MOBILE – Mobility Law Open Lab

Refugee Markets

Guest presenter: Neha Jain is Professor of Public International Law and Co-Director of the Academy of European Law, and Dean of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusiveness at the European University Institute. Her scholarship focuses on public international law, human rights law, criminal law, and comparative law. Jain is Vice-President of the European Society of International Law and a member of the Executive Council and Executive Committee of the American Society of International Law. She is Supervising Editor of AJIL Unbound and serves on the editorial boards of the American Journal of International Law and European Journal of International Law. Jain has been a Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law and held visiting positions at the College of Europe in Natolin, Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre of Excellence for International Courts, and the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. She has also served as a visiting professional in the Chambers Division of the International Criminal Court.

Presentation: Post-World War II international refugee policy is not only politicized, but increasingly marketized. While this marketisation is driven by regional actors and countries in the Global North such as the EU, UK, Israel, Denmark, and Australia, it draws on a longer pedigree of refugee law scholarship that sees markets as the solution to the global crisis in refugee protection. This Essay argues that both champions and critics of the turn to markets underestimate their ability to alter what it means to be a refugee or to host someone who is one. Market proposals commodify asylum seekers as widgets to be distributed among reluctant states and communicate their negative value for the communities that house them. They also render states in the Global South complicitous in the unfair allocation of responsibility for refugee protection, exacerbating the neo-colonial character of the international refugee regime.

!!! NEW Time: 26 May 2023 12:30-14:00

Place: MOBILE – 6B-2-22 Southern Campus

Online participation

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