Morality in the Refugee Regime? Arguing for More (Political) Realism in Admitting Refugees

Bibliographic Data

ID6324497
AuthorsFelix Bender (0000-0001-5124-2032, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume22
Issue4
Pages961-974
Publication date2024-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePerspectives on Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1537-5927 • E-ISSN: 1541-0986
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1537592724000860
OpenAlexW4399095247
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited59

Refugees drown, are beaten, and are pushed back at the borders of the states of the Global North. Moral outrage is understandable in the face of such treatment. But does it constitute a good political theory? Can morality supply us with good normative arguments for a political world? In this article, I argue that they cannot. Drawing on political realism, I show why moral arguments for admitting refugees fail. What we require is not the extrapolation of moral arguments onto a political world, but a new form of political normativity that is derived from how politics works. I show that refugeehood possesses a specific political function in international politics. States do not admit refugees based on humanitarian reasons. This is what moral arguments get wrong. Rather, they fulfill the political function of condemning and embarrassing other states, of building oppositional and military forces to undermine rival political systems both ideologically and materially. In other words, they play an important political role—a role that allows us to build normative arguments from within a political and not a moral understanding of the world

Epistemology · Ideology · Morality · Normative · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Realism · Refugee · Sociology · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Political Theology and Sovereignty

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