Repatriation is often presented as the most desirable means of ending refugee crises. It is therefore not surprising that the question of repatriation has been a focus of normatively inclined scholars. The question of under what conditions return might be ‘just’ is of particular importance for two different reasons: first, because refugees have typically (p. 57) escaped a position of acute vulnerability and their rights risk being violated once again upon return; second, because the question of whether refugees might have a duty to return to their country (because by doing so they may be able to help rebuild their country of origin or show gratitude to the state of asylum) is often a politically salient one.
While normative discussion of the legitimacy of repatriation programmes is not new (Weiner 1998; Barnett 2001), return processes have only recently begun to receive systematic normative attention (Bradley 2008, 2013a; Long 2008, 2013).
Political Theory, Ethics, and Forced Migration
Megan Bradley, for instance, has argued that there is an intimate connection between enabling a ‘dignified return’ by refugees (a stated goal of most international organizations involved in repatriation) and appropriate redress for the injustices experienced by those who have been forced to flee. For redress (or reparation) plays an essential role in asserting the dignity of refugees by showing that the rights of such people cannot be breached with impunity (2008:
306). Long’s approach is similarly indebted to the idea of the social contract, though she carefully reworks the concept to highlight the challenges of just repatriation. She labels this approach ‘empatriation’ because it involves the beginning or creation of a new relationship not a return to things as they were.
It is clear from the normative literature on repatriation that the conditions for a ‘just return’ involve far more than simply a cessation of hostilities or the emergence of a government that respects basic rights. A morally defensible account of when return is appropriate (or even obligatory) must involve reckoning with the relationship between the refugees and their country of asylum, respect for the dignity and autonomy of refugees as agents, and attention to the terms on which refugees will be (re)integrated into the country they originally fled.
Conclusion
This chapter shows that the ethics of forced migration is a diverse, growing, and vibrant area of scholarship. From its primary concentration on the question of asylum and refugees, the normative study of forced migration has recently branched out to consider the claims of repatriated refugees, people facing deportation, undocumented migrants, and a range of other groups. The claims of these forced migrants have served as a prism through which academics concerned with forced migration have critically questioned the moral boundaries of citizenship, the balance between the social good and the individual and group interest, the ethics of reparation for historical injustice, and the integration of marginalized people. There remain significant gaps: in particular, normative scholars have tended to be disproportionately concerned with the ethics of forced migration as it relates to the concerns and value frameworks of developed, Western, liberal states. Yet as the field of forced migration becomes more crowded and nuanced in the years ahead, the amount and quality of normative reflection on its main concerns seems only likely to grow rapidly.
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Matthew Gibney
Matthew J. Gibney is Reader in Po itics and Forced Migration at the University of Oxford, Officia Fe ow of Linacre Co ege, Oxford, and Deputy Director of the Refugee Studies Centre.
Print Pub ication Date: Jun 2014 Subject: Po itica Science, Internationa Re ations, Comparative Po itics
On ine Pub ication Date: Aug 2014
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199652433.013.0004