Mourad Norman 2019

883688
research-article2019
EJT0010.1177/1354066119883688European Journal of International RelationsMourad and Norman
Original Article
EJIR
European Journal of
International Relations
Transforming refugees 1–27
© The Author(s) 2019
into migrants: institutional Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
change and the politics of DOI: 10.1177/1354066119883688
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066119883688
journals.sagepub.com/home/ejt
international protection
Lama Mourad
University of Pennsylvania, USA
Kelsey P Norman
Rice University’s Baker Institute, USA
Abstract
Since the 2015 refugee “crisis,” much has been made of the distinction between the
legal category of refugee and migrant. While migration scholars have accounted for the
increased blurring of these two categories through explanations of institutional drift and
policy layering, we argue that the intentional policies utilized by states and international
organizations to minimize legal avenues for refugees to seek protection should also be
considered. We identify four practices of policy “conversion” that have also led to the
increasingly problematic distinction between migrants and refugees: (1) limiting access to
territory through burden-shifting and other practices of extraterritorialization; (2) limiting
access to asylum and local integration through procedural and administrative hindrances;
(3) the use of group-based criteria as a basis of exclusion; (4) the inclusion of non-
Convention criteria within resettlement schemes. Drawing upon a historical institutionalist
approach and a wide array of empirical sources—including 3 years of combined primary
field research conducted in Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey between 2013
and 2016—we demonstrate that states are actively pursuing a greater degree of control
over the selection of refugees, in practice making refugee resettlement closer to another
immigration track rather than a unique status that compels state responsibility.
Keywords
Migration, refugees, historical institutionalism, refugee regime, policy conversion,
International Relations
Corresponding author:
Kelsey P Norman, Rice University’s Baker Institute, 6100 Main St, Houston, TX 77005, USA.
Email: kpnorman@gmail.com
2 European Journal of International Relations 00(0)
Introduction
How have the institutions built to protect global refugees been transformed over time?
The global refugee regime is broadly recognized as the most highly institutionalized of
all multilateral or global migration regimes (Betts, 2010). It is anchored by the 1951 UN
Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its subsequent protocols (otherwise
known as the Refugee Convention) and overseen and managed by the Office of the
United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) (Betts et al., 2008; Loescher,
2001). At the core of this regime is a recognition of the specificity of “refugees” in rela-
tion to other types of migrants. Legally, the term refugee is reserved for individuals who
are officially recognized by the UNHCR or a host state government as having fled from
their home country for reasons specified in the Convention, and who thus deserve inter-
national protection. In practice, the distinctiveness of the “refugee” category from other
“migrant” categories—and the rights that this label invokes—is more fraught. Scholars
have argued that this outcome is primarily due to either changing global migration pat-
terns (Feller, 2001; Schoenholtz, 2015) or a reflection of the historical context within
which this category was first created (Goodwin-Gill, 2014; Karatani, 2005). Without
denying the significance of these factors, we argue that scholars need to also consider the
ways in which the institutions that govern the refugee regime have been altered, hollow-
ing out the specificity of the category of refugee and bringing it closer to other categories
of migrants. Specifically, we suggest that greater attention also be placed on the role of
critical actors—namely states and international organizations—that have actively trans-
formed the refugee regime in a way that erodes the distinctiveness of the category it
purports to be built upon.
This paper explains this process of erosion through a historical institutionalist
approach that identifies the mechanisms underlying this mode of institutional change.
We argue that the inability of the refugee definition to address modern migration flows
is neither entirely an instance of “policy drift”—where a current set of institutions “fail[s]
to [adapt] to cover a set of risks that have newly emerged or increased in salience”
(Streeck and Thelen, 2005: 25)—nor is it solely a case of “policy layering” where alter-
native regimes are used to bypass rather than subvert an existing regime (Betts, 2010).
Rather, the changes we identify in the refugee regime are examples of “policy conver-
sion,” where “institutions are not so much amended or allowed to decay as they are
redirected to new goals, functions, or purposes” (Streeck and Thelen, 2005: 26, emphasis
in original). If the adoption of the 1951 Refugee Convention and the creation of the
UNHCR responded to a particular historical moment, it was also the beginning of a pro-
cess that would separate “refugees” from “migrants,” which until then had been “blurr[ed]
[. . .] identities” both in law and in practice (Long, 2013: 14). Our aim is to demonstrate
how these categories have been blurred once again, and to demonstrate that states and
international agencies have played an active role in that “blurring.”
Specifically, we identify four main developments that have led to an increasingly
porous demarcation between migrants and refugees: (1) limiting access to territory
through burden-shifting and other practices of extraterritorialization; (2) limiting access
to asylum and local integration through procedural and administrative hindrances; (3) the
use of “group-based” criteria as the basis of exclusion; (4) the inclusion of non-Conven-
tion criteria within resettlement schemes. This paper addresses each of these practices in
Mourad and Norman 3
turn, drawing upon over 3 years of combined primary field research conducted in Egypt,
Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey between 2013 and 2016, during which the
authors conducted semi-structured interviews with government officials, international
migration bodies such as the UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration
(IOM), local civil society organizations involved in the migration sector, and individual
migrants and refugees of varying nationalities residing in each host state. We supplement
this primary data collection with secondary sources including academic studies, policy
and governmental reports, UNHCR data, and journalistic articles. We specifically make
use of the UNHCR Resettlement Handbook’s “Country Chapters,” which compile the
resettlement criteria utilized by 22 states that operate resettlement programs. Table 2
categorizes the stated criteria for resettlement, and Table 3 contains the text for each
country that utilizes “integration potential” as a criterion.
We focus primarily on evidence from cases in the Middle East and North Africa
(MENA), which is the region currently producing and hosting the largest number of
displaced people worldwide, and which serves as an important “transit” hub for migrants
and refugees aiming to reach Europe. The MENA region has also been directly impacted
by various EU external migration control measures over the last three decades, including
the use of readmission agreements and extraterritorial zones of policing that prevent both
asylum seekers and migrants from reaching the EU’s territory (Fargues, 2009; Zaiotti,
2016). As such, the region is an important context in which to study critical practices and
policies that tie traditional host countries in the Global South and countries of resettle-
ment in the Global North—as well as key norms of the refugee regime such as asylum
and burden-sharing—to one another. We acknowledge that the MENA region is not nec-
essarily representative of refugee hosting and resettlement practices globally. Nonetheless,
the migration-related interactions between European and MENA countries—and the
power hierarchies embedded within these interactions—mirror those in other regions,
such as between Australia and Southeast Asian countries, or between the United States
and Mexico (FitzGerald, 2019). As such, we argue that the trends identified in this article
are likely to have applicability outside of the MENA region.
Ultimately, we demonstrate that while the formal institutions of the refugee regime
appear to be resilient, their functions and purposes have been transformed by the very
actors that have committed to upholding them. While others have identified exogenous
factors affecting change within the refugee regime, we outline endogenous processes that
serve to subvert the original purpose of the regime. In shedding light on these practices,
our argument stands in contrast to those that focus on how migrants or refugees subvert,
or render unworkable,1 an otherwise functioning refugee system. Instead, these individ-
ual strategies need to be understood as attempts to access rights in a system that provides
increasingly limited avenues of protection and further blurs the very distinction it claims
to uphold.
Modes of change in International Relations

At its core the question we pose is one of institutional change: What has driven change
in the international refugee regime, and what have the consequences of this change been
for the distinct nature of the category of “refugee”? This deserves to be separated from
the related and equally important questions of why the international refugee regime has
failed to provide adequate protection (Koser, 2015; Suhrke, 1998), or whether and how
international cooperation can be achieved under this regime (Betts, 2011). Rather, our
analysis aims to identify how the refugee regime has changed over time, which actors
have been critical to this process, and the consequences of this transformation for the
regime’s ability to uphold a distinction between refugees and other migrants.
International Relations (IR) scholars have traditionally explained change through the
lens of one of the main theoretical schools, in part because scholars differ even in their
definition of what constitutes an institution.2 As Holsti (2004) explains, “[t]he main fac-
tors leading to changes in international institutions combine the ideational with more
traditional sources such as alteration of power relations” (303). Recently, scholars have
looked more closely at the ways in which institutionalist literature from comparative
politics can inform our understanding of international institutions (Betts, 2014; Ekelund,
2014). Migration scholars have also employed a historical institutionalist approach to
identify the international and transnational factors that can influence domestic policy
change (Klotz, 2013). Rational choice institutionalism and sociological institutionalism,
which map on in a relatively straightforward manner to the liberal institutionalist and
constructivist paradigms in IR, have had greater purchase among IR scholars than the
historical branch of institutionalism (HI) (Fioretos, 2011; Rixen and Viola, 2016). The
relative neglect of HI has meant that certain mechanisms of change—such as the legacies
of design, sunk costs, and feedback mechanisms—have been underutilized when attempt-
ing to explain change to international institutions. We aim in part to address this gap by
looking at the transformation of the international refugee regime through a historical
institutionalist lens.
Building on the dimensions of change identified by Rixen and Viola (2016) and
Fioretos (2011), we explain the emergent gaps in refugee protection by focusing on the
depth and scope of change. We identify practices of endogenous change that have
acted incrementally to transform the refugee regime. The scope of institutional change
relates to the “number of institutional features affected,” while the depth is “the degree
to which these features change” (Rixen and Viola, 2016: 18). We largely bracket the
third dimension identified by Rixen and Viola (2016)—speed—as it is not a source of
significant debate among scholars. Change in the international refugee regime has
been gradual, rather than abrupt. As we discuss in the section “Locating existing expla-
nations”, the practices we identify have a broad scope in that they affect multiple pil-
lars of the regime, and a profound depth, as they touch on the core refugee definition
that underpins the regime.
While others have pointed to the presence of change in the international refugee regime
(Betts, 2014), little systematic work has been done to understand the nature of this change.
Existing explanations have focused more closely on either (1) the ways in which new
actors and institutions have become important players within the regime; or (2) the way in
which the needs of world conditions, and the nature of contemporary migration, are no
longer met by an outdated refugee regime (Feller, 2001; Schoenholtz, 2015). In the fol-
lowing section, we analyze these existing arguments and place them in conversation with
historical institutionalist theories of change. By bringing these two literatures together,
our analysis systematically examines the subtle yet critical transformations underway
Mourad and Norman 5
within the global refugee regime. This analysis has important implications for understand-
ing: (a) how the change is occurring, (b) which actors are responsible, and (3) whether
reversals of the change are possible, and, if so, how.
Locating existing explanations

