Abtracts

[1] This is my phrase for quasi-formal limbos that need not literally involve encampment. Refugees waiting in cities raise the same camp dynamic: adjudication without membership, local integration bars, and tenuous non-refoulement.

Cole, Phillip
University of the West of England

Climate Change and Global Displacement: Towards an Ethical Response?

Global displacement of peoples is growing in scale in the 21st century. However, the focus of attention has been on those forcibly displaced, currently estimated at around 65 million. What is now being recognised is that people are not just displaced by political violence, but also by other factors, one of which is environmental disaster. The fact is that the numbers of environmentally displaced are much greater than those displaced by violence and political instability. It is estimated that between 2008 and 2012 sudden onset disasters such as earthquakes, cyclones and floods displaced around 144 million people. The UNHCR estimates 26.4 million people are displaced by natural disaster every year since 2008.

The role of climate change here is to some extent controversial, in that some of these events are clearly not related to it, such as earthquakes, and we do not have that scientific precision to precisely attribute others, such as cyclones and floods, to that process. However, climate change is a significant context for thinking about the environmentally displaced. In a Refugee Studies Centre report in 2008, the authors argued that there are two factors which distinguish what is happening and what may happen from the past: first, the global scale of environmental change and its potential impacts such as forced migration – while these may have been episodic or localised in the past they will not be in the future; second, human agency is at the centre of global climate change – and this matters to the political and ethical responses to it.

There are two key discussions to have on this question. The first is the whether the concept of the refugee is applicable here; the second is the question of moral and political responsibility. On the first question, there is considerable disagreement amongst experts on whether there can be environmental or climate change refugees, and in this paper I examine these debates and attempted definitions. On the second question, the discussion has a political dimension as the fact is that state parties to the UNHCR have consistently blocked moves to bring the environmentally displaced under the scope of that agency, or to expand the definition of the refugee in the international Refugee Convention to include them. In the face of that refusal, I examine possible solutions which aim to embody some degree of international responsibility for the environmentally displaced, such as the Nansen Initiative.

Given that global displacement through climate change is going to become one of the key questions in the 21st century, both in its scale and its urgency, in this paper I ask whether the responses we have seen so far from the international community go anywhere near meeting what is morally required.

De Vries, Bouke
Max Planck Institute

Admitting refugees:
Is it permissible for states to prioritise liberal-minded refugees?

Many refugees flee to liberal democracies for the extensive sets of liberties that they enjoy within these societies. However, not all are committed to liberal and democratic values, such as respect for personal autonomy, individual freedom, civic equality, the rule of law, majority rule, religious freedom, free speech, and free conscience. This paper considers when, if ever, it is morally permissible for states to refuse to admit refugees based on their anti-democratic and/or anti-liberal views. For example, are there conditions under which states might permissibly refuse to admit theocrats, or those who endorse some form of dictatorship or racial hierarchy within society? (For the sake of brevity, I will refer to such anti-liberal and/or anti-democratic views as ‘unreasonable’, though my construal of this notion is narrower than Rawls’).

As this paper shows, to determine whether reasonableness is a permissible criterion for selecting refugees (and would-be immigrants more generally), two questions ought to be addressed.  The first is whether such selection would be permissible in cases where states have perfect knowledge of refugees’ political views. To answer this question, several factors need to be taken into account. How dire is the situation of refugees? How strong is their opposition to liberal-democratic values, and what kinds of values do they oppose? Do they have children or partners? Are their unreasonable views likely to spread within the would-be host society, and how dangerous is this for the latter’s liberal-democratic institutions? Are the refugees likely to participate in acts of terrorism? And is living in the would-be host society likely to make these individuals more reasonable, perhaps (partially) as a result of mandatory civic integration classes? The second question is whether there are sufficiently accurate, morally permissible ways of determining whether refugees hold unreasonable views. Specifically, I will consider whether the following methods meet these epistemic and moral criteria: investigations into refugees’ past political behaviour, the use of testimonies, the use of written or oral quizzes, and the use oaths. My contention will be that there are indeed cases where states are justified in excluding groups of unreasonable refugees, even when they lack perfect knowledge of the latter’s (full range of) political views.

Duarte, Melina
UiT The Arctic University of Norway

Should high greenhouse gas emitting countries be required to admit and resettle more climate displacees than low greenhouse gas emitting countries?

Human displacement is one of the most profound impacts of climate change. Global warming is causing several areas of the globe to become temporarily or permanently uninhabitable, forcing their residents to relocate. Every second, a person is displaced due to sudden-onset disasters (e.g., storms, flooding, tsunamis, earthquakes) and the number of displacements caused by slow-onset disasters (e.g. droughts, sea level-rise) are still widely unknown. Although most of the displaced have been able to relocate within state borders, the predicted rise in terms of the amount and intensity of disasters is expected to increase dramatically the number of cross-border relocations, exacerbating conflicts between residents and newcomers. Since it is acknowledged that global warming is largely caused by anthropogenic greenhouse emissions, and since some countries are much higher emitters than others, it is reasonable to expect that the amount of gas emissions should play a role in determining a fair distribution scheme for the relocation of persons and populations displaced by climate change. A basic principle of justice requires that those who commit wrongful acts should repair the harm done, while those who were harmed should receive appropriate compensation. In international environmental law, this principle is known as the “no-harm principle”—a preventive rule requiring states to prevent, reduce, and control the risk of environmental harm to other states. Although initially formulated and successfully applied to cases of harm involving neighbouring states, its current scope (see UNFCCC 1992,  Rio Declaration 1992, UNCLOS 1994) can accommodate climate change generally as they relate to cases of harm to the global commons. Relying on this principle for establishing a fair distribution scheme for the relocation of persons and populations displaced by climate change, one could argue that high greenhouse gas emitting countries should be required to resettle more climate displacees than low greenhouse gas emitting countries or, at least, be more responsible for facilitating their resettlement in safe areas elsewhere. On the other hand, one could argue that the benefits of technologies invented in current high emitting countries benefited other states, allowing them to grow. In the latter account, it would not be fair to consider only the burdens of greenhouse gases emissions; the benefits should be also taken into consideration. Whether high emitting countries have internally climate displacees  and the extent in which they have also been affected by climate change should perhaps also be integrated in the function. This paper will explore potential criteria that should be considered in order to create a fair formula for the distribution of relocations related to climate displacement and, drawing on the experience of the failed EU Relocation Scheme (2015-2017) in the context of the current refugee crisis, control these criteria for non-ideal settings.

