“Running for Their Lives?” The Problematic Remaking of Refugees

Abstract

Asylum should be based on fundamental human rights deprivation in origin countries and not on persecution, argues Alexander Betts in his latest book, Survival Migration: Failed Governance and the Crisis of Displacement. This claim is embedded within Betts' concept of “survival migration” (p. 5), which is defined as fleeing one's country of origin because of an existential threat for which one has no access to a domestic solution. In defending survival migration, Betts assumes a normative and rights-based perspective to argue that the severe consequences of weak governance or persecution are more justifiable grounds for asylum than the particular causes of either phenomenon. He argues that in privileging the protection of refugees fleeing persecution, the international community overlooks “people whose own countries are unable or unwilling to ensure their most fundamental human rights and yet who fall outside the framework of the refugee regime” (p. 5). In addition to making a case for survival migration, the book explains the variation among host governments in “stretching” their asylum policies beyond the 1951 Refugee Convention to protect “survival migrants.” Betts (p. 7) argues that by understanding the mechanisms that shape international institutions to national contexts, international public policymakers may better address protection gaps without substantial institutional reform.