Many have argued that the UN parameters defining refugee status are outdated and nar-
row, reflecting the post-World War II European environment from which they emerged
(Goodwin-Gill, 2014; Karatani, 2005). In particular, the Convention definition has been
criticized for having a “political bias” and for being too narrowly focused on persecution,
excluding individuals who were forcibly displaced by other causes (El-Hinnawi, 1985;
Hathaway, 1988; Hathaway and Foster, 2014). While calls for expanding this definition
are by no means unanimous (Bierman and Boas, 2010; Morrissey, 2012; Suhrke, 1994),
it is clear that under the current regime those escaping their home countries due to fam-
ine, poverty, or climate change do not qualify as refugees. Despite often experiencing
similar conditions to those fleeing political persecution or war, these individuals are clas-
sified as migrants (Castles and Van Hear, 2011). However, as we demonstrate, this is also
partly a product of the actions of states and international agencies that have made access
to the legal category of refugee more difficult.
The limited scope of the Convention criteria and the complex nature of migratory
flows call into question the analytical distinction between refugee and migrant. In this line
of argument, the emergence of mixed movements and “new” types of forced migration
that are unaccounted for in the Refugee Convention, such as environmental forced
migrants, have led to a mismatch between the regime’s original purpose and the reality of
contemporary migration. We situate this explanation for policy change in the concept of
“policy drift,” whereby the “[n]eglect of institutional maintenance in spite of external
change [results] in slippage in institutional practice on the ground” (Streeck and Thelen,
2005: 31). We do not discount the historical circumstances that enabled the formation of
the current regime, and we acknowledge that these circumstances differ immensely from
the realities of contemporary migration. Yet it would be misleading to argue that it is only
“history” that “. . .separate[s] refugees and migrant regimes” (Karatani, 2005). We argue
that the emphasis placed on the discordance between the outdated Convention definition
and contemporary migration realities obfuscates the importance of deliberate action
undertaken by states and international bodies that has actively eroded the distinctiveness
of the “refugee” category. Furthermore, the mechanisms driving policy drift are primarily
exogenous; in other words, factors outside the refugee regime itself are creating change.
The second explanation for the mismatch between the Convention and migration
realities is offered by Betts (2010) and is based on the concept of “policy layering,”
whereby, “[n]ew elements attached to existing institutions gradually change their status
and structure” (Streeck and Thelen, 2005: 31). Betts argues that states have made use of
alternate regimes—in this case the “travel” regime—to bypass rather than “overtly
violat[e] the core tenets of the refugee regime” (Betts, 2010: 26, emphasis added). He
terms this the “refugee regime complex,” or the increasing overlap between the refugee
regime and a “range of other regimes within which States engage in a form of institution-
alized cooperation that have a direct and indirect impact on refugee protection” (12). The
Table 1. Modes of policy change within the international refugee regime.
Type of change
Features of change Policy drift Policy layering Policy conversion
Mechanisms Exogenous Exogenous Endogenous
Scope Limited Broad Broad
Depth Profound Mixed Profound
Speed Gradual Gradual Gradual
Effect on regime Misalignment of regime Parallel co- Subversion and
and migratory reality existence erosion of core tenets
mechanisms of policy layering include measures such as imposing carrier sanctions on

companies that transport foreigners without required documentation to the borders of a
state and other “remote control” security measures (Gammeltoft-Hansen, 2011; Hansen,
2014; Rodenhäuser, 2014; Zaiotti, 2016).
We agree with Betts (2010) that instances of institutional overlap have allowed states
to make use of alternate regimes to achieve their goals through policy layering. The use
of carrier sanctions, “remote control” security measures, and a greater integration of
biometric data in passports all show that states have used the travel regime to bypass,
rather than overtly violate, the refugee regime. Yet in addition to layering, we identify
key practices used by states and intergovernmental institutions that aim to transform,
rather than supplant, existing institutional frameworks, thereby further eroding the dis-
tinction between refugee and migrant. Furthermore, we demonstrate that this is even
occurring in areas of little to no regime overlap (i.e. where states could not make use of
another well-established bilateral or multilateral structure of coordination) and where
these practices touch core tenets of the refugee regime such as non-refoulement. As such,
we identify sources of endogenous change that constitute “policy conversion” or the
“[re]deployment of old institutions to new purposes; [and] new purposes attached to old
structures” (Streeck and Thelen, 2005: 31). Specifically, central actors—states and inter-
national organizations that are party to the regime—are actively converting existing
institutions and norms of the regime through the use of readmission agreements, proce-
dural hindrances to status recognition, group-based denial of access, and non-Conven-
tion criteria in resettlement schemes. As Streeck and Thelen (2005) explain, in an instance
of policy conversion, “[a]ctors are strategic and even those not involved in the design of
an institution will do everything in their power to interpret its rules in their own interest
(or circumvent or subvert rules that clash with their interests)” (27).
We compare the parameters of policy drift, policy layering, and policy conversion in
Table 1 using the well-established forms of policy change identified by Streeck and
Thelen (2005) and the mechanisms driving change posited by Fioretos (2011) and Rixen
and Viola (2016). We specify the dimensions, causes, agents, and effects of change
according to each theory.
In addition to whether change is exogenous versus endogenous, the scope and depth of
change for each explanation also differs. In the case of “policy drift,” the scope of change
is limited; it primarily concerns the nature of the Convention criteria and its inability to
Mourad and Norman 7
capture the diversity of contemporary drivers of forced migration. However, the depth is
profound. By hitting at a core element of the institution itself, it challenges the very exist-
ence of the institution. In contrast, “policy layering” presents a wider scope—affecting a
broader set of components of the regime—and a mixed effect in terms of depth of change.
As Betts (2010) argues, “[s]ome of the emerging regimes—such as the human rights
regime—have been complementary, reinforcing the norms of the refugee regime [. . .]
[while others] have had more ambiguous effects” (21-2). In the case of the refugee regime
and policy conversion, endogenous change is occurring through a gradual process of pol-
icy transformation (“creeping change” in the words of Streeck and Thelen (2005)). This
operates within the existing institutions and norms of the refugee regime—including bur-
den-sharing, individual and prima facie status determination, and resettlement—to deny
access to protection for would-be asylum claimants and refugees and to erode the categor-
ical distinction between refugees and migrants that underpins the regime.
We acknowledge that all three forms of policy change are present in the current refu-
gee regime. Our argument is that the latter—policy conversion—has occurred via inten-
tional state and institutional practices to erode the previously distinctive category of
“refugee.” Policy conversion is possible due to “. . .gaps that exist by design or emerge
over time between institutionalized rules and their local enactment” (Streeck and Thelen,
2005: 26). In the case of refugee regime, this gap is embedded within the design of the
regime itself as a result of two factors. The first is the fundamental ambiguity that exists
between the need for sovereign states to uphold asylum and refugee protection, and the
potential for asylum to threaten state sovereignty. As Hansen (2014) argues, “[s]tates and
borders both sustain and undermine the asylum system” (2). The second is the economic
cost of admitting refugees. Wealthy liberal democratic countries may be reluctant to
uphold the regime when admitting refugees (or migrants more broadly) means ensuring
socioeconomic rights and protections. Ruhs (2013) argues that the gap between human
rights as expressed in international conventions and migrant rights in practice can be
explained by states seeking to limit the “price” of granting rights. He finds that the rights
and protections promised to migrants by liberal constitutions and courts leads Western
countries to restrict the number of migrants granted admission. In other words,
“[t]here can be a trade-off (a negative relationship) between openness and some of the rights of
some migrant workers admitted to high-income countries—this, is, greater openness to
admitting migrant workers will be associated with relatively fewer rights for migrants and vice
versa” (39).
His argument could also be extrapolated to countries seeking to limit the number of refu-
gees and asylum seekers whose admission carries—in principle—an even greater guar-
antee of rights, which became universalized after the introduction of the 1967 protocol
(Orchard, 2014). We argue that one way in which states aim to gain greater control over
the admission of refugees is by making refugees and asylum seekers more difficult to
distinguish from other migrants.
If our argument is correct and policy conversion is contributing to the erosion of the
distinction between refugees and migrants, we must be able to demonstrate that two
phenomena are at play. First, change within the regime needs to be endogenous, meaning
that states and institutional actors such as the UNHCR and IOM are actively utilizing
practices to change the regime from within. We acknowledge that these actions may be
occurring in response to exogenous factors, such as the increased number of refugees and
asylum seekers attempting to access protection in Western countries since the end of the
Cold War (Keely, 2001). Nonetheless, states and institutional actors directly involved in
the administration of the regime are themselves carrying out practices that are converting
it, rather than actors outside the system. Second, states and institutional actors need to be
redeploying facets of the refugee regime to new purposes, rather than making use of
alternate regimes to achieve their goals via policy layering.
Situating the regime’s origin