Fine, Sarah
King’s College London

Refugees and the Limits of Political Philosophy

Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution, but in practice many seek and do not find. Where asylum is in short supply, can we identify principles for prioritizing the asylum claims of some over those of others?

In this paper, I reflect on what kind of question this is, and whether it is one that I am in a suitable position to answer.

For example, there are some questions that have no appropriate answer—perhaps each option is equally bad and all are impermissible—and in which context a political philosopher is redundant. There are some questions which call for the marshalling of various forms of empirical evidence or rely heavily on experience, in areas where a political philosopher has no special expertise. There are some questions which are difficult, contentious, sensitive, and require nuanced responses. Here the political philosopher will add caveats and provisos, but those details may be overlooked or ignored by the relevant audience. There are some questions where the political philosopher’s answer could lend justification to what seem like inexcusable policies, and thus could issue in serious harms. So which kind of question is this? And is it one that I ought to try to answer?

Gerver, Mollie
Newcastle University

QALYs and Selecting Refugees

It is increasingly accepted that states granting asylum ought not discriminate between those fleeing persecution and those fleeing other life-threatening conditions. It is wrong, for example, to deport an Ethiopian migrant fleeing famine, but not an Eritrean fleeing persecution. Unfortunately, the total number of individuals fleeing life-threatening conditions often surpasses the total number of individuals a state has the capacity or willingness to accept. As a result, states often implement selection procedures to determine who is granted asylum and who is not. This is especially true for states resettling refugees from transit states.

This article considers what criteria states ought to utilize when deciding who to grant asylum to. One option is for states to adopt the Urgency Criteria, accepting refugees with the greatest risk of immediate death upon return. An individual who will likely be executed upon arriving at the airport should be granted asylum before an individual likely to die from malnutrition several years after returning.

This criteria ought to be rejected, as it will discriminate against those who will have a greater chance of dying in the long term. If one refugee has a 90% chance of being executed by authorities at the airport, he may also have a close to 0% of being executed if he manages to pass through airport security undetected. In contrast, another refugee may have only a 5% chance of be killed by her husband on any given month, such that within a year her chances of being killed are greater than 90%. It seems unfair that the first refugee is given priority to the second.

A third option is to adopt the Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALY) Criteria, where states accept the refugees who experience the highest increase in QALYs through asylum.

Imagine, for example, that the following conditions hold:

1. Individuals suffering from disabilities in Kakumu refugee camp rate their quality of life as 2 out of 10, and have a 95% chance of survival in this camp over the next ten years, thus experiencing 1.9 QALYs in ten years (.2 X 10 X .95).

2. These same refugees will have a .6 quality of life if resettled to Canada, and an almost 100% chance of survival over the next ten years, thus experiencing 6 QALYs if resettled to Canada, and an increase in 4.1 QALYs.

These refugees ought to be resettled before other refugees who will experience less than a 4.1 increase in QALYs after resettlement.

This proposal, unfortunately, faces the Disability Objection: QALYs may discriminate against those who are more vulnerable. If those suffering from a disabilities experience a lower quality of life after resettlement compared to those suffering from no disabilities, they may gain fewer QALYs through resettlement compared to non--‐‑disabled refugees. They will therefore be denied resettlement in favor of their non-disabled peers.

I defend a final option, which I call the Prioritarian QALYs Criteria. Under this proposal, the welfare increase of those suffering from low welfare is given greater weight than the welfare of those with greater welfare. For example, the welfare increase of a refugee suffering from disabilities is given greater weight than the welfare increase of a refugee not suffering from disabilities. This avoids the Disability Objection, while ensuring that selection procedures are fair.

Gudovitch, Rami
Haifa University

Refugees- Why Prioritizing is Wrong

Faced with the worst refugee crisis since WWII, many Western countries have taken harsh measures to prevent refugees from reaching their boarders and to prevent those who have made it, from gaining protection. Thus, the world faces a soaring gap between those who seek protection and those who win it.

One response to this challenge involves an attempt to prioritize and favor those assumed to be under more acute threats over others. The rationale behind such a proposal is that our moral obligations can reach only as far as our available resources can, and these resources are becoming scarce due to increasing influence of anti-immigration forces in Western countries.  

This is a two-tier model of the moral and political discussion. First, we  determine how many refugees can be granted status, given various pragmatical considerations. Second, we decide who shall be included and who shall be excluded in order to match the moral ideal to our non-ideal world.

The problem with this view is that it is based on the false presumption that prioritizing is cost-free, and thus, it ignores the moral and political costs that it carries.

I will argue that in prioritizing we take the risk of harming some refugees by undermining the very claim for asylum made by those whom are in danger, yet, not acute enough to merit prioritizing. In prioritizing we do not merely accept new pragmatic standards for an independently defined concept. Rather, we gerrymander the very category of “refugee” by redrawing the semantic principles  governing the application of the term. The concept of “refugee” just is the concept of those who have well-founded fear of being persecuted or of being in danger serious enough to pose a moral obligation on others to offer them a shelter. Prioritization excludes some of those whom formerly  fell under this category.

The idea of prioritizing had come up within the Israeli political discourse by anti-immigration activists in the form of a distinction offered between refugees that are victims of genocide, such as Darfurians versus those who simply flee harsh measures of some non-democratic regimes, such as the Eritrean regime.  Given that Eritreans are by far, the largest group of asylum seekers in Israel, this very argument serves as all but a general argument against granting asylum to anyone.

Hillier-smith, Bradley
University of Reading

Is it morally justifiable to give priority to refugees who are suffering as a result of severe human rights violations?

This paper tackles the following philosophical problem. Does it makes a moral difference if persons are suffering as a result of human rather than natural causes?  I argue that it does make a moral difference: we have stronger reason to aid persons suffering as a result of severe human rights violations rather than those suffering as a result of natural causes. As a result I hold that it is morally justifiable to give priority to the particularly strong claims of refugees who are victims of severe human rights violations.

Section I notes that the triggers of displacement for the majority of the world’s refugees are indeed human causes in the form of severe human rights violations: rape, torture, persecution, arbitrary arrest, detention, execution, enslavement, targeted bombing of civilian areas, and potential genocide. I then test whether this factor is morally relevant by considering Judith Jarvis Thomson’s Two Communities Case.  We can either save one community from a naturally caused famine or a second community from a famine caused by a murderous agent. Thomson denies any moral difference between the two communities’ suffering and argues that we should flip a coin to decide whom to aid.

