Refugees Essay ⋆ Sociology Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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In international law ”refugee” refers to individuals who are residing outside of their country of origin and who are unable or unwilling to return because of a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

The term derives from the Latin refugere —to flee — and is believed to have first been applied to the Huguenots who fled France in the seventeenth century. Its modern legal usage follows the UN General Assembly’s establishment of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) in 1950. Within a system of nation-states with fixed borders, and a burgeoning cold war rivalry, the UNHCR’s principal aim was to guarantee and provide international protection and assistance to individuals who had become displaced by World War II. By becoming signatories to the 1951 UN Convention, nation-states agreed to grant special protection on an international basis to citizens of a state that could not guarantee their human rights and physical security. This remit for protection was later extended beyond Europe to encompass refugees from all over the world, as the problem of displaced people became more global, with the signing of the 1967 Bellagio Protocol. There are currently 137 states that are signatories to both the 1951 Convention and Bellagio Protocol.

There are, however, a number of conceptual distinctions within refugee discourse. People who are forced from their homes for reasons outlined in the 1951 UN definition of a refugee, but who remain within the borders of their own country, are known as internally displaced persons (IDPs), of which the UN estimates the number to be 25 million. By contrast, those who seek refugee status outside of their own state of origin must make an application to the country where they arrive and are referred to as asylum seekers. Hence, an asylum seeker is a person who is seeking asylum on the basis of his or her claim to be a refugee. Refugee status may be granted to asylum seekers following a formal legal procedure in which the host country decides whether to grant refugee status or otherwise.

The rising numbers of asylum seekers and refugees, as a specific type of migration, has also raised problems concerning how to conceptualize processes of migration. In contrast to the dominant rational choice theories of migration, which postulate individuals rationally weighing the costs and benefits of leaving one area for another in order to maximize their utility, refugee movement is often conceptualized as ”forced” or ”impelled.” Discussions concerning refugees refer to involuntary migrations that distinguish between the forced movements of refugees and the free movements of economic migrants. They also look to the political sphere rather than to economic forces as explanatory factors.

Such conceptualizations raise questions concerning agency and structure, as well as the very accounting practices that determine what is ”chosen” or ”forced.”

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