Routledge has published a book which deals
with aspects of the history of refugee and asylum law.
ABOUT THE BOOK
In contrast to the claim that refugee law
has been a key in guaranteeing a space of protection for refugees, this book
argues that law has been instrumental in eliminating spaces of protection, not
just from one’s persecutors but also from the grasp of sovereign power. By
uncovering certain fundamental aspects of asylum as practised in the past and
in present day social movements, namely its concern with defining space rather
than people and its role as a space of resistance or otherness to sovereign
law, this book demonstrates that asylum has historically been antagonistic to
law and vice versa. In contrast, twentieth-century refugee law was constructed
precisely to ensure the effective management and control over the movements of
forced migrants. To illustrate the complex ways in which these two paradigms –
asylum and refugee law – interact with one another, this book examines their
historical development and concludes with in-depth studies of the Sanctuary
Movement in the United States and the Sans-Papiers of France.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Simon Behrman is lecturer in law at Royal
Holloway, University of London.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Part I – The Space of Asylum
Chapter One: The Rise and Fall of Asylum in
Antiquity
Chapter Two: Sanctuary in England
Part II – The Creation of the Refugee
Subject
Chapter Three: The Nation-State Origins of
Refugee Law
Chapter Four: The Evolution and Impact of
International Refugee Law
Part III – Resistance: Grassroots Asylum
Chapter Five: The US Sanctuary Movement
Chapter Six: The
Sans-Papiers
Conclusion
