Why do states protect refugees? This is the fundamental question that Phil Orchard seeks to answer in this book. To accomplish this ambitious task, Orchard uses archival and secondary-source data to trace the evolution of norms, regimes, and institutions governing responses to refugee flows, since the word “refugee” was coined by the French to describe the 200,000 Huguenots who fled religious persecution in 1685. He employs a constructivist approach that naturally produces an emphasis on norms, regimes, and institutions, all of which are described in detail. A Right to Flee contributes to an extensive literature on the history of the international community’s efforts to manage refugees from scholars like Gil Loescher and Alexander Betts. Yet several limitations reveal room for political scientists to add conceptual, theoretical, and empirical clarity to the political issues involved in hosting refugees.
Orchard identifies four regimes that have existed to govern refugee responses since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648: “Laissez-Faire” (1789–1914), “Attempted Internationalization” (1921–39), “Effective Internationalization” (1951–89), and “Non-Entrée” (1989–present). These regimes, as Chapter 3 explains, formed after a period of emerging international norms for refugee protection. Each regime has been implemented by different sets of institutions and has incorporated different sets of norms. Chapter 4 explains how the Laissez-Faire regime marked a transition to accepting political as well as religious refugees, provided protection through domestic law and then bilateral extradition law, and introduced the norm that states should accept refugees as a requirement of hospitality and legitimacy in international society. During the Attempted Internationalization regime, formal international organizations began to manage refugee flows and states attempted to create binding international law to promote refugee protection (Chapter 5). While the Attempted Internationalization regime failed, it did pave the way for the post–World War II regime of Effective Internationalization. Here, with American support, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees became a key norm entrepreneur that convinced states to provide assistance to refugees and expand the system from being Eurocentric to being universal (Chapters 6–7).
Finally, Chapter 8 explains how the end of the Cold War in 1989 eroded key political motivations for hosting refugees. This led to the current regime of Non-Entrée, in which border restrictions have increased as states have attempted to contain the “contagion” of civil conflict and domestic strife. As a result, regional refugee definitions have emerged and more would-be refugees are becoming stuck as internally displaced persons (IDPs). In fact, as of the end of 2016, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) reported that there were roughly twice as many IDPs as refugees worldwide.
At each critical juncture for the international refugee system, “norm entrepreneurs” have played an essential role in pushing for broader acceptance of the rights of civilians to become refugees, as well as for host states to provide fundamental human rights to refugees. Orchard defines norm entrepreneurship as “an activity or process through which actors are willing to devote considerable resources (material and/or ideational) in order to introduce, change, or replace international norms in their areas of interest” (p. 37).
As valuable as it is to specify the characteristics of actors lobbying to change norms, this definition of norm entrepreneurship renders the concept extremely difficult to observe unless it is successful. In the rare instances when we can observe failing norm entrepreneurs, it is likely because their efforts successfully garnered attention, if not results. Orchard’s focus thus likely creates a selection bias that requires more explicit consideration. Norm entrepreneurs without sufficient power, size, or ability to make their causes resonate and achieve international attention or have political efficacy may portray a very different story. Similarly, the author focuses on norm entrepreneurs who advocate for increased protections for refugees. But this focus overlooks norm entrepreneurs who oppose protections for refugees, and insufficient attention is provided to the competition between proponents and opponents of refugee protections.
As scholars seek to apply this analysis to current dynamics in the international refugee system, Orchard’s conception of the Non-Entrée regime as giving rise to regional refugee definitions becomes provocative. Under current goals of containing instability, developed countries are driving efforts to keep displaced populations within their origin regions. The European Union deal with Turkey, as well as migration management agreements with African countries like Libya and Sudan, shows the EU engaging in a policy of migration management by proxy. The tightening migration policies of the United States have even turned Mexico into a host country for IDPs and Central American refugees. Under Orchard’s lens, these migration management policies can be understood as continuations along the long trajectory of the evolving international refugee regime.
Meanwhile, there is a lack of international attention to the challenges posed by protracted refugee situations. As refugees become understood as long-term rather than short-term problems, many states have grown less hospitable to them. Moreover, under protracted refugee crises, refugees tend to become increasingly involved in the politics of their host states. This may mean involvement in violent armed groups. Alternatively, refugees have also become involved in nonviolent campaigns, become important voting blocs in elections, and even fielded candidates for political office in some cases. Such behavior in refugee populations indicates that a crisis in the hosting of refugees may be precipitated not only by sudden increases in their number or changes in the type of refugees, as the author suggests (pp. 32–34). It may also result from refugee behavior within host states. Orchard’s work neglects this avenue for crisis to occur. Given the harsh reactions of host countries in the EU, Canada, and the United States to terrorist attacks in places such as Nairobi, Paris, Istanbul, and Ankara, this avenue for crisis merits significant consideration.
Host state responses to crises facilitated by the political behavior of refugees also raise a concern with Orchard’s depiction of host states as “protecting” refugees. This “protection” is only from origin states. Host states and their populations have engaged in anti-refugee repression and violence in every region of the world, from Europe to Africa to the Middle East. While Orchard’s primary concern is in the international refugee system, there is a striking gap in his analysis when he only minimally discusses how host states treat refugees after they accept them.
With A Right to Flee, we have a substantial contribution to our understanding of the deliberations over, and evolution of, the international system for managing refugee flows. However, this contribution is limited by an inherent selection bias in the analysis of norm entrepreneurs, by conceptual confusion over state protection versus hosting of refugees, and by empirical oversights in its lack of engagement with the challenges of protracted refugee crises and anti-refugee repression and violence. Addressing these shortcomings would yield still greater insight into the political contention involved in hosting refugees.