Identifying a starting point from which institutions either remain stagnant or change over
time is a well-identified problem among historical institutionalist scholars, as is identify-
ing an endpoint (Klotz, 2013). What is particularly important for our discussion is iden-
tifying the development of a coherent refugee definition within the regime, in order to
then explain how the definition has been transformed. Though the contemporary interna-
tional refugee regime is most closely associated with the 1951 Refugee Convention, its
subsequent protocols, and the UNHCR, the regime’s origins can be traced to Louis XIV’s
1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the subsequent flight of approximately
200,000 Huguenots from France, widely considered to be the first modern refugees
(Barnett, 2002; Haddad, 2003; Orchard, 2013, 2014). By the time the émigrés fled France
in the 18th century, the laissez faire attitude of nations, wherein “officials did not distin-
guish between immigrants and refugees, treating all equally and applying few restric-
tions to entry” had already begun to change (Barnett, 2002: 240). During this period, the
way that a nation related to a specific movement or group began to matter, thereby ren-
dering the “reception of exiles and refugees [. . .] ad hoc and state-centric” (Barnett,
2002: 241). For example, this logic was codified clearly in the British Alien Act of 1905,
such that refugees were “seen as the few hundred individually persecuted political activ-
ists; [and] immigrants were the impoverished masses who had the potential to arrive in
their thousands” (Haddad, 2003: 307).
The inadequacy of this approach for addressing major waves of displacement became
quickly apparent in the aftermath of the First World War, prompting the establishment
of the League of Nations High Commission for Refugees (HCR). While the HCR is
often seen as a relatively minor instance of “fail[ing] to come up with an effective refu-
gee regime,” what is clear is that this moment “helped establish the refugee as the focus
of displacement, while affirming intergovernmental action as the norm for confronting
the phenomenon” (Haddad, 2008: 108–109). It did not, however, settle key definitional
issues related to refugees. Category-based affiliation and origin continued to determine
who was defined as a refugee; as such, “[R]ussian exiles were defined as refugees
because a category existed specifically to grant them such status” (Barnett, 2002: 242).
In contrast, “some major refugee groups—such as refugees from fascist Italy and
Spain—were excluded from League assistance altogether” (Loescher, 1993: 39).
Moreover, the line between refugees and economic migrants remained blurred. Even
the HCR’s major innovation, the “Nansen passport,” designed to facilitate refugees’ right
to movement by “introducing refugee identity papers as an alternative to the national
Mourad and Norman 9
citizen’s passport” (Haddad, 2008: 110–111), was described as having the objective of
“admitt[ing] [. . .] refugees to countries where they could support themselves” (LNA
1922 in Long, 2013: 9). As such, it was intended to help refugees “become migrants”
(Long, 2013: 9). Under this framework, refugees were understood to be a “special cate-
gory of economic migrant,” with refugee quotas that matched receiving countries’
employment needs (Long, 2013: 10).
This remained a fundamentally ad hoc and weakly institutionalized system whereby
new arrangements with receiving countries had to be facilitated for every new group of
refugees (Orchard, 2013: 185–186). Tying states’ willingness to accept refugees with
their potential for economic contribution—while undeniably a “pragmatic strategy” that
“offered solutions to some” (Long, 2013: 11)—quickly showed its limits in Western
Europe’s denial of refugee status for most Jewish refugees in the 1930s, partly due to the
Great Recession. James McDonald, the High Commissioner for German refugees at the
time, underscored in his resignation letter in 1936 that “the present economic conditions
of the world” were driving the refusal of European states and the United States to take in
refugees (cited in Loescher, 1993: 43).
According to Torpey (2000), the dysfunctionality of an international system in which
states could refuse to admit those in need of international protection “may ultimately have
helped to push the Nazis toward extermination as the ‘final solution’ of the ‘Jewish prob-
lem’” (135–136). At the Évian Conference in 1938—the only significant, and ultimately
failed, international effort to address the plight of Jewish refugees—state representatives
referenced the potential for refugees to “‘disturb [. . .] the general economy,’ [. . .] at a
time of serious unemployment” (Loescher, 1993: 45). Moreover, both the 1933 and 1938
Refugee Convention failed to attract support from states, “who continued to frame
Germany’s Jewish refugee exodus in migration terms” (Long, 2013: 12, emphasis added).
It was only following this monumental failure, and its grave consequences, that
enough political will was galvanized to establish a legal framework that could protect a
refugee’s right to claim asylum and protect them from forcible return. Codified in Article
33 of the 1951 Refugee Convention, this principle formed the first major institution that
“separat[ed] the humanitarian from the economic drivers of migration” (Long, 2013: 16).
Alongside the establishment of the UNHCR, the Convention presents the foundation of
the most highly institutionalized of all multilateral or global migration regimes (Betts,
2010; Betts et al., 2008; Loescher, 2001). It also, putatively, continues to provide the core
definition of who can qualify as a refugee.
Under this system, the legal term refugee is reserved for individuals officially recog-
nized by UNHCR or a host state government as having fled from his or her home country
“due to a well-founded fear of being persecuted because of his or her race, religion, nation-
ality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion; and is unable or unwill-
ing to avail him—or herself of the protection of that country, or to return there, for fear of
persecution” (Article 1A(2)) and who is eligible for protection under the 1951 UN
Convention on the Status of Refugees or under subsequent protocols, henceforth referred
to as the Convention definition) (UNGA, 1950). The closely related term asylum seeker
refers to an individual who has applied to receive refugee status from UNHCR or a host
state government, but who has not yet gone through the refugee status determination (RSD)
process—whereby an individual is found to meet the Convention definition of a refugee
and is therefore entitled to the rights and international protection that status confers.
The word migrant, officially defined as a person “born in a country other than where
they currently reside” (Rosenblum and Tichenor, 2012: 5), is a broad category that
encompasses within it the more narrowly-defined categories of refugee and asylum
seeker. In common language, however, the term has largely become an antonym of “refu-
gee,” containing within it individuals who have left their home countries presumably to
seek economic opportunities elsewhere (“economic migrants”) (Fargues, 2009; Long,
2013; UNHCR, 2016b). This distinction is often invoked by politicians and other policy
makers claiming to “protect” the category of refugee. Yet we argue that alongside these
claims, states and other key institutional actors have undertaken practices that ultimately
work to erode this distinction—and the regime itself—bringing it closer to the pre-Con-
vention ad hoc norms identified above.
The following section draws on illustrative examples from liberal democratic receiv-
ing states in the Global North and migrant and refugee host countries in the MENA
region to outline four state or institution-led practices that we identify as having trans-
formative effects on the function, purpose, and goals of the international refugee regime.
These practices either limit access to the refugee regime even for those who fall within
its (admittedly narrow) parameters, or they blur the legal distinction between the cate-
gory of refugee and migrant.
Policy conversion led by states and IOs

As discussed in the previous section, opportunities for change through conversion emerge
when there are gaps “between institutionalized rules and their local enactment” (Streeck
and Thelen, 2005: 26) and as the result of new environmental challenges to which policy-
makers respond by deploying existing institutional resources to new ends (Streeck and
Thelen, 2005). We highlight four key practices that aim to achieve this: (1) limiting access
to territory through burden-shifting; (2) limiting access to asylum and legal status through
procedural hindrances; (3) the use of group-based criteria to limit access to protection;
(4) the inclusion of non-Convention criteria within resettlement schemes.
Each practice occurs at a different point in the protection system, somewhere between
the initial step at which would-be-refugees either enter a neighboring host state or lodge
an asylum claim and the “end point” whereby a refugee would theoretically be resettled
to a third country or granted refugee status through asylum. We examine how each of
these practices hinders one or more of the key pathways to international protection, either
by denying access to asylum in a developing host state or by not permitting third country
resettlement. We argue that these practices have made accessing protection so difficult
that many individuals are forced to choose alternate avenues, thereby rendering them-
selves vulnerable to the highly politicized claim of being migrants rather than refugees.
Extraterritorial control by asylum-granting states

