The refugee and the international states system

Abstract

Just beyond the frontier between ‘us’ and the ‘outsider’ is the perilous territory of not-belonging: this is to where in a primitive time peoples were banished, and where in the modern era immense aggregates of humanity loiter as refugees and displaced persons. Edward Said The refugee is intricately tied up in the very workings of international society. Each concept relies on the other for its existence. They continuously create and re-create one another, inscribing identities onto each other and changing the normative course each takes. In this regard, the refugee can be understood as both an insider and outsider: pushed out of the normal state–citizen contract and forced to flee she is excluded; yet concepts of belonging and identity depend on differentiation from those who are different, thus she is also part of the system and included. Starting with a look at the concept of sovereignty, this chapter asks how the refugee fits into an international society made up of separate sovereign states. It shows that as the state became nationalised, so the refugee became the vital ‘other’ necessary for national citizens to successfully forge their identity. With the rise of national identity as the new indicator of allegiance, the refugee became the imagined outsider who allowed the concept of the nation-state to take hold. By demonstrating how the refugee is defined in statist terms the chapter highlights her portrayal as an exception to the otherwise ‘normal’, sedentary state–citizen–territory trinity.