Transforming refugees into migrants: institutional change and the politics of international protection

Abstract

Since the 2015 refugee “crisis,” much has been made of the distinction between the legal category of refugee and migrant. While migration scholars have accounted for the increased blurring of these two categories through explanations of institutional drift and policy layering, we argue that the intentional policies utilized by states and international organizations to minimize legal avenues for refugees to seek protection should also be considered. We identify four practices of policy “conversion” that have also led to the increasingly problematic distinction between migrants and refugees: (1) limiting access to territory through burden-shifting and other practices of extraterritorialization; (2) limiting access to asylum and local integration through procedural and administrative hindrances; (3) the use of group-based criteria as a basis of exclusion; (4) the inclusion of non-Convention criteria within resettlement schemes. Drawing upon a historical institutionalist approach and a wide array of empirical sources—including 3 years of combined primary field research conducted in Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey between 2013 and 2016—we demonstrate that states are actively pursuing a greater degree of control over the selection of refugees, in practice making refugee resettlement closer to another immigration track rather than a unique status that compels state responsibility.

Human security at the Mediterranean borders: humanitarian discourse in the EU periphery

“…There is a lively scholarly debate on EU externalization to neighboring countries such as Turkey, with the EU-Turkey statement of 2016, or Libya, with the agreement of January 2017, without obtaining reassurances about humane treatment (Mourad and Norman 2020 ). Humanitarian associations and international human rights groups also denounce the human costs of these agreements (I10, I12, I14, I17, I18, I20).…”

When Pandemic Threat Does Not Stoke Xenophobia: Evidence from a Panel Survey around COVID-19

“…However, the UNHCR recognizes the over 4.9 million Venezuelan migrants as "forcibly displaced." Even a "voluntary" versus "forced" migration distinction is problematic as it does not recognize the nuance in migrant decision-making and it takes agency from migrants (Crawley and Skleparis, 2018;Mourad and Norman, 2020;Holland and Peters, 2020;Hamlin, 2021). To move away from this dichotomy, we focus on all migrants who leave due to violence, poverty, natural disaster, and so on, regardless of whether they qualify for legal refugee status and refer to them as migrants, while recognizing that this is not a value-neutral term either.…”

Why Physical Barriers Backfire: How Immigration Enforcement Deters Return and Increases Asylum Applications

“…There is a particularly large gray area between refugee flows, undocumented migration, and other forms of irregularity that concerns us (Betts, 2013; Düvell, 2011). Migrants in this gray area are especially likely to be targeted by immigration enforcement policies (Mourad & Norman, 2020). To examine the effects of immigration enforcement on migrants in these situations cross-nationally, refugee populations are critical to monitor since they are a population which straddles regularity and irregularity.…”

“…Galli (2019) finds that lawyers often encourage undocumented immigrants in the United States to apply for asylum in order to gain permanent legal status. Mourad and Norman (2020) highlight the reverse status movement, from refugee to migrant, in their analysis of how institutional drift and policy layering intentionally blur migrant and refugee categories (Betts, 2010; Streeck & Thelen, 2005). Refugee flows should therefore be understood as a combination of movement of people and movement of status.

Figure 1.World refugee population by year 1990–2016, excluding Palestinian refugees.

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