This was a question that I and several South African university colleagues have been asking as part of setting up what we are presently calling a Forced Migration and Refugee Studies program. The task of defining the law and migration field necessarily also faced Selina Goulbourne, the editor of this collection, a UK based academic in a school of international studies and law. Goulbourne's collection takes the establishment route, defining migration law to be composed of refugee law of a specific type and the standard topics of formal immigration law. Refugee law based on the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees lies at the heart of Goulbourne's conception of the migration field. International Law and Refugees is the title of one of the collection s four parts.
Several articles selected for the other parts also take refugee law as their subject matter.
It is striking how the body of formal refugee and asylum law, once the practically non-existent tail end of the law and migration field, has now grown to the point where its substance and concerns are at least equal partners with the more traditional immigration jurisprudence. Substantively, they focus on the 1951 UN Convention definition of a refugee. A program title of Forced Migration and Refugee Studies would cover a broader section of the field than the selection of articles here. The articles included in two other parts of the collection fall more within the standard ambit of formal immigration law. In terms of international law and relations, the challenges to state sovereignty posed by international human rights law are examined in the United States, Japan, and the European Union through articles by Michael Scaperlanda, Yasuzo Kitamura, and Stephen Hall.