International Political Theory and the Refugee Problem

Natasha Saunders

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781315304137
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

'The refugee problem' is a term that it has become almost impossible to escape. Although used by a wide range of actors involved in work related to forced migration, these actors do not often explain what exactly 'the problem' is that they are working to solve, leading to an unfortunate conflation of two quite different 'problems': the problems that refugees face and the problems that refugees pose.

Beginning from the simple, yet too often overlooked, observation that how one conceives of solving a problem is inseparable from what one understands that problem to be, Saunders' study explores the questions raised about how to address 'the refugee problem' if we recognise that there may not be just one 'problem', and that not all actors involved with the refugee regime conceive of their work as addressing the same 'problem'. Utilising the work of Michel Foucault, the book first charts how different 'problems' lend themselves to particular kinds of solutions, arguing that the international refugee regime is best understood as developed to 'solve' the refugee (as) problem, rather than refugees' problems. Turning to the work of Hannah Arendt, the book then reframes 'the refugee problem' from the perspective of the refugee, rather than the state, and investigates the extent to which doing so can open up creative space for rethinking the more traditional solutions to the refugee (as) problem. Cases of refugee protest in Europe, and the burgeoning Sanctuary Movement in the UK, are examined as two sub-state and popular movements which could constitute such creative solutions to a reframed problem.

The consequences of the 'refugee' label, and of the discourses of humanitarianism and emergency is a topic of critical concern, and as such, the book will form important reading for a scholars and students of (international) political theory and forced migration studies.

1 On Refugee Problems

The Development of a Problem and a Regime

In July 1951, delegates from 26 states gathered in Geneva to draw up a new Refugee Convention. Their deliberations were observed by representatives from an additional two states, and from 29 non-governmental organisations. As this Conference of Plenipotentiaries drew to a close, a Mr Rees stood up and made the following observation and impassioned plea:

It [the Conference] had … to use the popular expression, thrown the baby out with the bath water. Its decisions had at times given the impression that it was a conference for the protection of the helpless sovereign states against the wicked refugee. The draft Convention had been in danger of appearing to the refugee like the menu at an expensive restaurant, with every course crossed out except, perhaps, the soup, and a footnote to the effect that even the soup might not be served in certain circumstances … He would appeal to the Conference to ensure, at long last, that its deliberations sounded a note of generosity and liberalism, not one of fear and niggardliness.

(United Nations, 1951e: 4–5)

Mr Rees was the Chairman of the Standing Committee of Voluntary Agencies and, as such, represented 32 organisations – national and international – involved in relief work with refugees. He had been present throughout the deliberations of the Conference and, while his remarks were related strictly to these deliberations, they characterise equally well, I contend in this chapter, the development of the refugee regime over the preceding 30 years, as the result of a battle between two competing understandings of the ‘problem’ in need of a solution: the problems faced by refugees, and the problem of the refugee. The latter understanding of ‘the problem’ took precedence and has provided the dominant framework for the search for solutions to ‘the refugee problem’ ever since.

This chapter examines the relationship between ‘the refugee problem’ and the refugee regime, exploring how a particular understanding of ‘the refugee problem’ provides the foundation of the international refugee regime that persists to this day: ‘the refugee (as) problem’. Understanding how the dominance of the framework of ‘the refugee (as) problem’ has been present since the very earliest days of international concern with population displacement reveals that the rationale behind contemporary state practices is not novel developments which ‘betray’ an earlier, humanitarian, guiding conception of ‘the refugee problem’, but has been present since the very beginning. To do this, the chapter examines the formative years of the international refugee regime, 1921–1951, through the archives of the League of Nations and United Nations, to understand not simply how ‘the refugee’, ‘the refugee problem’ and the solutions to this ‘problem’ have been formally defined, but to examine the characterisations and assumptions upon which these definitions rest, and how, together, they form a distinct discourse governing how the refugee and refugee problem are spoken about; in other words, how they form a ‘refugee problem discourse’. To chart the development of this discourse the chapter is structured around three inter-related questions, corresponding to each of the substantive sections of the chapter: How is the refugee characterised? How is the problem understood? What solutions are conceived? In answering each question, attention is first devoted to the formal definitions as given in the Conventions, Agreements and Statutes of the period, before widening the focus to address the assumptions and characterisations contained in meeting minutes, letters, reports, resolutions and conference proceedings of the same period.

