TY - JOUR
T1 - Against the Alienage Condition for Refugeehood
AU - Beaton, Eilidh
N1 - Early versions of this paper were presented in graduate student workshops at the University of Pennsylvania, and at the University of Knoxville, Tennessee 2018 conference ‘Justice Across Borders’. Many thanks to the organizers and participants at those events for their useful comments. I would also particularly like to thank Kok-Chor Tan, Brian Berkey, and Samuel Freeman for their exceedingly helpful feedback on multiple early drafts of this paper; Fernando Chang-Muy, Max Cherem, and Stephen Perry for their valuable conversations on this topic; and two anonymous reviewers at Law and Philosophy for their thorough, constructive, and generous comments.
PY - 2020/4
Y1 - 2020/4
N2 - Under the 1951 Refugee Convention, there are two necessary conditions for refugeehood: (1) a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion and (2) alienage – that is, being outside of one’s country of nationality or habitual residence. In 1985 Andrew Shacknove famously argued that both of these conditions should be rejected. Shacknove’s paper prompted much debate about the suitability of the persecution condition, but his rejection of the alienage requirement has received significantly less attention. In this paper I argue, against some recent defenders of the Convention, that Shacknove was right to claim that the alienage condition should be rejected. On my view, people who would be granted refugee status if they crossed a border, but who remain in their country of nationality, should also be eligible for refugee status.
AB - Under the 1951 Refugee Convention, there are two necessary conditions for refugeehood: (1) a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion and (2) alienage – that is, being outside of one’s country of nationality or habitual residence. In 1985 Andrew Shacknove famously argued that both of these conditions should be rejected. Shacknove’s paper prompted much debate about the suitability of the persecution condition, but his rejection of the alienage requirement has received significantly less attention. In this paper I argue, against some recent defenders of the Convention, that Shacknove was right to claim that the alienage condition should be rejected. On my view, people who would be granted refugee status if they crossed a border, but who remain in their country of nationality, should also be eligible for refugee status.
U2 - 10.1007/s10982-019-09366-2
DO - 10.1007/s10982-019-09366-2
M3 - Article
SN - 1573-0522
VL - 32
SP - 147
EP - 176
JO - Law and Philosophy
JF - Law and Philosophy
IS - 9
ER -