Due to the implicit nature of burden-sharing built into the international refugee regime,3
the “burden” of refugee hosting has historically fallen primarily on neighboring states,
partly as a function of circumstance whereby refugees find themselves unable to move
past their first site of protection-seeking. Since the end of the Cold War, Western
Mourad and Norman 11
states—primarily those in Europe, North America, and Australia—have established new

practices to further control which persons manage to reach and successfully cross their
borders. Countries in the Global North generally have protections and rights in place for
asylum seekers once they manage to reach a country’s territory (Ruhs, 2013), but in order
to prevent undesired migrants and asylum-seekers from doing so, Western states have
employed new means of “remote control” (Zaiotti, 2016). These include measures such
as special zones for policing migrants and asylum seekers established within the territory
of another state, as well as incentivizing or coercing other states to counter unauthorized
migration through enhanced patrols.
In the Mediterranean region specifically, European governments began pressuring
neighboring Balkan and North African countries to bolster border security in order to curb
irregular migration in the early 2000s (Boubakari, 2013; Lavenex, 2007; Norman, 2016;
Qadim, 2019). As Geddes (2005) observes: “The language of EU policy development. . .
has been couched in terms of ‘co-operation’ and ‘migration dialogue,’ but policies have
tended to reflect EU security concerns without dialogue that takes into account the interest
of sending, receiving or transit countries” (278). Importantly for our argument, states have
also moved to transform burden-sharing into a tool of refugee control. For instance, the
EU has pressured migrant and refugee-source countries and neighboring countries into
signing readmission agreements that “externalize” their protection commitments.
In this legal environment, the external dimension of protection becomes one of the pillars of the
mechanism, which is designed to shift the responsibility of protection seekers to third countries.
Readmission agreements have appeared as a solution to make such rules operable by creating a
mechanism capable of forcing transit countries concerned to readmit asylum seekers as well as
migrants. (Tokuzlu, 2010: 6)
Non-EU countries agree to sign readmission agreements if the benefits provided by the
EU are deemed more profitable than the cost of hosting migrants and refugees. Tokuzlu
(2010) groups these benefits into four categories: development cooperation, economic
cooperation, neighborhood association with the EU, or acceptance into the framework of
EU enlargement.
While there has been much variation in the types of partnerships and agreements
concluded with various North African, Eastern European, and Middle Eastern host
states (Collyer, 2016), they have not included any enforceable guarantees of refugee
protection in situ and as such have not attenuated the “push factors” that drive refugees
and asylum seekers to leave their countries. Instead, they have contributed to the
increasingly irregular nature of their pathways and the further mixing of migrant and
refugee populations in surrounding Mediterranean countries. While this analysis focuses
primarily on Europe’s burden-shifting, similar mechanisms have been used by Australia
in the Southeast Asian region (Loughnane, 2013) and by the United States in its bilat-
eral relations with Mexico and Central America (Rascoe and Allyn, 2019). While bur-
den-sharing has historically resulted in the majority of refugees residing in countries of
the Global South, the increasing prevalence of partnerships and agreements that aim to
prevent the arrival of would-be refugees transforms the norm of burden-sharing into a
practice of migration containment.
The 2016 EU-Turkey “deal” can be seen as the furthest extension of burden-shifting
yet attempted by a Global North actor (in this case, the European Union) in that it seeks
to forcibly return Syrian nationals—who otherwise stood to be recognized as refugees in
Europe—from Greece to Turkey. The deal has been highly praised by both European and
Turkish politicians as well as widely criticized by international human rights groups and
UNHCR. In negotiating this deal, Turkey capitalized on European fear that the increase
in irregular migration seen in 2015 and 2016 would continue unabated. In mid-2016, the
EU and Turkey arrived at a deal whereby Turkey would receive an up-to 6 billion Euro
aid package coupled by the reinvigoration of EU accession negotiations and visa liberali-
zation in exchange for taking back Syrian refugees that had transited through Turkey and
arrived in Europe (Norman, 2019). The deal was highly criticized by international human
rights groups alleging that Turkey cannot be considered a safe third country to which
refugees can be returned because it frequently deports Syrians across the border to Syria
(Amnesty International, 2016). Further, Syrians are not eligible for full refugee status in
Turkey because it maintains geographical limitations to the 1951 Refugee Convention.4
The deal requires that refugees be resettled from Turkey to Europe via formal channels,
with the hope that a viable legal route would disincentive irregular arrivals. One problem
this poses is that the Turkish government has not been able to adequately identify the most
vulnerable cases for resettlement. While at the time of interviewing for this research in
2015, government officials had biometrically registered 2.7 million Syrians, UN officials
and NGOs indicated that the Turkish government had not been collecting enough infor-
mation during registration, focusing only on basic biometrics and omitting other critical
information.5 This made the process of conducting vulnerability assessments for the pur-
pose of targeted aid or selecting individuals for resettlement very difficult. Nonetheless,
the Turkish government emphasized its capability during the negotiations surrounding the
EU–Turkey deal in order to demonstrate Turkey’s investment in hosting Syrians and to
emphasize that the EU needed to offer further aid in the name of burden-sharing (Norman,
2019). In reality, however, the Turkish bureaucracy had neither the capacity nor sufficient
training to identify and recommend individuals for resettlement.
By invoking burden-sharing, a critical but difficult to enforce component of the refu-
gee regime, the EU–Turkey deal distorted the core purpose of the regime itself. In this
sense, the agreement does not correspond to the use of an alternate set of institutions à la
Betts (2011), but the transformation of an existing core tenet of the regime itself. The role
of burden-sharing in providing protection is transformed beyond recognition if the rights
of refugees are not guaranteed in situ.
Thus, the EU–Turkey deal, much like the Nansen refugee protection regime historically,
approaches refugee protection as a problem of “development and economic inclusion”
(Long, 2013: 10). By providing aid to Turkey to host Syrians that were previously in Europe,
the deal treats refugee protection as akin to economic migrant schemes, falling short of pro-
viding refugees with asylum but—in theory—guaranteeing them the right to work. By pre-
venting access to territory and disallowing refugees to move past their first country of
asylum, this co-optation of the norm of burden-sharing—aided by international organiza-
tions—makes use of existing institutions formed for refugee protection and reallocates them
toward the purpose of containing would-be-refugees. At their core, these state practices are
reminiscent of pre-Convention modes of refugee protection, which understood refugees as
a subset of migrants rather than falling under a discrete category of their own.
Bureaucratic and procedural hindrances in host states

For the 90% of the world’s refugees that reside in a developing country (UN Population
Division, 2013), refugee status determination (RSD) constitutes—in principle—the starting
point of the process toward finding a durable solution. However, long processing times and
procedural challenges at this stage often mean that this “starting” point is severely delayed,
forcing would-be refugees to either forego the process altogether in favor of alternate routes
of migration or to remain indefinitely in a developing host state. Blocking access to this deter-
mination procedure ultimately prevents would-be refugees from accessing the protections
entailed in the regime. The causes of these delays are multiple—from understaffing and
underfunding of UNHCR, to deliberate obstacles placed by host countries—but the result is
often similar: refugees find themselves in so-called “transit” countries for extended periods of
time with little to no protection and in need of work to support themselves and their families.
Consequently, they are confronted with two options: remain in an irregular status within the
host country and face claims of being an economic migrant, or attempt an irregular voyage
onward to a Western destination country alongside other migrants in what constitutes mixed
migration flows. Both these alternatives make refugees more akin to economic migrants,
while simultaneously maintaining the appearance of a functioning RSD process.
In Egypt, long delays in processing are driven in large part by understaffing and under-
funding of the UNHCR. Those arriving in the country and applying for refugee status are
given a “yellow card” by UNHCR, which connotes that they are asylum seekers and under
temporary protection until they undergo RSD and receive a “blue card.” At the time of inter-
viewing for this research in 2014, RSD interview dates were being given to non-Syrian
asylum-seekers for 2019, meaning that would-be refugees were required to wait 5 years
before potentially receiving official refugee status and becoming eligible for resettlement.
During this interim period, individuals are given certain protections and—in theory—access
to UNHCR-funded resources, but are not eligible for resettlement until they undergo an
official RSD interview. Morocco provides a further example of how the process to register
with UNHCR may be too burdensome or time-consuming for would-be refugees. A migrant
from Cameroon informed one of the authors that when he arrived in Morocco in 2010 he
attempted to approach the UNHCR office in Rabat, but because the office is only able to see
a small number of asylum seekers each day, he eventually gave up on the process.
“When I came here I wanted to [register], but it’s so hard. I have to go there, 4 o’clock in the
morning. Because the people, they are too many. Some people, they sleep there. So I tried for a
time, but it’s not possible.”6
Another individual from Cameroon expressed how fear of violence deterred him from
waiting outside the UNHCR office.
When I came to Morocco in 2004 it was hard. We had to wake up at 4 am to leave from the tent to be
the first person to get to the UNHCR. There were two groups. The Francophones and the Anglophones.
There was a lot of violence. When you go to the organization, you can’t even enter. You need a
number and they only give out ten numbers. To get a number there is a lot of pushing and struggling.7
Eventually this individual gave up on the process of attempting to qualify for refugee
status and chose instead to remain in Morocco as an irregular migrant.
In some cases, access to UNHCR registration in countries like Lebanon has more
overtly prevented would-be refugees from obtaining legal status via the introduction of
administrative regulations. While Lebanon maintained a de facto open border policy
toward Syrians prior to January 2015, this policy changed following a decision by the
Council of Ministers in October 2014 that had three aims: (1) to halt the influx of Syrian
refugees; (2) to encourage Syrians already in Lebanon to return to Syria; and (3) to limit the
number of UNHCR registered Syrians in Lebanon (Dionigi, 2016). Following this policy
change, the Government of Lebanon moved quickly to halt UNHCR registration of Syrians
in mid-2015. This meant that the legal status and protections that some Syrians were able
to access prior to 2015, while limited, were no longer accessible. Critically, even for Syrians
registered with UNHCR, access to legal stay largely became dependent on having a labor
sponsorship (kafil) in the country, and administrative procedures effectively served to re-
categorize Syrians from “displaced” or even “refugees” to “economic migrants” (Janmyr
and Mourad, 2018).
This wide array of procedural hindrances leads refugees to view both UNHCR regis-
tration and refugee status as increasingly devoid of meaningful protection. UNHCR,
perhaps in an attempt to provide limited rights under difficult circumstances, feeds back
into this dynamic by further eroding the protections guaranteed to refugees under inter-
national law, thereby bringing them closer to other less-protected types of migrants.
In this way, by severely restricting or even outright preventing access to RSD, states
and international organizations place would-be refugees and asylum seekers under con-
ditions that work to transform their status into irregular or economic migrants. As a
result, their access to protection becomes even more prone to the vagaries of states. For
instance, evictions of Syrians from towns in Lebanon and recent refugee returns to Syria
have been justified in part by the difficulty of distinguishing refugees from migrant
workers or economic migrants (Human Rights Watch, 2018; Karam, 2018). In these
instances, states are not using alternate mechanisms or institutions to regulate would-be
refugees—as would be expected in the case of policy layering—but are actively eroding
the existing institution of refugee status determination to block access to protection.
The use of group-based criteria for exclusion

