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Democratizing the Refugee Regime Complex

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Emily Barry-Murphy  and
Max Stephenson Jr.
Emily Barry-Murphy*
Affiliation:
US Citizenship and Immigration Services, 103 Ridge Road, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, USA
Max Stephenson Jr.*
Affiliation:
Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance, Virginia Tech School of Public and International Affairs, 201 West Roanoke Street, Blacksburg 24061-0001, USA
*
Emily.c.barry@gmail.com
mstephen@vt.edu
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Abstract

This article considers how civil society organizations (CSOs) may be understood in relation to the global refugee regime complex. It describes how several leading scholars have conceptualized refugee/internally displaced person (IDP) governance and explores how the neoliberal cognitive frame is impeding the possibility of democratic agency among IDPs/refugees. It argues that CSOs can play essential roles in encouraging democratization of the refugee regime complex by working to reshape their prevailing frame or orientation. Civil society organizations can also work to foster critical reflexivity among the parties that govern refugees and within that population as well. As an example of one such effort, the article employs Fraser’s (Scales of justice: reimagining political space in a globalizing world. Columbia University Press, New York, 2010) democratization framework in a brief case analysis of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Deshodaya initiative in Sri Lanka that has sought to enable IDPs in that nation to embrace critical reflexivity to reimagine themselves as governing agents who can redefine state and international organization-based definitions of refugee protection. Overall, the analysis suggests that civil society organizations can act successfully and intentionally to open democratic spaces in which refugees/IDPs may find possibilities to exercise their innate agential possibility.

Keywords

RefugeeInternally displaced personRefugee regime complexDemocratizationCritical reflexivityPolitical agency

Information

Type
Original Paper
Information
Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , August 2018 , pp. 790 - 800
Copyright
Copyright © International Society for Third-Sector Research and The Johns Hopkins University 2018

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Footnotes

The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not represent those of the United States Government.

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