While historical inquiry has largely been shunned in scholarship on forced migration – when compared to the fields of law, policy, sociology and anthropology – in favour of the more pressing concern that scholarship be ‘of use’ to practitioners and policy-makers, a small group of scholars have drawn attention to the importance of inter-war developments in refugee policy. Two studies in particular are noteworthy for my purposes here: Claudena Skran’s Refugees in Inter-War Europe: The Emergence of a Regime, and Nevzat Soguk’s States and Strangers: Refugees and Displacements of Statecraft. Skran’s study takes a regime theory approach to the inter-war period of refugee protection, arguing that characterisations of early efforts on behalf of refugees as ad hoc and ineffective are based largely on assessments of the League’s failure to assist Jewish refugees from Germany in the final two years of the 1930s, when the League of Nations was already disintegrating (Skran, 1995: 9–10). If, however, we take a longer view of League actions on behalf of refugees, then, Skran argues, these ad hoc actions begin to coalesce into a regime, defined by Stephen Krasner as a set of explicit or implicit “principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actor expectations converge in a given issue-area” (Krasner, 1982: 185). Skran examines the League of Nations archives to demonstrate how the refugee regime developed around the principles of sovereignty and humanitarianism; the norms of asylum, assistance, and burden-sharing; refugee definitions and the rule of non-refoulement; and the decision-making procedures of the various refugee agencies created under the auspices of the League.

As one part of a broader project, Nevzat Soguk also turns to the archives of the League of Nations to analyse refugee protection. The central argument of States and Strangers is that the term ‘refugee’ only makes sense when it is juxtaposed to ‘citizen’, as its opposite. Refugees are thus defined by what they lack – a state – and this conceptualisation of them in international politics serves to reinforce the state’s centrality. Through examining a series of historical episodes, Soguk charts the use of the refugee and refugee regime as tools of ‘statecraft’: practices that posit the state as something “already there”, while working through problematisations in various fields of activity to effect statist identities and images (Soguk, 1999: 40), and thus reinforcing the predominant position of the state and citizen in international politics. The central focus of States and Strangers is the (re)construction of the state and of citizenship through the problem of the foreigner/refugee. The archives of the League of Nations reveal, on Soguk’s account, the integral and instrumental role that the League of Nations High Commission for Refugees played in the production, stabilisation, and empowerment of the “contingent images, identities, subjectivities, relations, and institutions of sovereign statehood in local and global politics” (Soguk, 1999: 111). While we draw on many of the same archival materials, and I largely agree with his broader analysis, Soguk and I have slightly different concerns in turning to the inter-war period. Soguk’s concern is to demonstrate that the refugee was portrayed as the citizen’s ‘other’ – thus reinforcing the supremacy of the citizen subjectivity in international political life – and that the refugee regime serves to reaffirm the centrality of the sovereign state. My concern is to explore the specifics of this refugee regime, of the ‘refugee’ as a particular kind of subject, and of what specific kind of problem ‘the refugee problem’ was understood to be.

On Refugees

The dissolution of the multi-ethnic empires of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottomans, following the end of the First World War, involved massive movements of people. Some fled the new regimes in their home countries, others were forcibly transferred under international supervision in the attempt to achieve new ethnically un-mixed nation-states, while others were simply no longer welcome where they had lived as a result of their ethnic ‘incompatibility’ with the replacement state. In some of these cases movement was accompanied by formal denationalisation, but whether it was accompanied by denationalisation or not, many of the new migrants found themselves stranded abroad with no recognised identification papers and no state willing to claim them. The traditional story of the development of a regime instituted out of profound concern for the plight of these displaced multitudes, the purpose of which was to ensure the protection of their rights in the face of persecution, seems to be given weight by an examination of the international legal accords of the inter-war period. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the League of Nations took a series of ad hoc measures in response to each new flow of ‘refugees’. These legal accords show a development of the definition of the refugee from group-based juridical conceptions through to the individualist, persecution-centred definition that forms the bedrock of the international refugee regime today (for a detailed examination of these legal developments, see Hathaway, 1984). This evolution of refugee status mirrors an evolution in international understanding of the refugee problem from the lack of juridical status manifested in the lack of recognised identity documents, through to the problem of a fundamental incompatibility between an individual and her state, manifested in persecution or a fear of persecution compelling flight abroad.

The first group of displaced people to come to the attention of the League was a group of roughly 800,000 Russians who had fled the Russian civil war and had since been denationalised by the Bolshevik regime. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) sent a memorandum to the Council of the League, calling upon it to establish a High Commissioner’s office whose primary task would be to define the legal position of the Russians. A Conference on the question of Russian refugees examined the problem of their lack of legal status, and highlighted the role played by the lack of valid identity documents in prolonging their plight. A High Commissioner’s office was duly established, with the famed Norwegian explorer, scientist, and philanthropist, Fridtjof Nansen serving as the first High Commissioner, but the formal definition of a refugee was not laid down until 1926 when the competencies of the High Commissioner were extended to Armenian refugees. The Arrangement of 12 May 1926 relating to the Issue of Identity Certificates to Russian and Armenian Refugees defines a refugee as any person of Russian or Armenian origin, who no longer enjoyed the protection of either the USSR or the Turkish Republic, and who had not acquired another nationality (League of Nations, 1926a: 48). This same group-based definition of refugees was applied in 1928 to Assyrians, Assyro-Chaldeans and a small group of denationalised Turks (League of Nations, 1928b).

