Cosmopolitan Pariahs: The Moral Rationale for Exclusion under Article 1F

Abstract This article reconstructs the moral rationale for exclusion under article 1F of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. The idea that certain refugees may be ‘undeserving’ of refugee protection because of past criminality is incompatible with a reading of the international refugee law regime as a human rights regime. Instead, the best reconstruction of exclusion’s moral rationale is to construe it as a non-punitive form of blame, under which the international community withdraws the beneficence and goodwill necessary to enter into thicker relations of shared residence and potential citizenship. Some troubling implications of this construal of exclusion are briefly explored.