No refuge: ethics and the global refugee crisis

In: Oxford scholarship online

Abstract

This text confronts the ethical dimension of the global refugee crisis. When most people think of the global refugee crisis, they think of Syrians crossing the Mediterranean in flimsy boats into Europe or caravans of Central Americans arriving at the US border. Yet behind these images there is a second crisis: refuge itself has all but evaporated for millions of people fleeing persecution and violence. Refugees have only three real options - squalid refugee camps, urban slums, or dangerous journeys to seek asylum - and none of these provide access to the minimum conditions of human dignity. 'No Refuge' makes visible to readers the crisis that refugees experience in the 21st century: for refugees, there is no refugee.