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caused them to flee have not changed sufficiently. Local settlement,
where refugees can remain and rebuild their lives in
neighbouring countries, is too often impossible because of the
inability of poor, economically struggling - and politically unstable
- countries to absorb a new population when their indigenous
people face a daily struggle for survival. This option
works best where ethnic and tribal links cross national frontiers.
The difficulty of achieving either voluntary repatriation or
local settlement leaves resettlement in a more remote country
as the only remaining option. With the number of refugees
needing resettlement reaching dimensions never before experienced,
the main response of the industrialised countries has
been to institute deterrent policies and close their doors as tight
as they can. Admittedly, resettlement can never solve the problems
that make refugees leave their homes. Nor is it, of itself,
a solution to the world refugee problem. Only about 2 per cent
of the world's refugees are permanently resettled. Nevertheless,
the resettlement option is a significant one. It provides markedly
better lives for a considerable number of individuals, even if not
for a large proportion of the total number of refugees.
Resettlement also affects the policies of those countries to
which refugees first flee. If such countries have no hope that
refugees will be resettled, they know that their burden will grow
with every refugee who enters their country. And countries of
first refuge are among those least able to support additional
people. When the resettlement option tightens, the countries to
which refugees first go adopt policies to try to discourage
potential refugees from leaving their country. This policy will
include turning people back at the border, making the camps
251
Practical Ethics
as unattractive as possible, and screening the refugees as they
cross the border.
Resettlement is the only s.olution for those who cannot return
to their own countries in the foreseeable future and are only
welcome temporarily in the country to which they have fled;
in other words for those who have nowhere to go. There are
millions who would choose this option if there were countries
who would take them. For these refugees, resettlement may
mean the difference between life and death. It certainly is their
only hope for a decent existence.
THE EX GRATIA APPROACH
A widely held attitude is that we are under no moral or legal
obligation to accept any refugees at all; and if we do accept
some, it is an indication of our generous and humanitarian
character. Though popular, this view is not self-evidently morally
sound. Indeed, it appears to conflict with other attitudes
that are, if we can judge from what people say, at least as widely
held, including the belief in the equality of all human beings,
and the rejection of principles that discriminate on the basis of
race or national origin.
All developed nations safeguard the welfare of their residents
in many ways - protecting their legal rights, educating their
children, and providing sodal security payments and access to
medical care, either universally or for those who fall. below a
defined level of poverty. Refugees receive none of these benefits
unless they are accepted into the country. Since the overwhelming
majority of them are not accepted, the overwhelming majority
will not receive these benefits. But is this distinction in
the way in which we treat residents and nomesidents ethically
defensible?
Very few moral philosophers have given any attention to the
issue of refugees, even though it is clearly one of the major
moral issues of our time and raises significant moral questions
252
Insiders and Outsiders
about who is a member of our moral community. Take, for
example, John Rawls, the Harvard philosopher whose book, A
Theory of Justice, has been the most widely discussed artount of
justice since its publication in 1971. This 500-page volume deals
exclusively with justice within a society, thus ignoring all the
hard questions about the principles that ought to govern how
wealthy societies respond to the claims of poorer nations, or of
outsiders in need.
One of the few philosophers who has addressed this issue is
another American, Michael Walzer. His Spheres of Justice opens
with a chapter entitled 'The Distribution of Membership' in
which he asks how we constitute the community within which
distribution takes place. In the course of this chapter Walzer
seeks to justify something close to the present situation with
regard to refugee policy. The first question Walzer addresses is:
do countries have the right to close their borders to potential
immigrants? His answer is that they do, because without such
closure, or at least the power to close borders if desired, distinct
communities cannot exist.
Given that the decision to close borders can rightfully be
made, Walzer then goes on to consider how it should be exercised.
He compares the political community with a club, and
with a family. Clubs are examples of the ex gratia approach:
'Individuals may be able to give good reason why they should
be selected, but no one on the outside has a right to be inside:
But Walzer considers the analogy imperfect, because states are
also a bit like families. They are morally bound to open the
doors of their country - not to anyone who wants to come in,
perhaps, but to a particular group of outsiders, recognised as
national or ethnic 'relatives: In this way Walzer uses the analogy
of a family to justify the principle of family reunion as a
basis for immigration policy.
As far as refugees are concerned, however, this is not much
help. Does a political community have the right to exclude