Author Meets Critics: Lamis Abdelaaty's "Discrimination and Delegation"

Session Submission Type: Virtual Author meet critics

Session Description

This panel focuses on Lamis Abdelaaty’s new book, "Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees" (Oxford Univ Press). Depending on how other states respond, refugees may be allowed to escape persecution and violence in their country, or they may be forced back. They may be permitted to live where they wish, earn an income, pursue an education, and access medical treatment. Or they may be confined to a camp, forced to rely on aid, and denied basic services. What explains state responses to the refugees they receive?

The book identifies two puzzling patterns: states open their borders to some refugee groups while blocking others (discrimination), and a number of countries have given the UN control of asylum procedures and refugee camps on their territory (delegation). With regards to refugees at least, countries are selective in their appeals to, and exercise of, sovereignty. A country may assert its sovereign prerogative to control borders, turning away refugees and restricting their rights. Or it may welcome displacees and extend to them hospitable treatment. Finally, a government could hand over decision-making to international organizations, empowering them to admit and assist refugees. Studying state responses to refugees is instructive because it can help explain why states sometimes assert, and at other times seemingly cede, their sovereignty in the face of refugee rights.

To explain this selective exercise of sovereignty, the book develops a two-part theoretical framework in which policymakers in refugee-receiving countries weigh international and domestic concerns. Internationally, leaders use refugees in order to reassure allies and exert pressure on rivals. Domestically, policymakers have incentives to favor those refugee groups with whom they share an ethnic identity. When these international and domestic incentives conflict, shifting responsibility to the UN allows policymakers to placate both refugee-sending countries and domestic constituencies. In short, foreign policy and ethnic identity shape whether states will adopt policies of inclusion, exclusion, or delegation vis-à-vis refugee groups.

The book then carries out a “three-stage, multi-level” research design in which each successive step corroborates and elaborates the findings of the preceding stage. The first stage involves statistical analysis of asylum admissions worldwide; these results give a general indication that the theoretical framework applies across countries and over time and merits further in-depth examination. The second stage shifts from admissions decisions to consider refugee treatment, more broadly conceived, by drawing on elite interviews and archival sources in two side-by-side country case studies of Egypt and Turkey. The third stage zooms in on sub- or within-country dynamics in Kenya through content analysis of parliamentary proceedings.

The selection of developing country cases for stages two and three is deliberate. Most existing research on immigration and asylum policy has been limited to Western countries, despite the fact that some 85% of refugees reside in developing countries. Egypt is broadly representative of most refugee recipients, Turkey is an outlier that has limited the geographic application of the Refugee Convention, and Kenya is considered an important case in refugee studies because it is home to one of the largest refugee populations. At the same time, Egypt, Turkey, and Kenya share some of the same refugee groups, which allows for the comparison of policies towards a single refugee group across countries.

The panelists will draw on their expertise in refugee political economies, discrimination against outgroups, immigrant integration, and the legal dimensions of immigration politics around the world to discuss several questions raised by the book. Most importantly, the panelists will discuss how states craft their responses to refugees, and whether foreign policy and ethnic politics provide a compelling explanation for the discrimination and delegation puzzles. The panelists will also address how refugee-assistance organizations and advocacy groups can best respond to these dynamics, particularly since the book’s findings suggest that UN agencies and NGOs ought to target their advocacy and assistance to particular refugee groups. In addition, the book suggests that concerned states and the international community should forecast when exerting pressure will bear fruit and when other tools (such as resettlement) must be used instead, which sets the stage for panelists to discuss the implications of selective sovereignty for the international refugee regime. Finally, the panelists will discuss the ways in which scholars ought to reconceptualize the relationship between sovereignty and refugee rights.

Sub Unit

• Division 52: Migration & Citizenship

Chair

• Rebecca Hamlin University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Presenters

• Alexander Betts University of Oxford

• Claire Leslie Adida UCSD

• Sara Wallace Goodman University of California, Irvine

• Lamis Abdelaaty Syracuse University