Prima facie refugee status determination (PFRSD), also referred to as group-based deter-
mination of status, is most commonly used to grant refugee status by a state—or UNHCR
if delegated by the state—“on the basis of the readily apparent, objective circumstances
in the country of origin giving rise to exodus” (Rutinwa, 2002). While the use of PFRSD
is widespread,8 it remains weakly understood and institutionalized as a practice (Albert,
2010). Among the elements that remain underspecified are the conditions under which
its use is justified. Expediency has been cited as one justification in cases where indi-
vidual determinations would be too onerous, while others have argued that it can be used
based on the extent of “objective” information (i.e. “country of origin”) available (Albert,
2010: 66-68). Importantly, this process was devised to determine inclusion within the
refugee regime, and it cannot—according to UNHCR—be used to determine exclusion.
In practice, however, group-based determinants have been increasingly used to limit
access to asylum within both developing and developed countries, in some cases even
resulting in effective nonrefoulement. This presents a remarkable distortion of the prin-

ciples underlying the use of group-based criteria in the refugee regime, which at its core
is based on an individual assessment of protection needs.
Group-based criteria have most clearly been used by Western states to limit access to
asylum. Most prominently, the EU–Turkey deal uses country-of-origin information to
determine status. While the deal itself falls short of protection even for Syrian asylum
claimants and has burden-shifting implications, as the section on “extra-territorial control
by asylum-granting states” above demonstrates, it fails non-Syrian asylum claimants even
more gravely. By having different provisions for Syrian and non-Syrian asylum claimants,
it has been heavily criticized for severely disadvantaging the chances of protection for
refugees from countries such as Afghanistan, Somalia, and Iraq (Kaplan, 2016).
Another increasingly popular practice is the use of “safe country of origin” lists in the
process of asylum adjudication, whereby asylum claimants from listed countries are sub-
ject to a different process. Germany pioneered the concept in the early 1990s, including
on its list states known not to practice political and religious persecution. According to
Quosh and Wittig (2006), “[l]egally, all asylum applications of nationals from those
countries were to be considered illegitimate, unless the individual applicant could prove
that he or she had, in fact, suffered political persecution at the hands of the state.” Since
then, Germany has been a proponent of expanding the use of safe country of origin lists
across Europe as part of the effort to harmonize European immigration and asylum poli-
cies (Quosh and Wittig, 2006). At least 12 EU states currently have national lists of their
own (European Commission, 2016), and the European Parliament is developing a com-
mon list to replace national lists within 3 years (European Parliament, 2016).
The variation in the number of countries contained in EU national lists calls into
question their foundation on “objective information”: at one extreme, the UK’s list
includes 26 countries, while Ireland and Germany list one and five countries respec-
tively. In the Canadian case, a study found no evidence that claimants from desig-
nated countries of origin (DCO) have a lower likelihood of their asylum claim being
found valid. In fact, acceptance rates for DCO claimants were higher than those from
a non-DCO (61% versus 41%) (Keung, 2015a). This raises further questions about
whether a more limited adjudication process is founded on any “objective” informa-
tion (Keung, 2015b).
The practice of repurposing group-based criteria for exclusion is not limited to
Western states. Early on in the Syrian refugee crisis, neighboring countries—including
most notably Lebanon and Jordan—were praised and given, “great credit for having kept
their borders open to Syrian refugees” (Human Rights Watch, 2012). Yet in parallel to
this so-called “generosity,” reports of both countries denying entry to Palestinian refu-
gees arriving from Syria began to surface (Human Rights Watch, 2013).
The majority of the 450,000 Palestine refugees remaining in Syria are internally displaced and
remain in continuous need of humanitarian aid. Up to 280,000 are currently displaced inside
Syria, with a further 110,000 displaced to neighbouring countries, including Lebanon, Jordan,
Turkey, Egypt and increasingly, to Europe. The escalating violence makes movement and
access more difficult and causes severe hardship. Jordan effectively closed its borders to
Palestine refugees from Syria (PRS) early in the conflict; Lebanon followed suit in May 2015
(United Nations Refugee Works and Relief Agency (UNRWA), 2016).
The relatively small number of Palestinians in the context of the overwhelming displace-
ment from Syria makes these policies all the more remarkable. Palestinians from Syria
who do succeed in entering continue to face different legal regimes as well as unequal
access to resettlement (Abu Moghli et al., 2015).
Palestinian Syrians also faced difficulties in Egypt after they began arriving with
other Syrians in 2012. Many individuals were born in Syria and had never lived in
Palestine but were legally treated as Palestinians both within Syria and once they arrived
in Egypt. According to its mandate, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
(UNRWA) is responsible for Palestinian Refugees from Syria, but this body does not
provide protection services in Egypt, leaving Palestinians from Syria without the ability
to register as refugees. Egyptian authorities refused to allow the UNHCR to register
Palestinian refugees from Syria, citing article 1D of the Refugee Convention, which
excludes these individuals from the UNHCR’s mandate in areas where the UNRWA
provides services, such as in Syria (Norman, 2014). The unwillingness of the Egyptian
government to acknowledge the specific plight of Palestinian refugees from Syria may
be related to the alleged connections between Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood
trumped up in Egyptian media following the ousting of former President Mohamed
Morsi (Mandour, 2013). Regardless of the motivation, this use of group-based criteria to
exclude Palestinian refugees from Syria from access to protection left them particularly
vulnerable during a highly volatile political period in Egypt.
The political nature of “safe” lists as well as the more explicit policies adopted by
Lebanon and Egypt shift the institutions of international refugee protection closer to
the pre-Convention regime. Under the umbrella of the International Refugee
Organization (IRO), “[e]stablishing a refugee claim to IRO assistance [. . .] rested not
only on humanitarian need, but also on criteria that excluded those ‘undeserving’ by
virtue of their association with the Axis powers” (Long, 2013: 14). One of the core
changes to the post-IRO regime with the establishment of the UNHCR was the “entirely
non-political character” of the institution (UNGA in Long, 2013: 16), yet the use of
group-based criteria as a means of exclusion calls this neutrality into question. Prima
facie was originally designed to broaden the net of protection for refugees. By repur-
posing this poorly defined practice as a means of curtailing and even outright prevent-
ing access to asylum for individuals who otherwise present strong cases for
international protection, host states and the UNHCR are actively converting core
tenets of the refugee regime.
Inclusion of non-Convention criteria in resettlement schemes

While the racial and religious preferences historically—and in some cases, currently—
pervasive in the immigration schemes of Western countries are well-documented
(FitzGerald and Cook-Martín, 2014), the refugee resettlement process is meant—at least
in principle—to be based primarily on an individual’s level of vulnerability. As stated in
previous sections, RSD is a cornerstone of the refugee regime, constituting the process
through which an individual is found to meet the Convention definition, entitling them
to the rights and international protection that status confers. While the Convention defi-
nition poses its own set of challenges for determining status in a context where mixed
migration flows are increasingly the norm, the inclusion of additional criteria within
individual states’ resettlement schemes threatens to further erode the distinctiveness of

