Date: 2020
Type: Article
What do we owe to refugees? : political theory today, by David Owen
Migration studies, 2020, Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 486-488
BAUBÖCK, Rainer, What do we owe to refugees? : political theory today, by David Owen, Migration studies, 2020, Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 486-488
- https://hdl.handle.net/1814/70054
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
The so-called European refugee crisis of 2015–6 has focused the minds of many scholars on the ethical dilemmas of asylum and refugee protection. David Owen’s short book is much more than an introduction to these debates. It defends a coherently argued alternative to two dominant views. The first of these is the humanitarian perspective that regards refugees as the neediest of the needy toward whom everyone else has a duty to rescue them and provide them with shelter. For the second view, which Owen describes as a political conception, refugees are victims of persecution who have been deprived of their membership in a political community. The obligation of other states is to provide them with asylum as a surrogate membership, which is also a ‘communicative act that expresses condemnation of the persecuting state. On a humanitarian view, distinguishing between persecution, generalized violence or natural disasters as reasons for flight and for assisting only those refugees that have managed to leave their country of origin is morally arbitrary. On the political view, however, treating all refugees alike risks eroding the distinct claims of political ones to restitution of their citizenship status and rights.
Additional information:
First published online: 15 April 2020
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/70054
Full-text via DOI: 10.1093/migration/mnaa012
ISSN: 2049-5838; 2049-5846
Publisher: Oxford University Press
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