Essay: How should we define refugees?

“A Proper Conception of refugeehood is an important matter” – Shacknove (1985, 276).  

In this piece, I offer a critical look at the scholarly discussion on how to define refugees, prompted by a Deutsche Welle (2020) report on the Moria refugee camp in Greece, which was set on fire in September 2020. Thousands fled from the camp and were left without a roof over their head on the isle of Lesbos. This incident shows that many people who have been resettled as refugees in their host country are still suffering from difficult living conditions.

I foreground that existing academic definitions of refugees, as a response to the curtailed legal understanding, do not yet capture refugees who have settled in the hosting countries and are still bearing unpleasant living condition in refugee camps. I will provide an adapted academic definition after the exploration of different academic conceptions of refugees.

In terms of legal understanding, the 1951 United Nations Convention defines a refugee as any person who, “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country” (Article 1A2). However, this is a narrow legal understanding of refugees and in response,  the 1969 Organization of African Unity Refugee Convention adds that a refugee is also any person compelled to leave their habitual county owing to reason of external aggression such as foreign domination and occupation.

In the academic scope, Shacknove (1985) and Kukathas (2016) share a similar view concerning the narrow definition on refugees by the 1951 United Nations Convention. Both challenge the idea that persecution based on race, religion, nationality and political and social membership and being outside their country of habitual residence should be the only requirements for considering someone a refugee.

An academic definition must specify that refugees often still bear a hazardous life because their basic needs are not fulfilled to allow them to enjoy a better life in the host country.

I first highlight three academic definitions, naming them definition A, B, and C. Definition A emphasizes the unimportance of locational positions as the requirement of valid international protection. Therefore, qualifying as refugee does not necessarily require a person to cross an international frontier (Shacknove 1985, 227). This means that crossing  international borders cannot be a necessary determinant for refugeehood therefore definition A opposes Article 1A2 of the 1951 United Nations Convention, which defines refugees as people who are fleeing from persecution and being outside their country of habitual residence.

Definition A is in line with open border positions saying that “there is really nothing special about the category of refugees […] refugees are the product of the partition of the world into states that control the movement across borders […]” (Duarte et al. 2018). The reason is that if there was no such assumed state right to draw borders, there would be no ‘refugee’ category.

Definition B, provided by Kukathas (2016), is an endeavour to clear the path for refugees as being unique. Kukathas uses the term ‘asylum seekers’ to describe refugees: “people seeking asylum are […] special enough to be viewed as more substantial concerns in the calculus of value than immigrants of any other stripes” (Kukathas 2016, 253). He contrasts refugees with economic migrants who also want to flee from their home country for economic reasons. According to Kukathas, one qualification for the uniqueness of refugees is to deem the suffering of refugees to be greater than that of economic migrants but this account falls short because the suffering evaluation is a matter of moral judgement and relative to the circumstances.

In my view, if we closely scrutinise a less particular idea of suffering, it could be found that economic migrants often experience suffering that is comparable to the suffering of people seeking asylum. In turn, differentiation based on perceptions of a hierarchy of suffering – where economic migrants are assumed to be less deserving of protection – cannot reliably determine if a person has a legitimate claim for refugee status. After all, one can be both a refugee and an economic migrant.

Kukhatas (2016) argues that an optimal solution is to admit that the plight of refugees is more severe than of economic migrants with the emphasis that “only those outside their home countries fearing persecution for very particular reason might qualify” (Kukathas 2016, 258).  Kukhatas adheres to the conservative reading of the 1951 UN Convention on refugees for those who owe to well-founded fear of persecution and are outside the habitual country.

Definition C says that “refugees are, in essence, persons whose basic needs are unprotected by their country of origin, who have no remaining recourse other than to seek international restitution of their needs and who are so situated that international assistance is possible” (Shacknove 1985, 277). The basic needs referenced here are about the vital subsistence refugees require to survive. This covers not only shelter, food, minimal preventive health service but also other factors that can contribute to the provision of sustenance, such as freedom of movement and freedom of political participation. The latter belongs to the security needs which refer to the need for law, structure and order (Narvaez 2018, 4) – all of which are essential for a good government.

One possible critique could be made that such a definition would lead to disasters because “half of the world will become bonafide refugees overnight” (Shacknove 1985, 281). It might also be viewed as failing to see the real situations where countries have borders and therefore, it will be determined by the host state whether to permit entry or not. It is therefore unrealistic to expect that all refugees who are still residing in their country of origin, and whose basic needs are unmet, will be granted refugee status in a host country.

The understanding of refugees explicated in the definition above forgoes those who have already been granted refugee status and have been abandoned either in the host country or detained outside their habitual country. In my opinion, there is one crucial element for qualifying as a refugee which is missed in academic definitions A, B, and C. An academic definition must specify that refugees often still bear a hazardous life because their basic needs are not fulfilled to allow them to enjoy a better life in the host country. This not only places emphasis on those who are already residing in their host country, but also subsumes those who have been legally admitted as refugees but are still facing lengthy waits in detention centres, before they can be resettled in the community.

The case of the refugees in Moria is a good illustration of this as they are left unsheltered in the host country and seem to be left out of the academic definition of refugees. This critical eye leaves us with a new outlook – that the understanding of the refugee cannot just vanish when a refugee is already residing in a host country where they might still be suffering. This adapted definition of refugees can have practical implications in relation to the treatment of refugees in the country where they are relocated.