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Let Me Be a Refugee

Administrative Justice and the Politics of Asylum in the United States, Canada, and Australia

By (author) Rebecca Hamlin
Format: Hardback
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc, New York, United States
Published: 9th Oct 2014
Dimensions: w 162mm h 237mm d 21mm
Weight: 522g
ISBN-10: 0199373302
ISBN-13: 9780199373307
Barcode No: 9780199373307
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Synopsis
Why do decision-makers in similar liberal democracies interpret the same legal definition in very different ways? International law provides states with a common definition of a 'refugee' as well as guidelines outlining how asylum claims should be decided. Yet, the processes by which countries determine who should be granted refugee status look strikingly different, even across nations with many political, cultural, geographical, and institutional commonalities. This book compares the refugee status determination (RSD) regimes of three popular asylum seeker destinations - the United States, Canada, and Australia. Despite similarly high levels of political resistance to accepting asylum seekers across these three states, once asylum seekers cross their borders, they access three very different systems. These differences are significant both in terms of asylum seekers' experience of the process and in terms of their likelihood of being found to be a refugee. The book moves beyond the claim by some scholars that asylum seeker destinations are uniformly becoming more exclusionary, and the contrary assertions of other scholars that the same destinations are converging on a new inclusive internationalism leading to the decline of state sovereignty. Instead, I find these states to be running on three distinct trajectories, none of which are totally restrictive or expansive. Based on a multi-method analysis of all three countries, including a year of fieldwork with in-depth interviews of policy-makers and asylum-seeker advocates, observations of refugee status determination hearings, and a large-scale case analysis, I find that cross-national differences have less to do with political debates over admission and border control policy than with the level of insulation the administrative decision-making agency enjoys from either political interference or judicial review. Administrative justice is conceptualized and organized differently in every state, and so states vary in how they draw the line between refugee and non-refugee.

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Hamlin (Grinnell College) provides a comprehensive overview of the refugee process in three countries ... As immigration and refugee numbers stay constant or rise, this exploration of the rationale, if one can be defined, may help assist in understanding this complicated process. * W. R. Pruitt, Elmira College, CHOICE * This book makes an important and original contribution to the scholarly literature, especially the literature on refugees but also the broader literature on the administrative state. It shows how consequential different institutional arrangements and legal/political cultures can be. I know of no other research that has opened up the black box of the state to examine the inner dynamics of the process of refugee determination. Hamlin does so in a way that is persuasive
and illuminating. Anyone who works on refugees, whether in political science or law, will want to read this book. * Joseph H. Carens, University of Toronto * Hamlin gives us a highly original account of the politics of asylum-seeking, focusing on constitutional law and administrative practice in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. An excellent piece of scholarship and a timely book, Let Me Be a Refugee will quickly become a classic and a must-read for anyone interested in refugee policy. * James F. Hollifield, Tower Center, SMU *