The international states system has long been the result of an uneasy relationship between communitarian and cosmopolitan values. The refugee brings to the fore the very tension between the state prerogative to exclude and the human rights imperative to include. How, therefore, can refugee protection be reconciled with state sovereignty if the two are logically in opposition? The fact that states do take action on behalf of refugees suggests a human rights thinking. But this is compromised since the refugee issue is an inherently political one, and humanitarian action cannot be divorced from national and international politics. If the refugee opposes the thinking that underlies the make-up of international society – that all individuals should belong to a state – the answer to why states act for refugees might rather be due to a securitarian logic, not a humanitarian one.

This chapter first looks at the idea of ‘rights’ in order to ask what rights the refugee may rely on and how her position between states limits her ability to enjoy supposedly universal human rights.