Section II instead argues that there is a moral difference: we ought to save the second community because we have stronger reason to aid persons who are suffering as a result of severe human rights violation. This argument rests on the claims that:

1)         Persons suffering as a result of severe human rights violations could be considered worse off than persons suffering as a result of natural causes. This is because severe rights violations are a distinctive harm over and above the suffering that results; and
2)         We have duties in the interests of correcting injustices to protect and aid victims of rights violations which are distinct and additional to duties to alleviate suffering. Thus we have compounded weightier duties to persons suffering as a result of rights violations.

In section III, I argue that the UK and EU response to recent refugee flows (containment, deportation and militarisation of border enforcement) actively make refugees worse off than they would otherwise have been and as such violate negative duties not to harm. Therefore states complicit in such practices have an urgent duty to refrain from unduly harming refugees.

I conclude that when understanding moral obligations to settle refugees we ought to prioritise positive duties to victims of severe human rights violations and negative duties to refugees whom through our current practices have been caused undue harm. These duties are far weightier than many philosophers and most policy makers recognise.

Iida, Fumio
Kobe University

Can liberal states treat political and economic refugees alike?

Liberal states have long endorsed a double standard regarding the treatment of refugees, which requires them to permit maximum number of political refugees to stay while leaving the number of acceptable economic refugees totally at the discretion of the recipient countries. This allowed liberal states to accept only minimum number of refugees, so long as political refugees are far smaller in number compared with economic ones. However, a growing number of theorists supporting the ideal of open border or freedom of movement are beginning to suggest that the most ideal policy would be to grant formal citizenship status to both political and economic refugees alike almost automatically. This paper challenges these recent arguments by proposing an alternative admission policy, which requires liberal states to grant only renewable working permissions to both political and economic refugees in order to accept maximum number of refugees as a whole.

This paper begins by outlining the recent theories of refugees, which grants formal citizenship to economic and political refugees alike. It argues that these theories fail to acknowledge the fact that the major concern of the economic refugees is not to gain full formal citizenship of the recipient country but to secure working permit that gives them decent economic opportunities.

This paper then examines three major objections to these recent theories. First, this paper examines the objections of fairness, which states that generous admission policy towards economic refugees will be unfair to those regular formal migrants who have already spent considerable time and energy for entry and job opportunities through more formal procedures. Second, it examines the objection of future generations, which states that an excessively generous admission policy towards economic refugees will give rise to a reactionary movement within the recipient country that makes it quite difficult or almost impossible for the future possible economic refugees or even formal migrants to be admitted. Third, it examines the objection of overcompensation, which states that economic refugees are not necessarily interested in gaining formal citizenship status but rather in obtaining working permit more easily.

Finally, this paper proposes an alternative policy which requires liberal states to issue maximum number of working permits to both economic and political refugees alike. It concludes that this is the most tenable way to increase the number of admitted political and economic refugees most drastically in a real world without invoking excessive reactions from the majority of the recipient country.

Ivanovic, Mladjo
Grand Valley State University

Humanitarian Melancholia: Humanitarianism and the Need for Morality of Thinking.

            Gruesome scenes of unbearable human suffering and institutional callousness not seen in Europe since the Second World War have today become a daily routine. Images of boats and life jackets littering the beaches, bodies of children drowned at the sea, overcrowded UNHCR camps, families stranded at a border standing in cold next to a barbed wire are just some of the scenes of catastrophic conditions that define the present humanitarian crisis. Sadly, these images represent experiences of only a small portion of those attempting to escape horrific conditions in their home countries. Millions of refugees from the Middle East, for example, remain interned in massive refugee camps in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon; yet their hardships rarely reach front pages of Western media. Since the beginning of migration crisis in 2012, the European leaders and the general public have ignored the real causes of why people were seeking refuge in Europe, and instead focus on idle justifications of inhumane policies that have condemned thousands of people to death in Mediterranean. What is being cast as a “migrant problem” is in fact a collision of European state interests, outdated international law, and impotent humanism; one that drowns in iconography of human misery, and yet fails to mobilize solidarity toward those who are escaping appalling conditions. This is not an accident; these faults are both moral and political in nature. They point at a multifaceted dimension of reasoning about humanitarian tragedy, as well as the formation, or sustenance, of individual and collective identities of Western spectators and humanitarian victims.

            In what follows, this paper is divided into two main parts. The first identifies some of the weaknesses of humanitarian discourse and practices, and it has an analytical dimension in that it attempts to tease out the political forces, cultural habits, forms of knowledge, skills and expertise that were folded into the organization and form of subjectivity that is at the center of humanitarian attention. A growing problem of our political culture is an increased difficulty in mobilizing solidarity with people who are culturally and geographically distant from us. In examining the dire circumstances of millions of forcefully displaced people today, this is a problem that cannot continue to be ignored. Although there is an increasing amount of literature on humanitarianism, most of these (often brilliant) analyses stop at one of the institutional levels: They either focus on the deficiencies of institutional management or the political shortcomings of current policies that result from an inability (and unwillingness) of government or nonprofit officials and workers to struggle for a more just world. Although identifying these shortcomings is welcome (and necessary), I leave them aside and focus on showing inherent inconsistencies and ideological tendencies of humanitarian principles and practices that are the hallmark of today’s humanism.

The second part focuses on offering an alternative way of thinking about responsibility and solidarity. Following work of critical social theorists, I argue that our way of apprehending the world is in itself a historical and critical process. Accordingly, I propose a transformationalist interpretation of Theodor Adorno’s critique of cognitive and material dispositions that result in reductive habits of cognition and atrophied moral agency. While my reading of Adorno finds his work partially open to the possibility of ethics beyond the common liberal understanding, what I find ultimately helpful in addressing today’s issues of humanitarianism is the guiding thread of his work that shows how epistemology ought to be ethical, and that ethics should in turn be political. Adorno’s insistence on the primacy of the object of our knowledge invites us to think morally and see the priority of the Other as a crucial feature of any ethical relationship. Ultimately, by drawing attention to the ways in which the explication of the realms of human vulnerability depend upon our capacity to leave our own epistemic and ontological position to reflect upon the values and norms that often manifest themselves as subordinating and exploitative, this paper charts a possible venue how the transformation of humanitarian agency can take place.

