Asylum as Reparation - a new book by James Souter
Dr James Souter, Lecturer in International Relations, has published a new book, 'Asylum as Reparation' with Palgrave Macmillan.
Asylum as Reparation – Refuge and Responsibility for the Harms of Displacement argues that states have a special obligation to offer asylum as a form of reparation to refugees for whose flight they are responsible. It shows the great relevance of reparative justice, and the importance of the causes of contemporary forced migration, for our understanding of states’ responsibilities to refugees.
Part I explains how this view presents an alternative to the dominant humanitarian approach to asylum in political theory and some practice. Part II outlines the conditions under which asylum should act as a form of reparation, arguing that a state owes this form of asylum to refugees where it bears responsibility for the unjustified harms that they experience, and where asylum is the most fitting form of reparation available. Part III explores some of the ethical implications of this reparative approach to asylum for the workings of states’ asylum systems and the international politics of refugee protection.
The book is part of the Palgrave International Political Theory Series which provides students and scholars with cutting-edge scholarship that explores the ways in which we theorise the international.
