a taxi driver refusing to participate in guerrilla‐sponsored work stoppages.…”

Le Droit et ses médiations

“…Dans les années 2000 et 2010, plusieurs travaux se sont intéressés aux politiques d'asile et d'immigration « par le bas », en partant des pratiques des fonctionnaires ou des juges, de leurs interactions avec les étrangers, ou encore de l'expérience et des récits de ces derniers, et cela dans différents pays : aux États-Unis (Bohmer et Shuman, 2008 ;Schoenholtz et al, 2014), au Canada (Barsky, 1994 ;Rousseau et al, 2002 ;Soennecken, 2013 ;Tomkinson, 2015), en Australie (Hamlin, 2012 ;, en Grande-Bretagne (Good, 2007 ;Bohmer et Shuman, 2008 ;Jubany, 2011 ;Kelly, 2012), en France (Greselier, 2007 ;Valluy, 2009 ;Probst, 2011 ;Fassin et Kobelinsky, 2012 ;Akoka et Spire, 2013 ;Kobelinsky, 2013), en Espagne (Jubany, 2011 ;, en Allemagne (Probst, 2011 ;Eule, 2014 ;Lahusen et Schneider, 2016 ;Schittenhelm et Schneider, 2017), en Autriche (Dahlvik, 2018), ou encore en Suisse (Fresia et al, 2013 ;Affolter, 2016 ;Miaz, 2017a ;2017b ;Poertner, 2017). Ces recherches ont montré que la politique d'immigration et la politique des frontières se concrétisent localement aux guichets des ambassades et des consulats pour la délivrance des visas (Infantino, 2010 ;Alpes et Spire, 2014), ainsi qu'au sein des administrations locales (Spire, 2008 ;Eule, 2014).…”

Immigrants and civil rights in cross-national perspective: Lessons from North America

“…10. This is also the model for Canada's asylum policy, which is notable for its centralized administrative operations, in contrast to the more adversarial, legalistic American system or the fractured, politicized Australian one (Hamlin 2012 (Knopfff and Morton 1992). In contrast, within seven years of the Charter's enactment, the Supreme Court had heard one hundred Charter cases, of which 35% were successful (Morton, Russell and Withey 1992).…”