the status it relies upon.
As described by a refugee resettlement officer in Beirut, the exact criteria for RSD
vary from state to state and can often be opaque to those working within the UNHCR.
While the organization can recommend individuals or families for resettlement, coun-
tries will often conduct their own secondary determination and reject recommendations
for unspecified reasons.9
The length of processing time and the criteria used also vary considerably from one state to
another. For example, in the case of Syrian refugees, the determination of who constitutes a
security threat varies to the extent that the criteria prioritizing an individual in one case can
make them ineligible in another. Some countries consider any links to an armed paramilitary
group—such as having a brother in the FSA (Free Syrian Army) or Jabhat al-Nusra—as suf-
ficient grounds for rejection, even if the individual expresses disagreement with their participa-
tion. At the same time, others may see this as an added layer of vulnerability (i.e. if you refuse
to participate in the war, you are more likely to face persecution). On this matter, recommend-
ing a Syrian in Lebanon for resettlement to the United States was described by a UNHCR
representative as the “equivalent of putting the file in the drawer and locking the key.”10
In addition to security criteria, many states include other considerations related to the
refugee’s ability to “successfully integrate” into a resettlement country. This practice is
so widely used that it is included within UNHCR’s general presentation of the refugee
resettlement process as a “non-criteria” used to determine where to recommend an indi-
vidual or family for resettlement (The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), 2015).11
The potential for this practice to convert the refugee resettlement track into a general
immigration track has been quietly acknowledged. For example, as early as 2000,
UNHCR took issue with provisions within Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s crite-
ria for resettlement—particularly its prioritization of refugees with a demonstrated “abil-
ity to successfully establish”— stating that
UNHCR believes that “integration potential” should not be a determining factor in the selection
of refugees for resettlement. [. . .] If Canada’s refugee resettlement program is definitively to
disentangle itself from Canada’s immigration program, then, in UNHCR’s view, it must
distance itself as much as possible from immigration criteria (The UN Refugee Agency
(UNHCR), 2000, emphasis added).
Despite indications that the application of this criteria was softening, and hopes that
perhaps this would lead to its elimination altogether (Casasola, 2001: 80), it remains
integral to the Canadian resettlement criteria 15 years later (The UN Refugee Agency
(UNHCR), 2016a, 2016b, 2016c: 5).
More recently, in October 2015, then-Conservative party leader and Prime Minister
Stephen Harper admitted to having placed a priority on resettling “primarily Christians
and other religious minorities” from Syria (Dib, 2015). Similar policies have been dis-
cussed in Australia (Henderson and Uhlmann, 2015) and the United States (House of
Representatives, 2015). Avoiding the language of selection criteria, the Canadian gov-
ernment claimed that it simply “prioritize[s] those [refugees] that meet its areas of focus,”
but reports showed that these “areas of focus seem to value qualities considered desirable
for economic and cultural integration – language fluency, for example, or a young age at
Table 2. List of resettlement criteria by country.
18
Meets Degree of Extent of Need for Special Whether Country’s Security Integration
UNHCR persecution or connection to medical considerations another resettlement threats potential
definition discrimination resettlement attention for women or durable capacity posed by
country children option exists refugee
Argentina    
Australia      
Belgium  
Brazil      
Canada     
Chile     
Czech Republic    
Demark      
Finland      
France  
Germany    
Iceland   
Netherlands    
New Zealand  
Norway     
Portugal     
Romania    
Sweden  
United Kingdom   
United States   
Uruguay    
Note. The information in this table was extracted from the UNHCR Resettlement Handbook (UNHCR, 2016a).
European Journal of International Relations 00(0)
Table 3. Countries using “integration potential” as a criterion.
Country Criteria for resettlement relating to integration potential

Canada Normally, applicants must show potential to become self-sufficient and
successfully establish in Canada within a 3–5 year time frame. Factors such
as education, presence of a support network (family or sponsor) in Canada,
work experience and qualifications, ability to learn to speak English or
French, and other personal suitability factors such as resourcefulness will
be taken into account by visa officers.
Czech Other criteria are also taken into consideration in order to give resettlement a
Republic strategic effect in broader migration and foreign policy of the Czech Republic:
priorities of humanitarian aid policy, migration policy priorities, foreign policy
priorities, etc. Integration aspects are also taken into consideration, such as the
willingness of the refugee in question to be resettled to the Czech Republic and
the willingness to integrate into the Czech society.
Demark The person has essential qualifications which make it appropriate to grant
the him/her a residence permit, including if he/she can obtain employment
within a professional field of particularly qualified labor.
Finland The third requirement is that the requirements for admitting and
integrating the refugee into the country have been assessed.
Germany Family or other ties in Germany conducive to integration; and ability to
become integrated (indicators: level of school and occupational training;
work experience; language skills; religious affiliation; young age)
Netherlands Furthermore, the willingness and ability to integrate into Dutch society also
plays a role in selecting refugees for resettlement.
New Zealand Settlement—Issues considered include that individuals approved under the
Refugee Quota Programme do not present settlement issues which may
prove to be unmanageable or an unreasonable drain upon resources.
Norway Norway gives priority to persons who will make best use of the services
for integration in the settling municipality. Cases including women and girls
at risk and families with minor children are to be prioritized irrespective of
the integration perspective. More specifically, we will take the integration
perspective into consideration when the cases in the portfolio are very
similar, and when the number of cases exceed available slots on the quota.
Persons who express resentment about integrating in the Norwegian
society, labor market, or participation in the Introduction program may
therefore be rejected under this perspective. Moreover, persons with
education or work experience relevant for the Norwegian labor market
can be given priority.
Uruguay In the case of the regular resettlement program, there were families with
children under the age of 18, with at least two adults of working age, with
an urban or semi-urban profile, complete basic secondary education, and
with some skills and/or working experience.
Note. The information in this table was extracted from the UNHCR Resettlement Handbook (UNHCR,
2016a).
the time of migration” (Friesen et al., 2015). This, once again, further collapses the dis-
tinction between economic migrant and refugee by allowing for criteria unrelated to need
or vulnerability to determine access to a durable protection solution.
The effect of these additional “non-criteria” would be less nefarious in a situation

where the resettlement spaces available roughly matched the number of refugees in need
of a durable solution. The current context, however, can hardly be described as such;
while global resettlement needs have grown by 50% since 2012—with an estimated 1.1
million spaces needed in 2015—available resettlement spaces have decreased from
86,000 to 80,000 in the same period (The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), 2015: 6, 23).
As a result, states have a large degree of discretion in including non-vulnerability related
criteria—such as language skills and educational level—in their selection process. There
are indications that countries of first asylum are beginning to adopt this practice as well.
In September 2016, reports indicated that Turkey was preventing Syrian refugees who
had been accepted for resettlement from leaving the country toward the United States,
Canada, or Europe on the basis of possessing advanced degrees (Kingsley, 2016).
The increasingly common practice of including non-Convention, economically-driven
criteria in the adjudication of resettlement applications has a profoundly transformative
effect on one of the core competencies of the UNHCR, which is meant to “promot[e] the
admission of refugees, not excluding those in the most destitute categories, to the territo-
ries of States” (UNGA in Long, 2013: 16, emphasis added). With such a large “supply” of
refugees worldwide, of which only a remarkably small fraction will be selected for reset-
tlement, “[b]eyond the confirmation of refugee status and indication of objective need,
they [states] can essentially pick and choose” (Van Selm, 2014: 515). If this “picking and
choosing” is happening on the basis of economic or cultural desirability, it erodes the
distinctiveness of the refugee category as a unique form of migration, thereby redeploying
the refugee regime for the purpose of obtaining highly-skilled, “culturally similar”
migrants. Unlike policy layering, this change does not involve supplanting components of
the refugee regime with elements of a parallel regime. The changes described above are
endogenous, involving alterations to institutions within the refugee regime.
Discussion and conclusion

The findings presented in this paper provide evidence that—in addition to policy drift and
layering—policy conversion is contributing to the erosion of the distinction between
migrant and refugee. Specifically, states and international migration bodies have made use
of institutions designed precisely to separate a protected category of migrants—albeit a
political and narrow one—from others, and converted these institutions in a way that
allows them greater control over how and when individuals qualify for international pro-
tection. While the current refugee definition is broadly acknowledged as inadequate for
addressing the challenges of modern migration patterns, we have argued that the practices
of Western receiving states, developing host states, and international migration organiza-
tions like UNHCR, have also played a role in eroding the distinction between refugee and
migrant. As Fitzpatrick (1996) states, “[a] crisis exists not because the Convention fails to
meet the needs of asylum seekers, but because it meets them so well as to impose burdens
that are no longer politically tolerable to the States parties involved” (231). It may thus be
the case that the endogenous changes we identify are occurring in response to exogenous
factors such as the complexification of contemporary migration dynamics. Yet this is a
vicious cycle; states and international agencies bemoan the inability of the Refugee
Convention to address the contemporary reality of displacement while simultaneously put-

