The Geopolitics of Refugee Studies: A View from the South

In the post-1945 period the policy of Northern states has moved from the neglect of refugees in the Third World, to their use as pawns in Cold War politics, to their containment now. The paper explores in these shifting policy contexts the geopolitics of knowledge production in the field of refugee studies. The arrival of the ‘new asylum seekers’ in the 1980s signalled the expansion of refugee studies. A ‘new approach’ took shape which critiqued the established positivist approach to refugee law and created the myth of difference (the idea that great dissimilarities characterized refugee flows in Europe and the Third World). It advocated the rejection of the exile bias of refugee law; reliance on the solution of voluntary repatriation; and responsibility of the state of physical origin. In legitimizing the ‘new approach’, a key role, so far ignored, has been played by the knowledge production and dissemination functions of UNHCR.