Seminar: All that glitters is not gold: The limits of progressive refugee protection in Latin America

DATE
15-01-2019
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TIME
from: 11:00
to: 12:30

As part of the Migration Policy Centre seminar series, Luisa Feline Freier, Assistant Professor of Social and Political Science, Universidad del Pacífico, will present on refugee protection in Latin America.

 

Abstract

In recent years experts have hailed Latin America as the new avant-garde of generous asylum and refugee policies. Understanding the extent and sustainability of Latin America’s liberal approach to refugee protection holds important theoretical and normative implications for refugee studies and politics. The first part of the paper offers a short review of the characteristics and variance of refugee policy liberalization in the region and its relationship to universal refugee law. The second part of the paper analyses the implementation gaps of progressive refugee legislation in three cases: extra-continental asylum seekers from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, the resettlement of Syrian refugees, and the massive forced displacement of Venezuelans. The paper specifically discusses the applicability of the “numbers versus rights” hypothesis to explaining such policy gaps, and ends with some considerations regarding the future sustainability of expanded refugee protection and international co-operation in the region.