2024/09/10 by Rose Jaji, Ulrike Krause · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Migration, Refugees, and Integration
paper · doi:10.4337/9781802204599.00028
openalex publication_date 2024/09/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
International refugee law and protection purport to apply to refugees worldwide, but their founding and application is in fact intimately linked to the geopolitical battles and memories of the great powers. As a result, different conceptualisations of refugees have emerged along a Global North-South divide. This chapter is interested in these conceptualisations and focuses on colonial Othering in the context of displacement. To this end, it analytically links three areas: international refugee law, political discourses about refugee protection and gendered effects on refugees - particularly in (post)colonial Africa. We show that the 1951 Refugee Convention’s focus on refugees in and from Europe has contributed to the structural neglect and Othering of refugees who are situated ‘elsewhere’ in the world. After decolonisation in Africa, political discourses about protection intensified these dynamics; at the core was not legal asylum but instead humanitarian relief. This resulted in the portrayal of the Other refugees as helpless, apolitical and feminine bodies in need of relief, which (re)produced Western gender dualities.