Costs of refugee admission and the ethics of extraterritorial protection
| Published date | 01 January 2021 |
| Date | 01 January 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885117738118 |
| Author | Clara Sandelind |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
EJPT
Article
Costs of refugee admission
and the ethics of
extraterritorial protection
Clara Sandelind
University of Sheffield, UK
Abstract
Many affluent states seek to discharge their responsibilities to refugees through
extraterritorial policies, which limit the number of refugees that they admit whilst
contributing to protection in a third country. Is this morally permissible? I argue
that under non-ideal circumstances, where states’ non-compliance with their duties
to refugees are persistent, such policies can be permissible. However, extraterritorial
protection must satisfy two conditions. First, it must come about through bilateral or
multilateral agreements. Second, the protection provided must allow for full integration
in a new society. I argue that the lower the costs a state bears for admitting refugees to
its territory, the higher its contribution to extraterritorial protection must be.
This notion of costs is illustrated by exemplifying how refugee admission may impose
costs to the self-determination and equality of the hosting state.
Keywords
Feasibility, non-ideal theory, refugee protection, refugees, self-determination
Most liberal democratic states attempt to off-load their responsibilities to admit
refugees by pursuing extraterritorial policies. Australia’s offshore detention and
processing of asylum seekers, the EU deal with Turkey and the latest moves
from EU policy makers to equip Libya and Tunisia with means to pull back,
and possibly process, migrants and refugees are all examples of such extraterritorial
policies (e.g. Collett, 2017). These policies restrict refugees’ access to protection and
place many people in extremely precarious situations. Yet they seem to be a per-
sistent circumstance of our contemporary non-ideal world. Is it permissible for
states to limit refugee admissions in this way?
European Journal of Political Theory
2021, Vol. 20(1) 116–137
!The Author(s) 2017
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1474885117738118
journals.sagepub.com/home/ept
Corresponding author:
Clara Sandelind, Department of Politics, University of Sheffield, Elmfield, Northumberland Road, Sheffield, S10
2TU, UK.
Email: c.sandelind@sheffield.ac.uk
Given the persistence of states’ non-compliance with their supposed moral duty
to admit refugees to their territory, and the urgency of providing protection for
millions of refugees, I argue that states are permitted to limit the number of
refugees they admit if they compensate by contributing to protection in a third
country through bilateral or multilateral agreements. The protection provided in
the third country must be substantial, which means that it must allow for integra-
tion and not just basic rights. I argue that extraterritorial protection must also
reflect the costs that states bear for admitting refugees to their territory. Low costs
of refugee admission impose a duty to make high contributions extraterritorially,
and vice versa.
The questions this article addresses emerge from certain non-ideal conditions, by
which affluent, Western states admit fewer refugees than they ought to, to the
detriment of the provision of refugee protection globally.
1
There are at least
three important reasons to interrogate the ethics of extraterritorial protection in
such a non-ideal world. Firstly, the urgency of providing protection for millions of
refugees is arguably paramount to developing institutions that perfectly map states’
duties of justice. If extraterritorial protection can increase the overall provision of
protection globally, then at least in the short term it appears preferable to the status
quo. Secondly, given the ferocity with which Western states do in fact pursue
extraterritorial policies, there is an alarming gap in our ethical understanding of
the conditions that may make such policies more or less acceptable. Thirdly, many
states prefer to discharge their duties to refugees outside of their territory, and
many scholars do acknowledge that they may have a right to do so (Miller,
2016; Owen, 2016a; Wellman, 2016). Yet little scholarly attention has been paid
to the questions of when and how they are permitted to do so. Thus whilst much of
the scholarly literature grants states the right to engage in extraterritorial policies, it
does not specify under what conditions or what the implications are for states’
overall duties to refugees.
The methodological approach of this article, which starts from non-ideal con-
ditions, is useful to assess and improve existing institutions for which complete
overhaul is unrealistic in the short-term (cf. Carens, 2015: 11; Carens, 1996). From
an advocacy point of view, this also provides tools for assessing current state
practices that are far from ideal, but which may nonetheless differ quite substan-
tially in their ethical acceptability. I take both the non-compliance of Western
states with their duties to admit and protect refugees, as well as their asserted
right to exclude migrants in general, as givens, but I am conscious throughout
that this approach must not lead to the entrenchment of the unjust institutions
and practices it takes as background constraints.
The article starts by asking why there is an obligation to refugees, followed by
the question of what constitutes protection. Next, I ask how such protection might
be offered. Given that protection can be provided both by admitting refugees to a
state’s territory and by contributing to protection in a third country, I argue that
the lower the costs of admitting refugees to a state’s territory are, the higher its
extraterritorial contributions must be, provided certain conditions are fulfilled.
Lastly, I illustrate this approach of trading costs of admission against
Sandelind 117
To continue reading
Request your trial