Johanna Gördemann

The topics of refugee protection and family migration have both received significant attention in the philosophical literature. However, until recently, issues at the intersection of these two subjects were rarely discussed. In this entry, we outline and explore some of the most important questions concerning these issues of refugee family unity, separation, and reunification, considering what obligations (if any) states might have to respect and protect the value of family life for refugees in light of the different sorts of situations refugees may be in. In particular, we consider how the family unification rights of resettlement refugees may differ from the rights of first-asylum refugees, and how these issues might be complicated when unaccompanied minors are involved. Along the way, we discuss a number of related questions, such as: why should states respect and protect the unity of refugees’ families? which family members do refugees have rights to reunite with? and, how much weight should the importance of family life have in non-ideal circumstances when places for refugees in safe states are scarce?

This article examines the ethical issues surrounding the modern refugee, in particular the definition of a refugee and the moral obligations which follow. It also considers the allocation of refugee responsibilities among states, the link to reparations for past injustices, and concepts of burden-sharing based on state capacity and historical responsibility. Once refugees are accepted, the question arises as to whether they have the right to become members of their host countries. Refugee ethics mainly focuses on the duties of host societies, but some also discuss whether refugees themselves have any duties, including the controversial question of whether they have a duty to seek refuge in the first safe country they reach. Following the comprehensive overview of the ethical challenges associated with the global refugee regime, this article suggests further research aimed at new refugee protection policies characterised by greater international cooperation.

Migration is often analysed through an exclusively “humanitarian” lens that highlights the dire and widespread nature of human need to argue for urgent relief. This can be problematic for a variety of reasons. First, humanitarianism prioritises immediate charitable aid over justice-based institutional reforms. In so doing it may disempower aid recipients, subject them to domination, or encounter them in other objectionable ways—aid recipients may be treated as supplicants rather than as applicants for what they are (supposed to be) entitled to. Relatedly, if we identify human need as the sole standard for aid we can easily overlook preexisting duties and entitlements that people have as a matter of right. For example, while refugee protection always entails both “traditional protection” through diplomatic and legal representation (e.g. assessing refugee status) as well as “relief protection” through socio-economic aid (e.g. food, shelter) there is a worry that overemphasis on the latter (especially in the context of camps) can make the former less likely. Moreover, while humanitarian duties are typically discretionary, most migration crises involve specific remedial duties. When humanitarians step in where truly responsible, rights-violating actors resist discharging their remedial duties then, absent efforts to compel these actors to do the right thing, they are basically “let off the hook”; this can even give bad actors incentives to manipulate or intensify mass migrations. Finally, humanitarianism can make us neglect the root causes of mass migrations or solutions that are more institutional and political in nature. While this can be an unintended side effect of humanitarianism it may also be precisely what is intended by certain actors: by structuring discourse in terms of discretionary humanitarian charity, other more ‘politically difficult’ possibilities that involve structural and rights-based reforms are either downplayed or removed from discussion.

In this article, I discuss philosophical questions related to minor refugees. In the genuinely philosophical debate, there is—in contrast to adult refugees—almost no literature that explicitly deals with child refugees. This is regrettable since some philosophical-normative questions are obvious here. Two particularly important questions for philosophy can be elaborated: What can philosophy contribute to a better understanding of the situation of minor refugees, in particular what normative and ethical questions are associated with the status of minor refugees and what rights and duties do they have? What can philosophy contribute to improving the situation of child refugees, i.e. to asking which actors should assume responsibility here and how structures should be changed in order to achieve more justice? I will then discuss five sets of issues that seem important to me for understanding the philosophical concerns associated with child refugees: who is a child and what does it mean to be a child; who is a refugee and what distinguishes refugees from other migrants; what are children’s rights; what is the value of the family; what is the role of temporality in understanding the situation of child refugees (i.e. their age, the duration and timing of their flight). Finally, I will briefly mention desiderata for further philosophical research.

Poststructuralist approaches are often prevalent in border regime and critical migration and refugee studies when questions of illegalisation and de/normalization of migration and refugee-ness are discussed. The paper introduces refugee ethics from a poststructuralist perspective that understands migration as a phenomenon produced via discursive operations. It is stabilised by performative repetitions and manifests in legal regulations. Migration thus comprises a tightly knit network of speech acts, tacit performances, semantics, affects, materialities and architectures that make up the international migration regime. The paper discusses refugee agency from a white, European feminist academic position and how it is rendered im/possible in the contemporary migration regime. It concentrates on an analysis of the bio- and necropolitical production of oppression via migration politics and shows how, in reference to Autonomy of Migration, people on the move rework migratory routes and political scripts to challenge contemporary hegemonies concerning migration.

The convention in migration studies is to make a distinction between groups of immigrants, especially between the categories of economic migrants and refugees. The category of economic migrants is perhaps the most controversial in the ethics of migration because it is not clear which conclusions theorists should draw from the claims of this group. In this chapter, we discuss the positions of theorists of the ethics of migration about this category of migrants. Specifically, we explain why many theorists question the conventional political and legal distinction that is central to migration ethics, namely the distinction between economic and political refugees. Furthermore, we consider arguments that count in favour of recognising the claims to admission in destination countries by economic refugees. We conclude our discussion by highlighting some desiderata for future research on economic migrants.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art literature on migration ethics. The ethics of migration is one of the rapidly growing fields of research in political philosophy, applied ethics, political theory, legal theory, social philosophy and the study of migration in the wider social sciences. Approaches in this field have elaborated possible rights of migrants and host societies, debated permissible criteria for immigration policies, and considered the differences between the claims that refugees and other migrants can make. This Handbook brings together leading international philosophers and social scientists from all regions of the world. In its contributions, it retraces the historical and systematic evolution of normative positions on migration and asylum, introduces the methodologies used in this field and offers concise analyses of the most important controversies in the field of migration – and in particular in the current politically important debate on the ethics of refugees and asylum. The Handbook of Migration Ethics is an indispensable resource for academics, students as well as professionals working in the field of migration. It constitutes a useful starting point for understanding research in this field and its social and political significance, as well as for discovering future research topics.