Refugees and (Other) Migrants: Will the Global Compacts Ensure Safe Flight and Onward Mobility for Refugees?

Conclusion: Hannah Arendt’s 1943 essay, ‘We Refugees’, begins: ‘In the first place, we don’t like to be called “refugees”. We ourselves call each other “newcomers” or “immigrants”’. The essay demonstrates that for the refugees, of whom she was one, the label ‘immigrant’ was preferable. It reflected a desire to get on and integrate, rather than neediness. That impulse to avoid the ‘refugee’ label may still be common today, particularly from those keen to avoid rights restriction or stigmatization. However, the ‘refugee’ label today is also instrumentalized to downplay the protection needs of others – those who may not be recognized as refugees (even though they ought to be), and those who are not refugees in any sense, but nonetheless require international protection. The New York Declaration and the bifurcated Global Compacts risk endorsing an unduly narrow conception of refugeehood, and failing to root out the refugee containment that taints the global refugee regime. However, I also offer a more constructive reading, emphasizing the overarching concept of international protection, and obligations to avoid harm in migration governance.