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Enfranchising refugees in a non-ideal world

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Notes

  1. I thank an anonymous reviewer for this observation and for recommending that I insert a discussion about the importance of time’s passage.

  2. There are exceptions. Kukathas, for instance, considers that it is dangerous to think in terms of this exceptional character of refugees, as it encourages a “prove-your-own-worth” type of approach to immigration (2016, p. 254).

  3. I thank an anonymous reviewer for asking this question.

  4. I thank Dimitrios Efthymiou for the suggestion to rephrase my proposal in this way.

  5. My gratitude goes to Jonas Rosenberg and Andrei Poamă for urging me to clarify this aspect.

  6. I thank an anonymous reviewer for urging me to clarify this aspect.

  7. In fact, there are recent cases in which a better outcome for states and refugees alike were reached by not applying the EU asylum rules (InfoMigrants: 2022b).

  8. For a criticism, see Aleinikoff and Owen: 2022: “it is not by chance that most Syrian refugees reside primarily in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. Rohingya in Bangladesh, and Somalis in Ethiopia and Kenya. These are the countries that border a state that has, through conflict and persecution, forced its citizens to flee. There is thus a certain arbitrariness to a strategy directed at protecting refugees there – best not on the best interests of the refugee nor the desires (or capacities) of hosting states. Rather it is based primarily on propinquity” (p.4).

  9. The current proposal discusses about temporary quotas. Permanent quotas had previously been rejected by EU member states. For an overview, see Zaun: 2017.

  10. Whether or not it could have represented a factor that their past asylum-seeking-selves would have considered as relevant is of course something that we cannot ascertain.

  11. I thank Annabelle Lever for drawing attention to this topic.

  12. For instance, in the United States this happens once someone had spent five years as a green card holder in the US (Justia (b): Voting rights after receiving citizenship). The same 5-year residency requirement applies for refugees (Justia: (a) Applying for citizenship as a former asylee or refugee).

  13. I thank Andrei Poamă for suggesting that a discussion concerning this aspect is included in the paper.

  14. I thank Annabelle Lever for raising this question. The question can also be answered in other ways. For instance, in an interview organized by InfoMigrants with Ruvi Ziegler, he mentions that “granting refugees full political rights would help to overturn stereotypes of migrants and asylum seekers as simply victims who need help. They are often people who flee because they have expressed dissent or are in some way in confrontation with their own state. So these are not helpless people” (InfoMigrants: 2018).

  15. Here we enter the realm of the fourth justification for voting rights mentioned by Bennett: 2016, p. 413.

  16. For a presentation of the authorial form of democratic participation see Kapelner: 2020, p. 53 and the discussion he quotes from Owen: 2018.

  17. I thank Andrei Poamă for suggesting that political rights represent a mechanism of drawing politicians’ attention to the challenges faced by refugees.

  18. I express my gratitude to an anonymous reviewer for raising this objection.

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  1. Research Institute of the University of Bucharest, 90 Panduri Street, Sector 5, 050663, Bucharest, Romania

    Adelin-Costin Dumitru

  2. Department for Academic Training and Social Sciences, National University of Science and Technology POLITEHNICA Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

    Adelin-Costin Dumitru

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The author would like to thank Dimitrios Efthymiou, Annabelle Lever, Zsolt Kapelner, Andrei Poamă, Josan Rosenberg, Alexandru Volacu and the audience at the REDEM Stockholm Workshop on Migration, Populism and Ethical Perspectives on Voting (June 2022) for feedback on previous versions of the manuscript. The present article constitutes part of the research that the author did during his Fellowship at the Social Sciences Division of the Research Institute of the University of Bucharest (July 2021–June 2022).

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Dumitru, AC. Enfranchising refugees in a non-ideal world. J Value Inquiry (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-023-09963-4

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