In No Refuge, Serena Parekh makes a strong case that individuals and states alike have not taken seriously our moral obligations to all refugees. She argues that, contrary to current accounts of the issue, there are two aspects of the global refugee crisis that need to be considered when assigning responsibility. The primary focus tends to be on what she calls the first crisis—the causes necessitating people to migrate. Meanwhile, the often-ignored second crisis is that displaced persons are unable to find meaningful refuge and attain the minimum conditions for human dignity. When the issue is framed as only entailing the first crisis, blame is assigned to those states or actors that made migration necessary, and other states and organizations are seen as potential rescuers with no real obligation to help. By reframing the issue around the second crisis, blame and the resulting responsibility are laid squarely at the door of all states that “are contributors to an unjust system that makes it virtually impossible for refugees to get refuge” (p. 79).

The book is split into two parts, each dedicated to one of the crises. In the first part, Parekh establishes the building blocks for her larger argument. She also addresses the dominant frame used to discuss the global refugee crisis, in which the responsible parties are those failed states that have not protected the human rights of their citizens. This frame then casts the refugees as innocent bystanders while mostly Western actors choose whether to be involved at all. Parekh convincingly argues that this frame is problematic. On the one hand, it depicts refugees as lacking agency, an image that influences policy decisions and proposed solutions. On the other hand, if Western states do not feel a sense of political responsibility, the only motivation for them to aid refugees is a commitment to human rights or humanitarian principles.

This is an important observation and one that dovetails nicely with other work on shared responsibility and moral obligations. However, I found Parekh’s reliance on human rights a tad too optimistic. Pointing to John Locke, she claims that, even though states can rightfully claim self-determination, they “also have an obligation to human rights” (p. 9). She acknowledges that many states fail at providing all such rights to their citizens, yet still argues that the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights is so widely accepted as the basic standard of humane treatment that it is considered to be customary international law” and binding on nation-states (p. 12). However, nations routinely fail to provide rights listed in the Declaration such as food, housing, and health care, with impunity. Short of intervention by the international community, there is no guarantor of human rights when a nation-state fails to protect or provide them. It is, therefore, not surprising that a similar failure is happening in the recognition of human rights for refugees. Acknowledgment of this sad truth would have made Parekh’s later claims for a different basis of obligation all the more powerful. Furthermore, a discussion of the limitations of human rights would have opened the door to a critical analysis of the dehumanizing practices and discourse that allow certain groups of people to be systematically denied these supposedly universal rights.

Parekh is purposely writing for a more general audience in order to educate the public about the circumstances endured by refugees. This is an important goal that, unfortunately, led to some challenges for the author. For example, although it is straightforward and accessible, the description of Kantian and consequentialist ethics is largely uncritical and less nuanced than one would expect. Relatedly, the explanation as to how refugee status is granted (chapter 1), the general overview of theories of moral obligation (chapter 2), and an engagement with arguments claiming that we have no moral responsibility to refugees (chapter 3) will not be new to many political theorists or citizenship and migration scholars. It is the second half of the book where the true contribution to these fields is made and where Parekh masterfully pushes us to “rethink our moral obligations to refugees in a way that encompasses all of [the] dimensions of the refugee experience” (p. 157).

Once Parekh makes the turn to the second crisis, she describes the problems we—mostly Western states and their residents—have created. It is this turn that renders unnecessary the use of claims to individual dignity or human rights to argue that states need to provide refuge to those seeking it. Parekh makes clear the magnitude of the problem and our culpability in causing the current situation. Regardless of the reasons for people’s displacement, “98 percent of refugees… do not have access to one of the three durable solutions (resettlement, local integration, or repatriation)” (p. 155). Hence, as the title of the book indicates, there is no refuge for the vast majority of displaced persons, and the policies put in place to handle the situation—well intentioned or not—contribute to this injustice. It is, she argues, the obligation of all states to answer for the situations they have created: inhumane camps, draconian deterrence policies, and the inability of refugees (inside camps and without) to meet their basic human needs.

To counter the current belief that states bear minimal responsibility, Parekh extends Iris Marion Young’s conception of structural injustice to refugee policy, relying primarily on two of Young’s claims: the injustice need not be intentional, and the aim is to change the future, not redress what has been done in the past. Injustices, born of social and political structures, are the responsibility of anyone who participates in the multiple and multilayered institutional and social processes that create the resulting structural injustice. This understanding puts the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of Western states and their citizens and requires that changes be made to norms, policies, and practices going forward.

Parekh argues that refugees should be given a role in discussions about policy changes, both to recognize their agency and to ensure that their interests—informed by personal experience—are not ignored. To give refugees political agency, she suggests forms of disaggregated citizenship, such as practices that grant limited rights to any city resident regardless of citizenship status. Although this form of citizenship can be implemented in cities, it is not clear how it would be carried out in camps, especially given states’ attempts to deter camps within their borders. Basically, which political community would be granting such “city citizenship”? More importantly, how does this status translate into influencing policies when refugees’ numbers are far outweighed by national majorities? Will there be some form of differentiated citizenship in which the group-based rights of refugees will be recognized? If so, how are they represented? Who is authorized to speak for the group?

Some of the details may still need to be hammered out, but that does not detract from the book’s impressive contribution. I applaud Parekh’s efforts to go beyond the theoretical and provide real-world policy suggestions. Her stated goals are to educate the public and challenge the conventions underlying refugee policy, and this book admirably succeeds at both.