Kapelner, Zsolt Kristof
Central European University

Minority rights and democratic legitimacy in regulating refugee admission

In recent years a number of authors argued that states have no right to unilaterally control their border, but rather any regime of border control needs to be democratically justified to foreigners as well. In the case of refugee admission, this indicates that in order for political decisions on refugee admission to be legitimate, refugees themselves ought to be given certain rights to participate in the decision making process. However, refugees do not have equal stakes in being admitted; some have the resources to move on if not admitted, while others cannot afford being refused. More vulnerable refugees, furthermore, often have diminished capacities to participate in collective decision making and to represent their interests; for example, members of marginalized groups, such as women or sexual minorities, might be at a disadvantage in making their voice heard and influence public deliberation even if they have formal rights to participate in collective decision making. This indicates that the formal inclusion of refugees in decision making concerning refugee admission schemes is insufficient to render these schemes democratically legitimate. In this paper I argue that political decisions on refugee admission can only be democratically legitimate if states ensure that vulnerable refugees do not suffer participatory disadvantages. One might object that such disadvantages often stem from pre-existing injustices in refugees’ societies of origins. But receiving states only have the obligation to provide refuge, not to rectify all injustices refugees may suffer. Just as receiving states do not have the duty to correct unjust inequalities among refugees stemming from pre-existing arrangements, they do not have the duty to ensure parity in participatory capacity among more and less vulnerable refugees. Contrary to this objection, I argue that the ability to participate on an equal footing with others on decision making concerning matters that deeply affect one’s interests is a basic right, and thus ought to be protected by receiving states, and the protection of this right requires correcting disparities in participatory capacity. This implies that receiving states do not only have to endow refugees with formal participation rights, but also implement various policies of minority protection and representation to ensure that their refugee admission policies possess democratic legitimacy.

Larrucea, Maria Constanza Vera
Stockholm University

Who should protect and who should be protected? The European puzzle.

The European Asylum System (CEAS) was particularly shaken during the 2015-16 ‘refugee crisis’. While some countries open their doors showing a generosity that makes their reception systems collapse, others closed their frontiers or let refugees continue their journey to other countries without registering them. The inability to coordinate an efficient and equitable protection to asylum seekers showed a problem that is not new within refugee reception. The European puzzle reflects a larger, global problem. 84 percent of the world’s refugees are estimated to be hosted by countries in developing regions of the world who due to their proximity to the conflict, do not have a choice but to receive their neighbours looking for protection. This “collective action failure” reflects a larger systemic and longstanding gap in the international refugee regime (Betts, 2009). Besides the incapacity to cooperate, European countries do not seem to have a homogenous way to grasp their grounds for protection. The same group might have very different possibilities to receive protection. While practically all Afghans seeking for asylum might get it in Italy, less than 2% is granted protection in Bulgaria (Eurostat, 2017). International instruments of protection such as the Geneva Convention entitle all people under treat to receive protection in whatever country protection is seek. CEAS should provide member states with the necessary rules in order to have harmonized asylum outcomes, which is far from being the rule in terms of the amount of people granted with asylum, and the decisions regarding people belonging to the same group (Parusel & Schneider, 2017). Are European countries discriminating between groups when granting positive asylum decisions? Are there “national preferences” towards one specific group within the different member states? Why has the CEAS being unable to provide an harmonized asylum system? This paper intends to analyse the differences among countries in terms of the amount and the receptors of asylum in member states, with a focus on Germany, Finland and Sweden. Analysing data from Eurostat and official discourse regarding asylum decisions in these countries – found in official statements- the paper intends to disentangle the different national understandings towards the entitlement to protection and, possibly, reveal certain preferences for groups based on perceptions of vulnerability. Who should receive protection? Are the asylum decisions “in tune” with the official discourse? To what extent are these perceptions and decisions following the CEAS guidelines? Are national paradigms stronger than the common European Law? These are some of the questions that this paper intends to answer.

Lenard, Patti Tamara
University of Ottawa

Private sponsorship of refugees: The pros and cons of permitting citizens to select refugees for admission and resettlement

According to the UNHCR, there are over 20 million refugees worldwide, less than one percent of whom are referred for resettlement to third countries on a permanent basis.  One obstacle to more expansive resettlement stems from the alleged lack of resources in settlement countries.  A possible way forward is a ‘private sponsorship of refugees’ program, which in Canada has been in operation since the 1970s, and which permits private citizens to identify specific refugees for admission, if these citizens are willing and able to contribute their own, private, resources to the resettlement project. 

Key to private sponsorship schemes is that private citizens play a key role in selecting refugees for admission and resettlement.  In other words, in addition to more standard selection criteria (for example, identifying the most vulnerable, or those least likely to be able to return to their home countries) about who should be prioritized for scarce resettlement spots, in Canada, another selection criterion is whether particular private citizens are willing to take financial and social responsibility for the costs imposed by a particular refugee.  If they are, and if the refugee selected does not pose a security risk, she can be admitted over and above the refugees the government itself selects and admits.

In this paper, I evaluate the merits and demerits of inviting private citizens to participate in selecting refugees, largely as it has been practiced in the Canadian context, and using data recently collected on the reasons citizens give for participating in the private sponsorship of refugees.  On the one hand, one benefit is that permitting citizens to do the work of sponsoring refugees can (under the right conditions) create more spaces for resettlement to people in urgent need, over and above what a state might offer on its own.  On the other hand, such a program permits private citizens to select refugees for resettlement, and not only will they not necessarily select those most in need of resettlement, the reasons for their choices are not necessarily be morally justifiable according to the principles that perhaps ought to guide admission decisions.  Indeed, on the contrary, many problematic preferences may well be manifest in the choices they make. 

And so, I argue, while we have reason to defend private sponsorship schemes, like Canada’s, which permit citizens’ (possibly morally flawed) preferences for some refugees over others, simply to make more space available to refugees overall, it is also the case that any defensible private sponsorship program must a) ensure that privately sponsored refugees are additional to and not instead of a state-mandated admission quota and b) work to encourage private citizens to select refugees on morally justifiable bases. The paper concludes with proposals for mechanisms to ensure that these are both possible.

Lindauer, Matthew
Australian National University

Domestic Justice and Refugee Prioritization

It is common for moral and political theorists working on immigration to treat refugee policy monistically, examining different one-size-fits-all approaches that existing societies might adopt.  Walzer (1983), for instance, despite arguing for the view that differences between societies and their local conditions matter for justice, has very little to say about how refugee policies might differ between societies on the basis of these particularities.  Carens (1987, 2013) and Wellman (2008), while occupying the poles of the open-closed borders debate, also each say very little about how their views should be adapted to particular societies.  One might thus get the impression that refugee prioritization policies––policies regarding how different prospective refugee admissions are prioritized when a society cannot taken in an unlimited number––should be set without attention to local factors.

