Abstract
The “duty of care” is a legal concept referring to the obligation to abide by a specified standard of care, defined in a particular legal system or professional domain, when there is potential for causing harm. Institutions such as social services or medical facilities as well as detention centers and prisons have standards of care set by states or international treaties that describe how harm to people whose care they are responsible for should be avoided in the first place. The realities of offshore immigration detention and immobilizing, camp-like refugee accommodation have made standards of care (or lack thereof), and in turn, duties of care, urgent loci of discussion. This chapter applies a feminist ethics of care lens to this discussion and suggests concrete steps informed by this lens toward improving refugee accommodation.
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Acknowledgments
I thank Canan Coşkan who introduced me to the political conceptualizations of ethics of care and to Joan Tronto’s body of work. I also acknowledge that preliminary work on relational justice was co-created with Diana Podar and Florian Drüke.
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Namer, Y. (2022). Feminist Ethics of Care, Responsibility, and Refugee Accommodation: Concrete Steps Toward Improvements. In: Razum, O., Dawson, A., Eckenwiler, L., Wild, V. (eds) Refugee Camps in Europe and Australia. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12877-6_8
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