‘No democratic country can wash its hands of this problem: the emergence of refugee protection as a question in international politics in the interwar period’
The question of refugee protection is a relatively new one in the history of political thought. Prior to the 20thcentury, the ancient right of asylum had been largely sufficient to accommodate for those suffering persecution. In the aftermath of the First World War, however, Europe was facing a refugee crisis of unprecedented scope; the convention of asylum became almost useless in regulating and alleviating the plight of the masses of refugees generated by the war and by the revolutions and ethnic conflicts that followed. Nonetheless, along with the unprecedented crisis, novel forms of international organization began to emerge. First tackled by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the refugee question soon became an issue of concern for the young League of Nations. Several scholars have identified the interwar period as a decisive stage in the evolution of the post-Second World War refugee regime. While drawing on their work, this paper will suggest that some of the most radical developments regarding refugee protection did not occur until the late 1930s, as Europe was facing the prospect of another war, and the fate of refugees came to be associated with European peace and stability.
Though most of the 1920s and 1930s it was widely believed that the refugee problem was soluble and limited in scope; it was therefore mostly tackled by the League of Nations on an ad hoc basis, and did not inspire much theoretical deliberation. In 1938 and 1939, however, a surge occurred in writing about the refugee question by diplomats, civil servants, journalists and academics. These writers stressed the need to adopt a more comprehensive definition of the refugee; they also came to understand the refugee problem as an indicative of an inherent fault in the post-WWI European order, which had to be addressed if peace and stability were to be maintained. To demonstrate this, the paper will focus on the work of two principle representatives of this approach: American journalist Dorothy Thompson and British administrator Sir John Hope Simpson. Drawing on their work, I will argue that the case for international action for refugee protection that prevailed in the 1930s was rooted in a twofold logic of international stability on one hand, and of the normative identity of liberal democracies on the other.
All Senior Members, Students, and Staff are warmly invited to attend the Pudding Seminars, which feature coffee, cake, and lively discussion! To allow people to get to 2pm appointments, please note that coffee and cake will be available from 1 o’clock with the Seminar starting promptly at 1.15pm.
Full details of all this term’s pudding seminars can be found on the
college website:
https://newn.cam.ac.uk/research/pudding-seminars/forthcoming-pudding-seminars/