            Yet it is clear that differences between societies at least will affect refugee prioritization.  Sometimes this is no justification for the policy adopted.  That the United States has taken in so few refugees from Syria partly reflects the political calculations of politicians who do not wish to anger citizens who demonstrate Islamophobic biases.  But if we think about a society like Germany, with a history of discriminating against a particular minority group, Jewish people in this case, that its citizens generally wish to overcome and make up for, we see that there could be important historical reasons for societies to treat some minority groups differently than others.

            I argue that because of the differences between receiving societies, the same refugee prioritization policy could meet or fail to meet the demands of domestic justice depending on where it is implemented.  Refugee prioritization policies must thus be thought of pluralistically, taking into account local historical and contemporary factors in the receiving society.  My view draws on prior work of mine exploring the ways in which immigration policies can violate demands of domestic justice (Lindauer 2017), in particular the principle of equal respect for members of society.  Policies that facially concern the treatment of nonmembers, such as refugees, can also express disrespect for members of society.  For instance, a society giving less priority to refugees that practice a particular religion could express disrespect for members of society who are practitioners of that religion, particularly when persons in that group have already faced discrimination in the society.  I also show that my view is compatible with a consequentialist picture of what is wrong with discrimination (Lippert-Rasmussen 2014).

            The upshot of my view is that, rather than ignoring the important but difficult issues raised by the different domestic significances of refugee prioritization policies, more global governance is needed to harmonize the fit between different refugees and their receiving countries.  Criteria used in one society will often have different implications for both existing members and the refugees seeking admission in another society.  These implications can also change, and so the project of optimizing refugee admissions, I argue, must be ongoing and informed by the best social scientific research available on the treatment and outcomes of different minority groups.

References

Carens, Joseph H. “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders.” Review of Politics 49, no. 2 (Spring 1987): 251–73.

———. The Ethics of Immigration. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Lindauer, Matthew. “Immigration Policy and Identification Across Borders.” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 12, no. 3 (December 2017): 280-303.

Lippert-Rasmussen, Kasper. Born Free and Equal?: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature of Discrimination. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Walzer, Michael. Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. New York: Basic, 1983.

Wellman, Christopher Heath. “Immigration and Freedom of Association.” Ethics 119, no. 1 (October 2008): 123–32.

Lippert-Rasmussen, Kasper
Aarhus University and UiT The Arctic University of Norway
&
Sune Lægaard
Roskilde University

Refugees and minorities: Some conceptual issues

It is widely agreed that states ought to provide certain legal protections for minorities, e.g., religious, linguistic and sexual minorities, within its own borders. It is also widely, though less so, agreed that states ought to give some special weight to the protection of minorities among refugees, when it comes to admission of refugees even if, admittedly, some measures involving preferential treatment of minority refugees are controversial, cf. the recent Canadian policy of preferential treatment of women, children and families as opposed to men among Syrian refugees. To provide a satisfactory answer to the normative question of whether preferential treatment of minority refugees is morally justified, we need to clarify the conceptual question of what a minority refugee is in the first place. This conceptual question is the main focus of our paper, though we shall argue that it cannot be adequately answered independently of addressing normative questions. To illustrate the sort of issues that fall under the heading of conceptual issues, consider first the list of minorities that we offered above for purposes of illustration. Obviously, the list could be extended in that, say, political minorities too is what people have in mind, when they defend preferential treatment of minority refugees. However, other groups that in some sense clearly form minorities, e.g., the poorest 10% of the country of origin or people with early stages of Alzheimer’s, do not form minorities in the sense relevant from the point of view of justifying preferential treatment of minorities. And perhaps there are borderline groups that are hard to classify, e.g., groups of refugees that for non-standard-minority-related reasons will not be admitted by most other countries. So one important conceptual question is what sort of features a group must have for the purpose of (not) qualifying as member on the list of minorities in the context of refugee admission. One can approach this question empirically by trying to chart people’s (or legal experts’) linguistic intuitions. But one also try, alternatively or as a supplement, to start out by identifying the normative considerations that motivate giving certain groups of refugees preferential treatment and then on that basis delimit the extension of “minority refugees”. We will pursue a combination of these two approaches. Along the lines of the second approach we will propose a moralized notion of minority refugees. That is, a notion of minority refugee that is not purely descriptive -- e.g., member of a group from the country of origin which has fewer members than the largest complementary group -- but that is normative in the sense that to say that a certain group of refugees are minority refugees implies that there is at least a prima facie reason to think that the reasons in favor of admitting them is greater than in the case of “majority refugees” (of which we will then an independent characterization).

Lysaker, Odin
Universitetet i Agder

Childhoods Put on Hold: A Waiting Guarantee for Vulnerable Unaccompanied Minors’ Prolonged Displacement

Abstract: Unaccompanied minors fall out of time regarding normal expectable life cycles when subjected to prolonged waiting and forced displacement, for instance at detention centres. To handle unaccompanied minors, which UNHCR defines as particularly vulnerable, therefore, I introduce what I call a ‘waiting guarantee’. This principle says that it is morally unacceptable if prolonged waiting put unaccompanied minors’ childhood on hold. So, within the framework of Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition, I introduce two meta-forms of recognitive negation, namely ‘misrecognition’ and ‘nonrecognition’, to identity situations in which unaccompanied minors during the waiting time of forced displacement can no longer struggle for recognition due to mental and physical effects of the prolonged waiting. In contrast to Honneth’s methodological nationalism, then, I apply his recognition theory on a transnational scale in the case of today’s flows of irregular migration. Hence, on the backdrop of basic Honnethian recognition, I hold that rights – such as UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child and its fundamental principle of the best interests of the child (Article 3) – as well as care and esteem should protect vulnerable unaccompanied minors living in limbo-situations of protracted refugee situations. Still, in line with Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach, I ascribe children, including unaccompanied minors, a special moral priority, since their vulnerability make them more dependent upon others’ recognition than most adults. Still, I here view vulnerability as an existential and bodily condition, namely an ontological feature shared by all humans as non-chosen and hence something that cannot be chosen away. Accordingly, in Nussbaumian terms, to live a fully human life worthy of dignity, bodily integrity, and life quality, unaccompanied minors’ vulnerability should be protected through recognition, which implies living in accordance with normal expectable life cycles rather than experiencing nonrecognition through prolonged waiting, and thus having one’s childhood put on hold.

