•  95
    On What Matters for Obligations to Refugees
    Journal of Controversial Ideas 4 (2). 2024.
    Rindermann et al.’s article concludes that certain refugees may have a lower IQ and as a result may not provide as significant an economic contribution to host states compared to the average citizen, and so may be an economic cost. This commentary first casts doubt on this conclusion. It then, and most importantly, demonstrates that even if this conclusion were true, it would be irrelevant insofar as it would have no moral or legal significance in mitigating or defeating obligations towards refu…Read more
  •  5
    This book appears at a time of intense debate on how states should respond to refugees: some philosophers argue states are not necessarily obligated to admit a single refugee, others argue states should continually admit refugees until the point of societal collapse. Some politicians argue for increasing refugee resettlement, others seek to prevent refugees from arriving at the border. Some countries provide expansive welcome schemes and have taken in over a million refugees, others have erected…Read more
  •  201
    Direct and structural injustice against refugees
    Journal of Social Philosophy 54 (2): 262-284. 2023.
    Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.
  •  216
    Doing and Allowing Harm to Refugees
    Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 18 (3). 2020.
    Most theorists working on moral obligations to refugees conceive of western states as innocent bystanders with duties to aid refugees if they can do so at little cost to themselves. This paper challenges this dominant theoretical framing of global displacement by highlighting for the first time certain practices of western states in response to refugee flows such as border violence, detention, encampment and containment which may make us question whether states who engage in such practices are i…Read more
  •  216
    Does a State’s Right to Control Borders Justify Harming Refugees?
    Moral Philosophy and Politics. forthcoming.
    Certain states in the Global North have responded to refugees seeking safety on their territories through harmful practices of border violence, detention, encampment and containment that serve to prevent and deter refugee arrivals. These practices are ostensibly justified through an appeal to a right to control borders. This paper therefore assesses whether these harmful practices can indeed be morally justified by a state’s right to control borders. It analyses whether Christopher Heath Wellman…Read more