Refugees: The politically oppressed

Abstract

Who should be recognized as a refugee? This article seeks to uncover the normative arguments at the core of legal and philosophical conceptions of refugeehood. It identifies three analytically distinct approaches grounding the right to refugee status and argues that all three are normatively inadequate. Refugee status should neither be grounded in individual persecution for specific reasons (classical approach) nor in individual persecution for any discriminatory reasons (human rights approach). It should also not be based solely on harm (humanitarian approach). Rather, this article argues, it should be based on political oppression – on persons lacking public autonomy, formally expressed as a lack of legal–political status. The normative foundation for a claim to refugee status lies in the inability of a person to control, amend and seek recourse to the specific situation she faces. It lies in the lack of public autonomy expressed as a lack of legal–political rights. What matters for a claim to refugee status is thus the legal–political disenfranchisement of a person, ultimately leaving her with no recourse to the particular situation she faces other than flight. Refugees, then, are not only those who fear harm or persecution, but those who are politically oppressed.

Why Refugees Should Be Enfranchised

“…the principle which Bender and Benli use in their arguments, and Bender in other works also invokes autonomy as central to the value of democratic agency. 17 But even if not all defenders of refugee enfranchisement endorse the Equal Autonomy View, it is certainly an intuitively appealing view of why the democratic inclusion of refugees matters, particularly for affirming refugees' agency. I would argue, however, that the connection between democratic inclusion, equal autonomy, and affirming refugees' agency is far less clear than the Equal Autonomy View suggests.…”