Mazzola, Dario
Milan State University

Towards a Refugee-Centered Approach to Distribution

According to Michael Blake (2016), distribution is one of the five key philosophical problems relating to the refugee crisis.  Even if the world 7,6 billion population is hardly to be “overwhelmed” by the 65,6 million forcibly displaced people registered by UNHCR in 2016, some states, including among the wealthiest, have raised concerns relating to the increasing figures of the entries, and have introduced direct and indirect distinctions based on the refugees’ origins. The possibility of giving priority to refugees depending on their religion, languages, skills, and other criteria is now discussed even explicitly in many countries.

In my paper, I argue for the elaboration of a “refugee-centered” approach to distribute those for whom resettlement seems the most appropriate solution.

By so claiming, I show that some of the practices and criteria that appear to be discriminatory when acted upon for the interests of a state or national community, e.g. giving precedence to Hindu refugees in a predominantly Hindu country, can have an enabling effect with respect to the refugees’ human rights, in this example freedom of religion. Other “refugee-oriented” benefits of such distribution criteria can include promoting integration, preventing xenophobic reactions, and facilitating travels and returns when considering geographic proximity. Overall, it is possible to derive from the “refugee-centered” perspective both non-discriminatory principles such as respect for refugees’ interests and choices and a consequentialist defense of selection criteria. This would respect the realistic constraints defended by those who, like David Miller (2016), require political theory to be workable in the world as it is.

In opposition to this, I also consider possible objections to the “refugee-centered” approach, such as the accusation of introducing indirect discriminations. According to this objection, my approach would run the risk of becoming an ideological cover and a conceptual proxy for bringing about discriminatory exclusions or, at best, a morally dubious practical compromise between national majorities’ preferences and refugees’ rights.

As an answer and conclusion, I claim that the “refugee-centered” approach upholding distribution criteria such as affinity of language and religion is defensible only on condition of there being impartial and international consensus on schemes of distribution, and vigilance on their unbiased enforcement. Secondly, and most importantly, the “refugee-centered” approach can allow for such criteria coherently only if they are only defended as part of a global assistance to all refugees. 

Miller, David
University of Oxford

Selecting Refugees

My lecture will examine the grounds on which liberal states may select refugees for admission.  I will argue first that selection itself is defensible in principle: the responsibility to protect the human rights of refugees is a collective responsibility owed by all the states that are in a position to discharge it, so no state is obliged to accept more than its fair share of refugees.  This, however, does not determine how the selection of refugees, for example among those currently housed in camps, should be carried out.  May states favour those refugees who they believe will contribute most to the society they are joining, or should they always give preference to the most vulnerable?  It is permissible to discriminate between refugees on grounds of their religious or cultural affiliations?  And do receiving states have a special obligation to accommodate refugees in cases where the states in question have contributed to bringing about the state of affairs that the refugees are now trying to escape?

Mladenova, Viki
Scuola Normale Superiore

Non-ideal human rights

The ongoing displacement crisis claimed as the “worst” one since the Second World War undoubtedly is related to the crisis of human rights and their ontology. Many authors have talked about the contemporary crisis of human rights. Different aspects, in this manner, were discovered: subjects of crisis (Achille Mbembe), states of injury (Wendy Brown), bare life and sovereign power (Giorgio Agamben), the positions of the subaltern (Gayatri Spivak, Ratna Kapur), precarious life (Judith Butler, Isabel Lory)…        
Going back to some of the most important texts on power and the Foucauldian need to think power differently and also to some of the Arendtian explanations of totalitarian rule, we can consider the point of convergence of the worst displacement crisis and the contemporary crisis of human rights: when one is nothing more than human, abandoned by the guarding mechanisms of the nation-state, exposed to the violence of power relations, the one is not human enough, is not a citizen, not a subject but an object of law and cannot use his human rights. This route, as known – started with totalitarian rule specific to the Western world in the 20th century, but also earlier, during the historical western trajectories of colonialism and racism on which later the modern model of nation-state was built. Now ends itself in the ongoing “end of history” through the destiny of so many refugees that flee from war zones that are victimized in innumerous ways, no matter if they are on their path to a new life or if they already reached the racist shores of the Occident. There, they share the same destiny of the precarious, the poor, and vanished from social mobility, discriminated and criminalized (the same “state of injury”). Where the fundamental rights of refugees are as far from they as are for other minority groups, controlled through their precarization.                          
This dynamic and practice of human rights showed one thing for sure: one of their main principles, the principle of the universality of human rights, as their protective membrane cannot accomplish its immanent task. In fact, the conjunction of its execution goes the other way round, meaning that the principle of universality points out the inconsistency of the concept of human rights, whose validity is localized and Western-centric, while at a global level this principle malfunctions and leads to the production of precarious populations, those of the (displaced) Third World. Or, as Claude Lefort notes: “reality is to be defined at the level of the relations of property and relations of power; as for the issue of rights, when it is seen as anything more than a rationalization of these relations” (1986, p. 243).  
The new needs of questioning the human rights or setting new demands towards them, as if we should think about acceptable and unacceptable criteria for accepting or rejecting refugees in a non-ideal world, cannot be settled without previously considering the contemporary crisis of human rights, the answers to it or the new political possibilities to come, not necessarily related to law.                      

Oberman, Kieran
University of Edinburgh

Refugee Discrimination – The Good, the Bad and the Politically Expedient

How frequently do states discriminate among refugees? When is such discrimination wrong? Would it ever be permissible for a political leader to impose wrongful discrimination in the face of political constraints? This article seeks to answer each question in turn. In answer to the first, it finds that discrimination is rampant. There is the kind of discrimination that gets noticed: discrimination within the current refugee system in favour of those who inspire more sympathy or have more to offer a receiving state. But there is also that kind of discrimination that is missed: discrimination built into the refugee system itself. The second question proves tricky. Matters are clear at the extremes. Discrimination based on need is permissible. Discrimination based on racism is not. In between, we have cases in which we may suspect that discrimination is wrong but we are not precisely sure why it is wrong or how wrong it is. The article searches for relevant criteria by which to judge. Finally, in turning to the last question, the article comes to the surprising conclusion that whether it is permissible for a political leader to impose wrongful discrimination in the face of political constraints depends a great deal on our philosophical understanding of the state and the relationship between the state and its political leadership. If we understand the state and political leadership in one way, wrongful discrimination can be justifiably imposed. Understood another way, however, the idea of justifiably imposing wrongful discrimination proves a contradiction in terms.