ting in place measures that weaken it.
The fundamental gap within the design of the refugee regime itself (Hansen, 2014),
whereby the tension between asylum and sovereignty was never fully reconciled, as well as
the “cost” of granting rights and protections to refugees (Ruhs, 2013), provided the space
and incentive for states to transform the institution from within. This tension also drives
many of those concerned with refugee protection to caution against any renegotiation of the
1951 Convention definition even with the aim of adopting a more expansive refugee defini-
tion that reflects contemporary migration movements. As Koser (2015) argues, “[r]evising
[the Convention] may jeopardize the rights, principles and standards it enshrines. In the
current political climate, states would likely be more inclined to negotiate a more restrictive
Convention. It would take decades to ratify any new Convention as completely as the cur-
rent version.” As we demonstrate, it is also this tension that makes the regime so susceptible
to conversion. Regardless of whether the Convention is revised or renegotiated, the refugee
regime is not static. Our findings show that the category of “refugee” is being actively trans-
formed through the intentional practices of states and international organizations. Due to its
broad scope and incremental nature, this endogenous transformation is likely to be harder to
reverse rapidly, even as conditions external to the regime continue to change.
Disclosure
The authors report no conflict of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and
writing of the paper.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article: The authors would like to thank the Carnegie Corporation of New York,
the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and the Middle East Initiative at the
Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs for support while
writing this article. Research for this article was supported by the International Development
Research Centre and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
ORCID iD
Kelsey P Norman https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5044-0280
Notes
1. For example, by submitting asylum applications in multiple countries at once—a practice
pejoratively termed “asylum shopping” (Moore, 2013).
2. For more on this, see Kratochwil and Ruggie (1986) and Wendt and Duvall (1989).
3. For more on this, see Betts (2009).
4. Consequently, only refugees originating from Europe are considered full refugees in Turkey.
Refugees arriving in Turkey from anywhere outside Europe who successfully undergo RSD
are either considered “conditional” or “temporary” refugees by the Turkish government.
5. Interview with deidentified individual, UNICEF. Ankara, Turkey. May 2015.
6. Interview with a migrant from Cameroon. Rabat, Morocco. March 2015.
7. Interview with a migrant from Cameroon. Rabat, Morocco. February 2015.
8. While estimates vary widely, figures cited in Albert (2010) indicate that at least 64% of refu-
gees in the world at present have attained their refugee status as a result of PFRSD by states
and UNHCR. This number has likely only increased, as the largest cause of displacement
over the last 5 years has been the Syrian conflict and RSD for Syrians in host countries has
overwhelmingly been conducted on the basis of PFRSD.
9. Interview with UNHCR Resettlement Officer. Beirut, Lebanon. December 2015.
10. Interview with UNHCR Resettlement Officer. Beirut, Lebanon. December 2015.
11. Specifically, the UNHCR Handbook lists “language abilities” and “cultural aspects” as
possible criteria for states to include when constructing their own resettlement parameters
(UNHCR, 2016a).
References
Abu Moghli M, Bitarie N and Gabiam N (2015) Palestinian refugees from Syria: stranded on the
margins of the law. Al Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network.
Albert M (2010) Governance and prima facie refugee status determination: clarifying the bounda-
ries of temporary protection, group determination, and mass influx. Refugee Survey Quarterly
29(1): 61–91.
Amnesty International (2016) Turkey: illegal mass returns of Syrian refugees expose fatal flaws
in EU-Turkey deal. Amnesty International. Available at: https://www.amnesty.org/en/press-
releases/2016/04/turkey-illegal-mass-returns-of-syrian-refugees-expose-fatal-flaws-in-eu-
turkey-deal/ (accessed 26 September 2019).
Barnett L (2002) Global governance and the evolution of the international refugee regime.
International Journal of Refugee Law 14(2/3): 238–262.
Betts A (2009) Protection by Persuasion: International Cooperation in the Refugee Regime.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Betts A (2010) The refugee regime complex. Refugee Survey Quarterly 29(1): 12–37.
Betts A (2011) International cooperation in the refugee regime. In: Betts A and Loescher G (eds)
Refugees in International Relations. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 53–84.
Betts A (2014) From persecution to deprivation: how refugee norms adapt at implementation. In:
Betts A and Orchard P (eds) Implementation and World Politics: How International Norms
Change Practice. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 29–49.
Betts A, Loescher G and Milner J (2008) UNHCR: The Politics and Practice of Refugee Protection.
2nd edn. London: Routledge.
Bierman F and Boas I (2010) Preparing for a warmer world: towards a global governance system
to protect climate refugees. Global Environmental Politics 10(1): 60–88.
Boubakri H (2013) Revolution and international migration in Tunisia. Migration Policy Centre
(MPC) Research Report 2013/14. San Domenico di Fiesole, Italy: Robert Schuman Centre for
Advanced Studies. Available at: http://www.migrationpolicycentre.eu/docs/MPC-RR-2013-04.
pdf (accessed 26 September 2019).
Casasola M (2001) Current trends and new challenges for Canada’s resettlement program. Refuge
19(4): 76–83.
Castles S and Van Hear N (2011) Root causes. In: Betts A (ed.) Global Migration Governance.
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 288–306.
Collyer M (2016) Geopolitics as a migration governance strategy: European union bilateral relations
with southern Mediterranean countries. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42(4): 606–624.
Dib L (2015) ‘Targeted for extermination’: Harper says prioritizing Christian and religious minority
refugees isn’t discriminatory. National Post, 10 October. Available at: http://news.national-
post.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/targeted-for-extermination-harper-says-prioritizing-
christian-and-religious-minority-refugees-isnt-discriminatory (accessed 26 September 2019).
Dionigi F (2016) The Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon: state fragility and social resilience. LSE
Middle East Centre Paper Series 15.
El-Hinnawi E (1985) Environmental Refugees. Nairobi: United Nations Environmental
Program.
Ekelund H (2014) The establishment of FRONTEX: a new Institutionalist approach. Journal of
European Integration 36(2): 99–116.
European Commission (2016) An EU ‘Safe countries of origin’ list. Available at: https://
ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-
migration/background-information/docs/2_eu_safe_countries_of_origin_en.pdf (accessed
26 September 2019).
European Parliament (2016) Asylum: EU list of safe countries of origin to replace national lists
in 3 years. European Parliament: News, 7 July. Available at: http://www.europarl.europa.
eu/news/en/news-room/20160707IPR36205/asylum-eu-list-of-safe-countries-of-origin-to-
replace-national-lists-in-3-years (accessed 26 September 2019).
Fargues P (2009) Work, refuge, transit: an emerging pattern of irregular immigration South and
East of the Mediterranean. International Migration Review 43(3): 544–577.
Feller E (2001) The convention at 50: the way ahead for refugee protection. Forced Migration
Review 10: 6–9.
Fioretos O (2011) Historical Institutionalism in international relations. International Organization
65(2): 367–399.
FitzGerald D (2019) Refuge Beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers. New
York: Oxford University Press.
FitzGerald D and Cook-Martín D (2014) Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist
Immigration Policy in the Americas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Fitzpatrick J (1996) Revitalizing the 1951 refugee convention. Harvard Human Rights Journal 9:
229–253.
Friesen J, Bailey I and Galloway G (2015) Harper defends how refugees are processed. The Globe
and Mail, 9 October. Available at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/govern-
ment-prioritized-some-refugees-because-they-are-being-targeted-by-isis-harper-says/arti-
cle26746945/ (accessed 26 September 2019).
Gammeltoft-Hansen T (2011) Access to Asylum: International Refugee Law and the Globalisation
of Migration Control. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Geddes A (2005) Europeanisation goes South: the external dimension of EU migration and asylum
policy. Zeitschrift Für Staats- Und Europawissenschaften (ZSE) / Journal for Comparative
Government and European Policy 3(2): 275–293.
Goodwin-Gill G (2014) The international law of refugee protection. In: Fiddian-Qasmiyeh E,
Loescher G, Long K, et al. (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration
Studies. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 36–47.
Haddad E (2003) The refugee: the individual between sovereigns. Global Society 17(3):
297–322.
Haddad E (2008) The Refugee in International Society: Between Sovereigns. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Hansen R (2014) State controls: borders, refugees, and citizenship. In: Fiddian-Qasmiyeh E,
Loescher G, Long K, et al. (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration
Studies. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Hathaway JC (1988) International refugee law: humanitarian standard of protectionist ploy?
In: Nash AE and Humphrey JP (eds) Human Rights and the Protection of Refugees under
International Law. Montreal, Quebec: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 183–188.
Hathaway JC and Foster M (2014) The Law of Refugee Status. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Henderson A and Uhlmann C (2015) Syrian migrant crisis: Christians to get priority as Abbott
faces pressure to take in more refugee. ABC News, 8 September. Available at: http://www.
abc.net.au/news/2015-09-08/christians-to-get-priority-in-syrian-refugee-intake/6757110
(accessed 26 September 2019).
Holsti KJ (2004) Taming the Sovereigns: Institutional Change in International Politics. Cambridge:
House of Representatives (2015) Refugee Resettlement Oversight and Security Act of 2015.
H.R.3573.
Human Rights Watch (2005) Obstacles in the refugee status determination process. Available
at: https://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/southafrica1105/5.htm (accessed 26 September 2019).
Human Rights Watch (2012) Syria neighbors: keep borders open for refugees. Available at: https://
www.hrw.org/news/2012/08/29/syria-neighbors-keep-borders-open-refugees (accessed 26
September 2019).
Human Rights Watch (2013) Lebanon: Palestinians fleeing Syria denied entry. Available at:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/08/07/lebanon-palestinians-fleeing-syria-denied-entry
Human Rights Watch (2016) ‘I just wanted to be treated like a person’ how Lebanon’s residency rules
facilitate abuse of Syrian refugees. Available at: https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/01/12/i-
just-wanted-be-treated-person/how-lebanons-residency-rules-facilitate-abuse (accessed 26
September 2019).
Human Rights Watch (2018) Lebanon: mass evictions of Syrian refugees. Available at: https://
www.hrw.org/news/2018/04/20/lebanon-mass-evictions-syrian-refugees (accessed 26
September 2019).
Janmyr M and Mourad L (2018) Modes of ordering: labelling, classification and categorization in
Lebanon’s refugee response. Journal of Refugee Studies 31(4): 544–565.
Kaplan M (2016) EU-Turkey deal and non-Syrian refugees: how Afghans, Iraqis, Somalis, others
