What is special about refugees? In this paper, I argue that the two main accounts of who should count as a refugee have major shortcomings. The first, based on protection from persecution, is too n...

Many affluent states seek to discharge their responsibilities to refugees through extraterritorial policies, which limit the number of refugees that they admit whilst contributing to protection in a third country. Is this morally permissible? I argue that under non-ideal circumstances, where states’ non-compliance with their duties to refugees are persistent, such policies can be permissible. However, extraterritorial protection must satisfy two conditions. First, it must come about through bilateral or multilateral agreements. Second, the protection provided must allow for full integration (...) in a new society. I argue that the lower the costs a state bears for admitting refugees to its territory, the higher its contribution to extraterritorial protection must be. This notion of costs is illustrated by exemplifying how refugee admission may impose costs to the self-determination and equality of the hosting state. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 4, Page 480-495, December 2021.

Jeremy Waldron introduced the notion of rights supersession into the philosophical discussion about restitutive justice in cases of historic injustices. He refers to land claims by indigenous peoples as a real-world example and as an application of his theory of rights supersession. He implies that the changes that have taken place in settler states since the first years of colonialism are the kind of changes that lead to a supersession of land rights. The article proposes to unbundle property rights into (...) rights of benefit, control, use, and access and to distinguish between different forms of attachment. This strategy allows for a third option of restitution and supersession, namely partial restitution. Partial restitution grants current land holders those rights that they need to satisfy their attachments and basic distributive justice claims. At the same time, rights that are not needed for either purpose will revert back to indigenous peoples as the original owners. The article argues that the notion of partial restitution allows for far more extensive land rights than a less nuanced application of the supersession thesis. (shrink)

Many affluent states seek to discharge their responsibilities to refugees through extraterritorial policies, which limit the number of refugees that they admit whilst contributing to protection in...