Parekh, Serena
Northeastern University

The Refugee Crisis Needs a New Frame: We are Not Rescuers

                In this talk, I suggest that the way we talk about the challenges around refugees needs a new frame. According to the old frame, Western states can be seen as rescuing refugees who have fled from bad states, either through resettlement or through granting asylum. On this view, our moral obligations to refugees can be thought of as an ethics of rescue - we have a moral obligation to rescue people when we can do so at relatively low cost to ourselves. I argue that this frame is too myopic in light of the contemporary global reality. In the 21^st century, refugees experience two sets of harms. The first harm is well known: their displacement from their countries of origin caused by their malicious or ineffective governments. But the second harm is the result of the “solutions” created by the international community and supported and encouraged by Western states. So rather than being rescuers, we must consider ourselves as part of the problem.

                The harm that I’m referring to is the fact that a refugee in the 21^st century has basically three choices, all of them problematic, that are the result of states’ collective refusal to find morally acceptable solutions for refugees and to instead focus on sovereign control of borders. The three choices are: indefinite waiting in a resource-poor, insecure refugee camp for the slim chance - less than 1% - of resettlement; self-settlement in urban slums, without the ability to either work legally nor access aid from the UN; agree to be smuggled to Europe, knowing you will very likely be tortured, raped, extorted, and potentially suffocated or drowned along the way. While we in the West debate whether we should resettle 1% or .5% of refugees, refugees themselves are navigating these choices that we have created for them.

                If we think of the problem like this, it becomes clear that Western states are not merely rescuers but, in fact, part of the problem. With this frame in place, it becomes clear that thinking about our moral obligations to refugees requires a much larger lens than the one that usually restricts our focus to whether or not we are obliged to grant asylum or ought to resettle refugees. The moral question becomes: can we reform the refugee protection regime so that we are able to genuinely protect and offer autonomy and dignity to all refugees? Can we help people who are enduring our “solutions” i.e., refugee camps, urban slums, dangerous migrations? This paper asks us to go beyond the theme of the conference and the ethics of ‘refugee triage’ and look at the broader context and the ways in which our policies shape the possibilities open to refugees.

Romano, Benedetta
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

I belong therefore I am: Immigrants, National Identity, and Feeling of Belonging

Is the cultural background of immigrants a legitimate criterion for determining their access to the host country? Those endorsing the cultural criterion, have emphasized the value of national culture as a source of identity for the members of the national community, and have argued that the inclusion of immigrants with a different cultural background within the community, constitutes a threat against it. In order to assess the cultural criterion, I first determine what the value of national culture as a source of identity consists in, and then, what it entails to respect it. Having clarified that the value of national culture as a source of identity consists in providing a feeling of belonging, and that this value has a participatory character, I claim that immigrants do not threaten it if they do not share cultural traits similar to those characterizing the hosting community, but only only if they do not share a feeling of belonging to it. This is why, I conclude, what is appropriate in order to protect the value of national culture as a source of identity, is not selecting immigrants based on their cultural background, but rather fostering their feeling of belonging to the hosting community.

Ross, Alec
University of Edinburgh

Rethinking Acceptable Criteria for Accepting/Rejecting Refugees in a Non-Ideal World

This proposal submits that there are defensible grounds on which to prioritize granting asylum according to the nature and severity of an individual’s persecution. It does so first by arguing that in a non-ideal world, allowing states to exercise discretion in refugee admission does not necessarily result in fewer refugees being helped; in some cases, allowing for discretion can increase the numbers of successful asylum cases. Given that state reluctance results in a relative few claimants being granted asylum, great care ought to be taken to address the reluctance problem specifically. One strategy for this is maximizing incentive for state hosting. Allowing for discretion is one way to do this. In some cases, those most persecuted are those possessing strong ties to potential host states, including the religious and political. In others, the most persecuted groups may be the demographical sorts many states are more willing to admit. Syria is an example: women and children are persecuted by the Assad regime, as are the Christians, Yazidis, and Dumiz populations. Host states often prefer women and children refugees, citing concerns of illegitimate asylum claims by able-bodied male applicants. In cases such as these, minority populations are the sorts of refugees many states are willing to admit. Further, there is much sympathy for persecuted Christian populations among potential host states, as is the case for Kurdish Yazidis, who have long been a western ally in the region. If we accept these premises, it seems plausible that state discretion and minority protection are not opposing, but complimenting forces. The author feels that this insight is a unique contribution to the relevant literature, and makes up one thought that has gone curiously unexplored. This article will examine these themes and address several imminent criticisms, including that allowing for state discretion grants states too much consideration in the calculation of refugee allocations; that reluctant states will likely take advantage of these considerations. Another is that refugee status is sufficient for the duty of help and thus prioritizing asylum unnecessarily discriminates against refugees and does so on weak grounds.

Schweiger, Gottfried
University of Salzburg

Should we prioritize child refugees?

In this paper I am interested in the question if and why states should prioritize child refugees over adult refugees in the case that they are not able to grant refuge to all those that are entitled to it. In particular I discuss three grounds on which such a prioritization could be based: (a) vulnerability, (b) efficiency, (c) life phase and life span. The argument from vulnerability refers, on the one hand, to the greater harm that child refugees suffer and, on the hand, to their increased need of protection and care. The efficiency argument points to the assumption that children are cheaper and more easily to be integrated in the host society, which among other things increases the number of refugees that can be admitted. Finally, it seems as if states should prioritize children simply because they are younger, which means that they had less from their lives so far compared to adults and have moral claims to enjoy their own "fair innings". I am not so much interested in the general validity of these arguments but rather want to explore if they can sufficiently justify the prioritization of child refugees. As can be shown they apply, to some extent, also to particular groups of adults such as women, the elderly, or persons with special needs. Based on this I argue that states should invest significant resources to filter out those who are the most needy and vulnerable although there are several epistemic limitations. Only if such a selection process would be so costly and time-consuming that significantly fewer refugees can be admitted states have good moral reasons to prioritize children without further screening. A final question is whether or not the prioritization of child refugees also affects their parents or care-givers. In regard to this I want to argue that - based on the arguments discussed before - the non-admittance is potentially more harmful than the separation from the parents/care-givers. Thus in order to admit more children such a separation can be justified.

