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Asylum as Reparation pp 189–194Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Conclusion

Part of the International Political Theory book series (IPoT)

Abstract

The conclusion to this book reviews its main arguments, identifies key themes emerging from them and shows how they point towards avenues for future research. Emphasising that the notion of asylum as reparation presents a challenge to current understandings of responsibilities to refugees and existing state practice in this context, Souter shows how the analysis has underscored, among other things, the moral tensions and conflicts that may arise from states’ acceptance of their reparative obligations towards refugees, and the need to see asylum as one potentially fitting reparative measure among others. Finally, the conclusion stresses the ongoing relevance of the notion of asylum as reparation to the international politics of the twenty-first century in light of states’ continued refugee-producing actions.

Keywords

  • Asylum
  • Reparation
  • Refugees
  • Responsibility

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For the view that refugee protection potentially requires ‘morally excruciating’ choices, see Miller (2016: 162).

  2. 2.

    For relevant discussion, see Bosniak (2016: 209–217).

  3. 3.

    For the application of reparative thinking to the case of forced migration from Honduras in light of US foreign policy, see Nevins (2019).

  4. 4.

    The application of this framework to case studies would allow us to evaluate more general claims about the salience of reparative justice for refugee and immigrant admissions more robustly, such as David Miller’s assertion that ‘allowing reparative concerns to dominate immigration policy as a whole would…be a backward step’ (Miller, 2017: 765). Moreover, its more thorough application to cases of environmental displacement may reveal normatively salient differences between the environmentally displaced and ‘political’ refugees, as Eckersley (2015: 494) has anticipated.

  5. 5.

    See Vernon (2012: 43) for discussion of the extent to which immigrants more generally may come to share in the responsibilities of their new states to redress historic injustice. For the argument that refugees do not owe gratitude to their host states given that they are owed asylum as a form of recompense, see Kling (2019: 97).

  6. 6.

    While this can be expected to vary among refugees and different refugee populations, some have pointed to examples of refugees and migrants thinking in reparative terms about states’ responsibilities towards them (see e.g. Achiume, 2019: 1570; Saunders, 2018: 857).

  7. 7.

    For recent work on the development of solidarity with refugees see, for instance, Sandelind and Ulaş (2020) and Woods (2020).

  8. 8.

    For discussion of this point more generally, see Hobbs (2020: 66).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    James Souter

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  1. James Souter
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Souter, J. (2022). Conclusion. In: Asylum as Reparation . International Political Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62448-4_10

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