A subtle but fundamental shift occurred in refugee definitions in the 1930s, signalling that one could be a refugee even while formally retaining the nationality of the state from which one had fled. The Plan for the Issue of a Certificate of Identity to Refugees from the Saar, of 1935, defined a refugee as a person who, having previously been a resident of the Saar, had “left the territory on the occasion of the plebiscite and are not in possession of national passports” (League of Nations, 1935c: 1681). The plebiscite to which the Plan refers concerned the reunification of the Saarland with the rest of Germany, and the decision in favour of reunification prompted an exodus of those opposed to the Nazi regime. A relatively steady stream of people had been leaving Germany since the rise of the Nazis to power in 1933, and the Provisional Arrangement concerning the Status of Refugees Coming from Germany, of 1936, and the Convention concerning the Status of Refugees coming from Germany, of 1938, expanded the definition of a refugee to include the de facto loss of government protection. These documents defined a refugee as any “person who was settled in that country … and in respect of whom it is established that in law or in fact he or she does not enjoy the protection of the Government of the Reich” (League of Nations, 1936: 77; emphasis added).

The final stage in the development of the refugee definition began with the Constitution of the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) in 1946, when the group-based criterion was dropped (except for persons of German ethnic origin who, as a group, were barred from the protection and assistance of the IRO), and the core of refugeehood was conceptualised as the fundamental incompatibility of an individual with her state of origin (United Nations, 1946c: 18–20). The 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees maintains this focus on the individual and persecution in defining a refugee as any person who

owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.

(United Nations, 1951o: Art.1A(2))

These definitions, and the progression from a group-based conception of the refugee to the individualist one of today, are important, not least because they have very real consequences for a person denied Refugee status, but they only tell part of the story. The definitions tell us who a Refugee is in legal terms – they give a formal title/status to the physical and legal realities in which certain persons or groups of persons have found themselves – but the discourse about the refugee was, and still is, larger than simply legal definition. Indeed, the first legal definition of the refugee came five years after the League of Nations first devoted its attention to the displaced. If we widen our focus and look beyond the formal international legal accords of the period, it quickly becomes evident that the refugee is not simply conceived of and spoken about in legal terms.

The Refugee as a Humanitarian Object and Burden

From the very earliest days of League concern with the displaced, the refugee was constructed as a problem figure. The first formal discussion we see in the League of Nations regarding refugees was in response to a letter sent to the Secretary General by Gustav Ador, then President of the ICRC, of 20 February 1921, requesting the assistance of the League in relief efforts on behalf of Russians who had fled the civil war and congregated in the countries bordering the former Russian empire. The memorandum warns that if no effort is made by the international community, then the refugees are “in danger of becoming useless and harmful elements in the Europe of tomorrow” (League of Nations, 1921a: 228). This view of refugees as a pool of potential social unrest and general “uselessness” was shared by the governments invited to provide information for a conference on the Russian refugee question on the numbers and conditions of refugees in their territories, and these discussions are rich in refugee problematisations, among the strongest from the Finnish representative:

One of the disadvantages due to the presence of the refugees is the demoralising influence exercised on the neighbouring Finnish population by these multitudes, composed, for the greater part, of persons unaccustomed to discipline and order and used to idleness.

(League of Nations, 1921e: 1010)

The Finnish government, along with many others, had felt it necessary to hold the refugees in concentration camps for “military and political reasons”, and placed restrictions on their freedom of movement (League of Nations, 1921e: 1009). The refugees are frequently described as a “burden” on their countries of refuge, and the discussions quickly turn to the concept of “burden sharing”. Later that year the League appointed Fridtjof Nansen as the first League of Nations High Commissioner for [Russian] Refugees, and his reports to the League contain similar conceptions of refugees.

This manner of referring to refugees was not confined to the initial discussions in the months preceding formal League action on their behalf but continued throughout the period in question. Nansen continued to speak of the “danger of social and political unrest” engendered by the presence of large numbers of refugees throughout Europe (League of Nations, 1927a: 1337), and the interested governments were at times reluctant to make potentially meaningful reforms to League efforts because of these fears. One notable example comes again from a Finnish representative in a discussion on liberalising the bureaucracy involved in granting and extending entry and transit visas for refugees. The Finnish government was reluctant to liberalise its visa policy for refugees since they “often turn out to be politically and socially undesirable persons” (League of Nations, 1931b: 1009).

Racial and ethnic desirability were also important facto...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations of books by Michel Foucault and Hannah Arendt
• Introduction: Out of Profound Concern – For Whom?
• 1 On Refugee Problems: The Development of a Problem and a Regime
• 2 Michel Foucault, Governmentality, and the State: The Emergence of the Refugee (as) Problem
• 3 Power, Knowledge, and the Subject: Managing the Refugee (as) Problem
• 4 Hannah Arendt and the Refugee Problem: Worldlessness and Superfluity
• 5 Making Oneself at Home in the World: Solutions to Refugees’ Problems
• Conclusion: On Durability and Permanence
• Index