Research

Four cross cutting themes are addressed within the RefMig streams of research:

MOBILITY AND MIGRATION

International refugee law provides a vision of refugee agency: refugees are understood to have a right to flee (including illegally – states undertake not to penalize refugees for illegal entry) and enjoy self-employment and work rights in their countries of asylum.

However, in practice, refugee flight is increasingly suppressed, both in refugees’ regions of origin and further afield, with the EU one of the key actors in the global suppression of refugee mobility. Refugees’ right to flee, onward movement in search of decent refuge and possible further access to migration opportunities need scholarly attention. Refugees often face more mobility barriers than other travellers and migrants and, in the absence of legal ways to claim asylum, they often must have recourse to smugglers.

Even when they are formally recognised as refugees, refugees’ travel and migration options are often curtailed with resettlement as much a containment as a mobility practice. The project’s premise, that ‘refugees are migrants’ aims to open up for scrutiny those practices that limit refugee flight and onward mobility, to examine how migration control concerns have come to permeate the refugee regime.

GENDER

The RefMig project aims to integrate a gendered perspective throughout, with the aim of revealing and problematising the gendered division of protection in the global refugee regime.

In refugee law, there is a rich scholarship challenging the androcentricity of the refugee definition, generally foregrounding by interpretation, various forms of gender-based harms have been acknowledged as persecution. This means that it appears that at least some headway has been made to make asylum equally accessible to men and women, although this is by no means a done deal.

Part of the motivation for bringing refugee law into conversation with the refugee regime is precisely that asylum (particularly in the EU) is a mode of protection used by men more than women. In contrast, at present, resettlement programmes often employ amorphous ‘vulnerability’ criteria, which are also deeply gendered and need further elaboration. The RefMig project is committed to asking the gender question throughout the research.

ACCOUNTABILITY

The lives of refugees and migrants are profoundly shaped by the laws and practices not only of states (usually states of which they are not citizens) but also various non-state actors—including international organisations and non-governmental organizations—that shape the global refugee regime.

In order to be recognised as refugees, individuals must usually register, and undergo some form of bureaucratic processes. If the outcome of these processes is not positive, they often have little means to challenge their rejection. Along their journeys, refugees and other migrants are subjected to various human rights abuses not only by individuals or states, but also by humanitarian non-state actors.

The project aims to understand and problematise the accountability for these human rights violations, and more generally, how those actors that determine refugeehood and migrants’ rights may be held accountable for their actions.

NON-STATE ACTORS

International refugee law is predominantly made by states, and implemented in and by states. The project seeks to better understand the role of non-state actors, in particular, international organisations, in the refugee regime, including their role in norm setting and implementation.

For example, the significant role of UNHCR in recognising refugees is examined in the Recognising Refugees strand. Understanding the expanding role of IOM in dealing with refugees and other displaced persons is central to the Organisations of Protection strand. The project also takes a broad notion of ‘intermediary’ to examine the regulation of the various actors, including non-governmental organizations, who facilitate and thwart refugee mobility, protection and solutions.

The legal regime governing mobility and migration is complex. Discrete elements thereof have been identified as barriers to protection, but their workings are under-investigated.

These themes will be focused on within the RefMig key research strands:

International refugee law provides a vision of refugee agency: refugees are understood to have a right to flee (including illegally – states undertake not to penalize refugees for illegal entry) and enjoy self-employment and work rights in their countries of asylum.

The RefMig project aims to integrate a gendered perspective throughout, with the aim of revealing and problematising the gendered division of protection in the global refugee regime.

The lives of refugees and migrants are profoundly shaped by the laws and practices not only of states (usually states of which they are not citizens) but also various non-state actors—including international organisations and non-governmental organizations—that shape the global refugee regime.

International refugee law is predominantly made by states, and implemented in and by states. The project seeks to better understand the role of non-state actors, in particular, international organisations, in the refugee regime, including their role in norm setting and implementation.