Eurocentrism and the International Refugee Regime

Abstract

As refugees know, and scholars have demonstrated, there are many ways in which the international refugee regime is Eurocentric. This includes legal definitions of refugeehood, mental maps of who is a refugee, ideas about where refugees come from, and who takes the responsibility for receiving and caring for refugees. In the fields of Refugee Studies and Critical Refugee Studies there exists a robust literature on the question of Eurocentrism, particularly as regards the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, recognized as the cornerstone of the contemporary international refugee regime. There are many valid critiques. Yet the tendency to condemn existing practices on the basis of Eurocentrism alone occludes the generalized anti-refugee sentiment, or the generalized view of refugees as a problem, which influenced the shape and character of the 1951 convention. As this essay will demonstrate, the Eurocentric nature of the convention was partly the result of an effort to make the so-called ‘refugee problem’ more manageable, though as a solution it ultimately exacerbated other issues. The tensions inherent in the convention’s approach became clear in 2015 when a record 1.3 million refugees sought asylum in Europe. States and opponents resisted this movement by