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What explains the variety of responses that states adopt toward different refugee groups? In this book, Lamis Elmy Abdelaaty asks why states sometimes assert their sovereignty vis-à-vis refugee rights and at other times seemingly cede it by delegating refugee oversight to the United Nations. Including three in-depth case studies of asylum policies in Egypt, Turkey, and Kenya,
Discrimination and Delegation argues that foreign policy and ethnic identity, more so than resources, humanitarianism, or labor skills, shape reactions to refugees.
List of contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Chapter One: Selective Sovereignty and the Refugee Regime
- Chapter Two: The Role of Foreign Policy and Ethnic Politics
- Chapter Three: Cross-national Trends in Refugee Status
- Chapter Four: Politics Overtakes Policy in Egypt
- Chapter Five: Selective Protection in Turkey
- Chapter Six: Refugee Debates in Kenya
- Chapter Seven: The Implications of Selective Sovereignty for Refugee Rights
- Appendix I: Supplementary Data
- Appendix II: Content Analysis Codebook
- References
About the author
Lamis Elmy Abdelaaty is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, and Senior Research Associate at the Campbell Public Affairs Institute. Her research and teaching deal with the international politics of refugees, and her publications have appeared in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and Journal of Refugee Studies. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice, and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. Abdelaaty holds a doctoral degree in politics from Princeton University.
Summary
What explains the variety of responses that states adopt toward different refugee groups? Refugees might be granted protection or turned away; they might be permitted to live where they wish and earn an income, pursue education, and access medical treatment; or, they might be confined to a camp and forced to rely on aid while being denied basic services. However, states do not consistently wield their capacity for control, nor do they jealously guard their authority to regulate.
In this book, Lamis Elmy Abdelaaty asks why states sometimes assert their sovereignty vis-à-vis refugee rights and at other times seemingly cede it by delegating refugee oversight to the United Nations. To explain this selective exercise of sovereignty, Abdelaaty develops a two-part theoretical framework in which policymakers in refugee-receiving countries weigh international and domestic concerns. Policymakers in a receiving country might decide to offer protection to refugees from a rival country in order to undermine the sending country's stability, saddle it with reputation costs, and even engage in guerilla-style cross-border attacks. At the domestic level, policymakers consider political competition among ethnic groups--welcoming refugees who are ethnic kin of citizens can satisfy domestic constituencies, expand the base of support for the government, and encourage mobilization along ethnic lines. When these international and domestic incentives conflict, the state shifts responsibility for refugees to the UN, which allows policymakers to placate both refugee-sending countries and domestic constituencies.
Abdelaaty analyzes asylum admissions worldwide, and then examines three case studies in-depth: Egypt (a country that is broadly representative of most refugee recipients), Turkey (an outlier that has limited the geographic application of the Refugee Convention), and Kenya (home to one of the largest refugee populations in the world). Discrimination and Delegation argues that foreign policy and ethnic identity, more so than resources, humanitarianism, or labor skills, shape reactions to refugees.
Additional text
In this fascinating book, Lamis Elmy Abdelaaty examines the political determinants of asylum policy. Wielding a variety of data and methods, including cross-national statistics, archival research, and fieldwork in Egypt, Turkey and Kenya, Abdelaaty argues that states balance international and domestic interests in selecting policies of restriction, inclusion, or delegation. Compelling and insightful, the book brings a fresh, multi-level analysis to refugee studies and serves as a model for empirically rigorous, theoretically sophisticated scholarship on human rights.
