Refugees and minorities: some conceptual and normative issues

In many contexts, states have a duty to take special measures to protect minorities. Does this duty include prioritizing minority over majority refugees? To answer this question, we first show that a vulnerability-focused notion of 'minorities' is preferable to a numerical one. Given the v...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ethics & global politics 2020-01, Vol.13 (1), p.79-92
Main Authors: Lippert-Rasmussen, Kasper, Lægaard, Sune
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Concept of a minority
duty to rescue and refugees
Ethics
ethics of migration
global justice
Migration
Minority groups
minority protection
minority rights
non-ideal theory
Presumption
principle of irrelevant goods
Prioritizing
Refugees
refugees and justice
Vulnerability
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:In many contexts, states have a duty to take special measures to protect minorities. Does this duty include prioritizing minority over majority refugees? To answer this question, we first show that a vulnerability-focused notion of 'minorities' is preferable to a numerical one. Given the vulnerability-focused notion, there is a presumption in favour of prioritizing minority over majority refugees. However, this presumption is sometimes defeated. We identify five conditions under which this is the case. In fact, surprisingly, under special circumstances, states should prioritize certain majority over certain minority refugees.
ISSN:1654-4951
1654-6369
1654-6369
DOI:10.1080/16544951.2020.1735014