Survival migration: Reviewing displacement beyond refugee law

Development summary

Hannah Baumeister’s review examines the national politics of international institutions concerned with refugees and asks why host states with similar refugee norms respond differently to cross-border displacement.

It reports Alexander Betts’s argument that elite interests, shaped by national and international incentives, influence whether protection is extended to people fleeing serious human-rights deprivation outside the dominant legal definition of a refugee. The concept of “survival migration” offers a human-rights-based framework for assessing whether such people are entitled not to be returned under refugee law or human-rights law.