Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T23:25:11.911Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - Conundrums, Paradoxes and Productive Instability

from Conclusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2021

Janna Wessels
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
Get access

Summary

The concluding chapter argues that the scope of refugee protection forms a complex picture of instability. Due to the refugee definition’s double rationale – Convention grounds and persecution – and the consequent conundrum of whether to focus on persecutor or persecuted, the scope of protection is subject to a variety of tensions and ambiguities which overlap and intersect in significant and complex ways. For example, human rights standards can be used as a benchmark when it comes to deciding both, which identities and which actions, fall within or outside of the scope of protection. And although ‘discretion’ reasoning is created at the level of the Convention ground, it moves around and is often debated in other elements of the refugee definition. These complex connections make everything unstable – not only ‘discretion’ itself but also its rejection. ‘Discretion’ functions as a patch for all these instabilities that emerge from the refugee definition. The book shows both the breadth and the depth of the ‘discretion’ logics: it is an unresolvable issue at the core of the refugee concept that surfaces at different layers, in different locations and in different ways – if it is put down in one place and form it will resurface in another place and in another form.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Concealment Controversy
Sexual Orientation, Discretion Reasoning and the Scope of Refugee Protection
, pp. 233 - 252
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×