Abstract
This article develops a normative theory of the status of ‘internally displaced persons’. Political theorists working on forced migration have paid little attention to internally displaced persons, but internally displaced persons bear a distinctive normative status that implies a set of rights that its bearer can claim and correlate duties that others owe. This article develops a practice-based account of justice in internal displacement, which aims to answer the questions of who counts as an internally displaced person and what is owed to internally displaced persons (and by whom). The first section addresses the question of who counts as an internally displaced person by offering an interpretation of the conditions of non-alienage and involuntariness. The second section articulates an account of what is owed to internally displaced persons that draws on and refines the idea of ‘occupancy rights’. The third section sets out an account of the role of the international community in supplementing the protection of internally displaced persons by their own states.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 314-331 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | Political Studies |
| Volume | 71 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - May 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This paper grew out of a doctoral research project that was supported by the Leverhulme Doctoral Programme in Climate Justice: Ethics, Policy, Law under grant number DS-2014-002.
Funding Information:
Various versions of this paper were presented at the University of Oxford, the University of Reading, the Manchester Centre For Political Theory Workshops (University of Manchester) and at the Normative Theory of Immigration Working Group (via Zoom). I am grateful to the attendees for helpful comments. I am also grateful to Rufaida Al Hashmi, Rebecca Buxton, Rob Jubb, Cécile Laborde, Alex McLaughlin, David Owen, Hallvard Sandven, Patrick Tomlin and the anonymous reviewers at Political Studies for their helpful comments and suggestions, and to Matt Sleat for excellent editorial guidance. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This paper grew out of a doctoral research project that was supported by the Leverhulme Doctoral Programme in Climate Justice: Ethics, Policy, Law under grant number DS-2014-002.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2021.
Keywords
- human rights
- internal displacement
- justice
- occupancy rights
- refugees