Servan, Johannes
University of Bergen

‘What justice requires’ – state-centric and cosmopolitan perspectives on priority criteria in resettlement policies.

In this paper I will raise a moral epistemological concern regarding the way we provide justified criteria of priority in non-ideal cases of issuing resettlement policies. My concern is that a state-centric perspective will provide inadequate answers to the question of which criteria to use, because it tends to limit its concern to the balance between the interest of the hosting state, and weak cosmopolitan concern for the individual interest of refugees. As a promising competing approach, I suggest we consider a cosmopolitan perspective to establish adequate criteria of distributing admissions and material resources to refugees.

To specify the issue, I take for granted that “refugees” are understood as individuals with a particularly strong moral claim to admission in an alien state, compared to other migrants. This claim is grounded in the need for sanctuary (which in the wide sense includes victims of war and state collapse). The claim corresponds to the obligation of the international community of states to resettle all, and for each state to take its fair share of the burden. In the case of a non-ideal situation, I understand this “fair share” to vary according to limited resources, but to be independent of the effect of immoral actions, such as non-arrival measures.

Further, my argument does not concern cases where states provide refugees more than what justice requires, such as permanent residency. In these cases, inspired by David Miller’s argument in “Justice in immigration” (2015), we could say that states are justified (within certain external constraints) to issue criteria, such as work skills, based on the state’s interest. (Miller 2015) And, as a last condition, I will restrict my argument to issues of resettlement policies, involving quotas and an internationally organized system of distribution, like the UN. Similar criteria might be used in cases of asylum seekers (i.e. refugees in the territorial proximity of the state issuing the policies), but I find it harder to justify criteria beyond random selection in these cases.

By “state-centric” I mainly refer to a perspective that frames the question of refugees in terms of an “ethics of admission”. (Parekh 2017) This perspective implies that issues of adequate resettlement policies are judged primarily by two concerns: the interest of the hosting state, and the moral concern for the individual refugee (such as the conditions of a minimally decent life, in Miller’s account). This might seem reasonable enough, but it has a tendency to undermine, according to Serena Parekh, the systemic consequences of the sum of policies issued by each state. I argue along the same lines that a cosmopolitan perspective is better suited for this task, and will provide us with better advice on how to distribute sanctuary as a scarce resource.

Miller, David. 2015. "Justice in Immigration." European Journal of Political Theory 14 no. 4: 391-408.
Parekh, Serena. 2017. Refugees and the Ethics of Forced Displacement, Routledge Research in Applied Ethics.

Shahvisi, Arianne
Brighton and Sussex Medical School

Existence precedes nascence: an argument for accepting greater numbers of refugees

In this article I argue that all applications for asylum should be granted, provided the number of applicants each year is lower than the projected birth-rate of a given country for that same year, or lower than the projected population increase that the country is able to accommodate (whichever is greater). My paper takes the United Kingdom as its case study. I consider the projected birth-rate for the UK over the coming decade, and compare this with projected estimates of asylum applications to the UK and Europe over the same period. I argue that since the projected birth-rate for the UK is vastly greater than the number of asylum applications to all European countries, convincing arguments are needed in order to justify favouring persons who do not yet (and may never) exist, and whose rights claims are merely abstract, over refugees currently seeking asylum, whose rights claims are concrete and urgent. Given that the UK is unlikely to undertake measures to prevent or curb the procreation of current citizens, and presumably intends to accommodate the expected rise in population and the associated needs and costs, then it should assign those intended resources to refugees whose needs are extant, rather than reserving them for persons who may never exist. I describe the motivations that might be given for favouring the future offspring of existing citizens over those of existing non-citizens, the most prominent of which are concerns about local cultures being lost, and concerns about once-majority racial groups becoming demographic minorities. I explore the relationship between culture and globalisation and the evolution of cultural practices in the UK, and contend that the first concern is unfounded. By reviewing the literature on racial groups, I determine that the second concern is founded on flawed science, and is in any case impossible to articulate in terms that are not racist. I therefore conclude that the needs of existing people should be prioritised, and that states should accept as many refugees as they would births.

Slater, Gary
St. Edward’s University

From Sacer to Sanctus: Against Prioritizing Among Refugees

This paper argues that states cannot legitimately prioritize among refugees who seek asylum within their borders. Its arguments rest on the following claims: (a) vocabularies of belonging and alienage are more appropriate within migration discourse than those of rights and justice; (b) reflections on national immigration policy must engage with the diverse ways in which the spatial politics of immigration manifests itself locally. These claims have the following implications.

First, the sole legitimate form of discrimination on the part of the state concerning refugees is that of discriminating how and when to renounce its own agency. Since prioritizing among refugees entails excluding those groups that are not prioritized, alienage inevitably follows. For individuals so excluded, their status is what Georgio Agamben calls homo sacer, or bare life that is alienated from juridical identity. To minimize such alienage, the state should selectively renounce its own agency. This substitutes a distinction concerning state sovereignty for the distinction concerning which groups are entitled to legal and political protection.

Second, engagement with the local dimension of immigration policy, when considered in light of the preceding paragraph, amounts to a measured defense of sanctuary cities as they exist in the United States and Canada (as opposed to the United Kingdom or on the European continent). As exceptions to national immigration policies, sanctuary cities represent an existing model in which to analyze the ethics of migration in light of the limits of state sovereignty. In such a retreat of the state lies the possibility of civic belonging. Yet in order for this possibility to be fulfilled, civil initiative must fill the space created by the state’s retreat. As a strategy for fostering such initiative, this paper suggests reflection on the etymology of “sanctuary” as derived from the Latin sanctus, understood as being set apart for protection.

The historical relation between sacer and sanctus is instructive. While the homo sacer was exposed to violence yet exempt from sacrifice, persons associated with sanctus—that is, persons living in sanctuary—underwent sacrifice in order to secure bodily protection from harm. The modern analogues to this ancient split between sacer and sanctus can be found in the opposition between sanctuary and camp. The camp applies to spaces beyond the law such as characterize the life of the refugee. The sanctuary is the exact opposite of the camp as a place of protection and shelter. Yet both refer to ambiguous territory: the camp is the site of the homo sacer, while the sanctuary is the temenos, the holy ground and where those who flee from the law, power and violence can find asylum.^[1] Within this etymological frame, this paper concludes by considering how sanctuary cities provide the possibility of transformation from sacer to sanctus.