could be hurt by agreement. IB Times, 24 March. Available at: http://www.ibtimes.com/eu-
turkey-deal-non-syrian-refugees-how-afghans-iraqis-somalis-others-could-be-hurt-2340449
Karam J (2018) Gebran Bassil: Lebanon does not accept Syrians as ‘refugees’. The National, 25
September. Available at: https://www.thenational.ae/world/gebran-bassil-lebanon-does-not-
accept-syrians-as-refugees-1.773658 (accessed 26 September 2019).
Karatani R (2005) How history separated refugee and migrant regimes: in search of their institu-
tional origins. International Journal of Refugee Law 17(3): 517–541.
Keely CB (2001) The international refugee regime(s): the end of the cold war matters. International
Migration Review 35(1): 303–314.
Keung N (2015a) Canada’s refugee acceptance rate up despite asylum restrictions. The Toronto
Star, 1 March. Available at: https://www.thestar.com/news/immigration/2015/03/01/canadas-
refugee-acceptance-rate-up-despite-asylum-restrictions.html (accessed 26 September 2019).
Keung N (2015b) Court rules denial of appeals for ‘safe Country’ refugees unconstitutional. The
Toronto Star, 23 July. Available at: https://www.thestar.com/news/immigration/2015/07/23/
court-strikes-down-ottawas-safe-country-list-for-refugees.html (accessed 26 September 2019).
Kingsley P (2016) Turkey blocks Syrian refugees from resettlement in the US–for having degrees.
The Guardian, 19 September. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/19/
turkey-syrian-refugees-resettlement-blocked-us-degrees (accessed 26 September 2019).
Klotz A (2013) Migration and National Identity in South Africa, 1960–2010. Cambridge, UK:
Koser K (2015) Time to reform the international refugee regime. In: OUP Blog. Available at:
https://blog.oup.com/2015/09/international-refugee-regime-reform/ (accessed 26 September
2019).
Kratochwil F and Ruggie JG (1986) International organization: a state of the art on an art of the
state. International Organization 40(4): 753–775.
Lavenex S (2007) The external face of Europeanization: third countries and international organi-
zations. In: Faist T and Ette A (eds) The Europeanization of National Policies and Politics
of Immigration: Between Autonomy and the European Union. London; New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 246–264.
Loescher G (1993) Beyond Charity: International Cooperation and the Global Refugee Crisis.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Loescher G (2001) The UNHCR and world politics: state interests vs. institutional autonomy.
International Migration Review 35(1): 33–56.
Long K (2013) When refugees stopped being migrants: movement, labour and humanitarian pro-
tection. Migration Studies 1(1): 4–26.
Loughnane B (2013) The coalition’s policy for a regional deterrence framework to combat peo-
ple smuggling. Blackall and Macquarie Sts. Available at: http://lpaweb-static.s3.amazonaws.
com/13-08-23+The+Coalition%E2%80%99s+Policy+for+a+Regional+Deterrence+Framew
ork+to+Combat+People+Smuggling.pdf (accessed 26 September 2019).
Mandour M (2013) The Egyptian coup and Hamas. Open Democracy, 30 September. Available
at: https://www.opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/maged-mandour/egyptian-coup-and-
hamas (accessed 26 September 2019).
Moore K (2013) ‘Asylum shopping’ in the neoliberal social imaginary. Media, Culture & Society
35(3): 348–365.
Morrissey J (2012) Rethinking the ‘Debate on environmental refugees’: from ‘Maximilists and
Minimalists’ to ‘Proponents and Critics.’ Journal of Political Ecology 19(1): 36–49.
Norman KP (2014) Different policies, the same game: Syrian and Palestinian refugees in Egypt.
Jadaliyya. Available at: http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/16221/different-policies-the-
same-game_syrian-and-palest (accessed 26 September 2019).
Norman KP (2016) Between Europe and Africa: Morocco as a country of immigration. Journal of
the Middle East and Africa 7(4): 421–439.
Norman KP (2019) Inclusion, exclusion or indifference? Redefining migrant and refugee host state
engagement options in Mediterranean ‘Transit’ countries. Journal of Ethnic and Migration
Studies 45(1): 42–60.
Orchard PC (2013) Governing forced migration. In: Harman S and Williams D (eds) Governing
the World? Cases in Global Governance. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 180–196.
Orchard PC (2014) A Right to Flee: Refugees, States, and the Construction of International
Cooperation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Qadim N (2019) The funding instruments of the EU’s neogtiation on external migraton policy:
incentives for cooperation? In: Carrera S, den Hertog L, Panizzon M, et al. (eds) EU External
Migration Policies in an Era of Global Mobilities: Intersecting Policy Universes. Leiden: Brill,
341–363.
Quosh C and Wittig M (2006) “Safe third country” lists – a threat to international human rights?
Humanity in Action. Available at: https://www.humanityinaction.org/knowledgebase/205-safe-
country-lists-a-threat-to-international-human-rights (accessed 24 August 2017).
Rascoe A and Bobby A (2019) Trump: U.S., Mexico reach deal to avoid new tariffs. National
Public Radio, 7 June. Available at: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730283772/trump-u-s-
mexico-reaches-deal-to-avoid-new-tariffs (accessed 26 September 2019).
Rixen T and Viola LA (2016) Historical institutionalism and international relations: explaining
institutional development in world politics. In: Rixen T, Viola LA and Zurn M (eds) Historical
Institutionalism and International Relations. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 3–34.
Rodenhäuser T (2014) Another brick in the wall: carrier sanctions and the privatization of immi-
gration control. International Journal of Refugee Law 26(2): 223–247.
Rosenblum M and Tichenor D (2012) Introduction. In: Rosenblum M and Tichenor D (eds) Oxford
Handbook of the Politics of International Migration. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,
1–21.
Rutinwa B (2002) Prima facie status and refugee protection. UNHCR Working Paper No. 69.
Ruhs M (2013) The Price of Rights: Regulating International Labor Migration. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Schoenholtz AJ (2015) The new refugees and the old treaty: persecutors and persecuted in the
twenty-first century. Chicago Journal of International Law 16: 81–126.
Streeck W and Thelen K (eds) (2005) Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced
Political Economies. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Suhrke A (1994) Environmental degradation and population flows. Journal of International
Affairs 47(2): 473–496.
Suhrke A (1998) Burden-sharing during refugee emergencies: the logic of collective action versus
national action. Journal of Refugee Studies 11(4): 396–415.
Tokuzlu LB (2010) Burden-sharing games for asylum seekers between Turkey and the European
union. EUI Working Papers, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies.
Torpey J (2000) The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State. Cambridge:
United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) (1950) Statute of the office of the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees. 14 December. A/RES/428(V).
UN Population Division (2013) The number of international migrants worldwide reaches 232 mil-
lion. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division No.
2013/2.
UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) (2000) UNHCR comments on CIC paper entitled ‘Refugee reset-
tlement eligibility and selection criteria: implementation policy.’ Available at: http://ccrweb.
ca/sites/ccrweb.ca/files/static-files/elighcr.htm (accessed 26 September 2019).
UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) (2015) UNHCR refugee resettlement: trends 2015. Available at:
http://www.unhcr.org/559ce97f9 (accessed 26 September 2019).
UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) (2016a) UNHCR resettlement handbook and country chapters.
Available at: http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/protection/resettlement/4a2ccf4c6/unhcr-resettle-
ment-handbook-country-chapters.html (accessed 26 September 2019).
UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) (2016b) UNHCR viewpoint: ‘Refugee’ or ‘migrant’ – which is
right? UNHCR, 11 July. Available at: http://www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2016/7/55df0e556/
unhcr-viewpoint-refugee-migrant-right.html (accessed 26 September 2019).
UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) (2016c) Country chapter: Canada. UNHCR Resettlement Handbook.
Available at: http://www.unhcr.org/3c5e55594.html (accessed 26 September 2019).
UN Refugee Works and Relief Agency (UNRWA) (2016) Syria crisis. United Nations Refugee
Works and Relief Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Available at: http://www.
unrwa.org/syria-crisis (accessed 26 September 2019).
Van Selm J (2014) Refugee resettlement. In: Fiddian-Qasmiyeh E, Loescher G, Long K, et al.
(eds) The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.
Wendt A and Raymond D (1989) Institutions and international order. In: Czempiel EO and Rosenau
JN (eds) Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges: Approaches to World Politics for the
1990s. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 51–73.
Zaiotti R (ed.) (2016) Externalizing Migration Management: Europe, North America and the
Spread of “Remote Control” Practices. London: Routledge.
Author biographies
Lama Mourad is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House and
a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) postdoctoral fellow at Harvard
University’s Department of Government and Perry World House. Her research interests are in the
politics of migration and local governance, with a regional focus on the Middle East. She received
her PhD from the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, and previously
held a predoctoral fellowship with the Middle East Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School of
Government’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
Kelsey P Norman is a Fellow for the Middle East at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public
Policy. Her research focuses on host state responses to migrant and refugee settlement in the
Middle East and North Africa. She received her PhD from the Department of Political Science at
the University of California, Irvine, and previously held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Sié
Chéou-Kang Center for International Security and Diplomacy at the Josef Korbel School of
International Studies at the University of Denver and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council (SSHRC) postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Political Science at the University
of British Columbia.

Mourad Norman 2019

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Mourad Norman 2019

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

883688

Modes of change in International Relations

Locating existing explanations

mechanisms of policy layering include measures such as imposing carrier sanctions on

Situating the regime’s origin

Policy conversion led by states and IOs

Extraterritorial control by asylum-granting states

states—primarily those in Europe, North America, and Australia—have established new

Bureaucratic and procedural hindrances in host states

The use of group-based criteria for exclusion

resulting in effective nonrefoulement. This presents a remarkable distortion of the prin-

Inclusion of non-Convention criteria in resettlement schemes

individual states’ resettlement schemes threatens to further erode the distinctiveness of

Table 3. Countries using “integration potential” as a criterion.

Country Criteria for resettlement relating to integration potential

The effect of these additional “non-criteria” would be less nefarious in a situation

Discussion and conclusion

Convention to address the contemporary reality of displacement while simultaneously put-

You might also like