Safe Third Country Agreements and the Protection of Rights

• In Event: 20862 - Section on International Migration Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 12: Immigration Policy and Politics

Abstract

The concept of “safe third country” underlies bilateral and multilateral agreements on refugee and asylum flows. Such agreements often assume that the other signatories provide comparable rights protections, so individuals should seek refuge there instead of crossing international borders. To date, most works on this subject have relied on legal analyses in specific contexts (e.g., whether it accords with national or international law). We have thus lacked the ability to empirically examine the extent to which different rights are protected as well as to compare across country contexts. To do so, this paper leverages a novel cross-national dataset on migrant rights covering 45 countries. It examines which rights are most commonly protected in bilateral and/or multilateral agreements, whether and to what extent the implementation of protections (rather than just protections on paper) matters, and whether there are shared rights (or groups of rights) that are common across different agreements. In doing so, this paper seeks to present findings that can inform ongoing debates about the protection of migrant rights and the avenues states have used to manage migrant flows.

Author

• Nathan Ly, Cornell University