Re-theorizing Representation, Participation and Agency in the Governance of the Global Refugee Regime

Date: Thursday, Feb. 13
Time: 2:30 pm
Location: Neatby-Timlin Theatre, Arts Building Room 241, 9 Campus Dr., Saskatoon

Free and open to the public

About this event

This paper aims to advance a multi-scalar approach to reconceptualizing the place of forced migrants in the varying levels of governance that define the contemporary refugee regime. In doing so it responds to the emerging recognition of a growing imperative to rethink past articulations of international protection that have predominated for the last half-century. These earlier responses to displacement have largely treated refugees as objects of humanitarian intervention, giving little space for their voice or participation, thereby effacing the agency of displaced persons. Today's current moment of reflection and political possibility therefore offers to address among the deepest normative failures of the contemporary refugee regime: if refugeehood is theorized in terms of the denial what Hannah Arendt called the “right to have rights” then the treatment of displaced persons within the international system constitutes more of a continuation, rather than remedy or reprieve, of this situation. Addressing the voice and agency of refugees is urgent and long overdue. However, formulating what meaningful representation and participation constitutes in these circumstances remains challenging. To address these considerations I proceed by taking up this issue from both normative and historical perspectives to map out and complicate the way representation and participation could be understood in this context. I do so by reconstructing several distinctive models of representation to underscore the different normative considerations underlying these approaches. I conclude by showing how this should be applied to the refugee regime in order to both reform and transform contemporary international protection.

Kiran Banerjee is associate professor and Canada Research Chair of Forced Migration and Refugee Policy at Dalhousie University. His research addresses global migration governance, focusing on international institutions and domestic political actors in responding to forced displacement. Banerjee’s broader research interests include international ethics, global governance, international relations theory, and migration studies, as well as legal theory. Before joining the Department of Political Science, Banerjee was a faculty member in the Department of Political Studies at the University of Saskatchewan and a SSHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Columbia University.

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