LSE Philosophy Associate Professor Kieran Oberman has published his new paper ‘Enough Spurious Distinctions: Refugees are Just People in Need of Refuge’ in Springer Nature.

About the paper: What makes refugees different to non-refugee migrants? A plausible answer is that refugees need refuge. Within their home state, they fall below some threshold. To fulfil their basic human needs, they must migrate elsewhere. Non-refugee migrants might be badly off in relative terms, but they don’t fall below this threshold. It is because refugees need refuge that they have a claim to refuge. States are obligated to admit them at least when they can do so without severe cost. Call this the “Needs Account” of refugeehood. The Needs Account combines a needs-based definition of a refugee with a needs-based argument for refugee protection. Refugees are people in need of refuge, and, for this reason, they have a claim to refuge.

You can read the paper online (open access) here.