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Another Brick in the Wall? Neo-Refoulement and the Externalization of Asylum by Australia and Europe1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Jennifer Hyndman  and
Alison Mountz
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Abstract

Insecurity and fear in the global North produce political space to advance security measures, including the externalization of asylum. States in the global North make it increasingly difficult for asylum seekers to reach sovereign territory where they might make a refugee claim. While legal protection remains intact under the Refugee Convention, extra-legal measures employ geography to restrict access to asylum and keep claimants at bay through a variety of tactics. This article probes the ways in which fear of uninvited asylum seekers is securitized and looks at the tactics utilized to keep them at bay, far from the borders of states that are signatories to the UN Refugee Convention. Drawing on research in Europe and Australia, we demonstrate how states are promoting ‘protection in regions of origin’ through practices of de facto neo-refoulement. Neo-refoulement refers to a geographically based strategy of preventing asylum by restricting access to territories that, in principle, provide protection to refugees.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , 2008 , pp. 249 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2008.

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Footnotes

1

We are grateful to Eva-Lotta Hedman and Matthew Gibney for organizing the workshop where this was presented at the Centre for Refugee Studies and for their editorial work, to Areti Sianni for her research contributions, and to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for funding the research.

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