Lamis Abdelaaty

Syracuse University | SU · Department of Political Science

This article examines how refugees advocate for themselves with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), and what responses their communications engender. It analyzes letters sent by refugees in Kenya to UNHCR headquarters in Geneva between 1983 and 1994. The findings underline a disjuncture between refugees’ efforts to constitute themselves as political age...

This article examines how refugees advocate for themselves with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), and what responses their communications engender. It analyzes letters sent by refugees in Kenya to UNHCR headquarters in Geneva between 1983 and 1994. The findings underline a disjuncture between refugees’ efforts to constitute themselves as political age...

From 2013 to 2018, the global refugee population increased by about 50 per cent. Although public opinion toward refugees plays a key role in shaping related policies, scholarly research on this topic remains limited. Using original data from a nationally representative conjoint survey experiment conducted in 2019, we examine whether US citizens’ at...

This letter explores the prevalence of misperceptions about refugee policy and tests whether correcting these misperceptions changes attitudes toward refugees. Large numbers of people hold misperceptions about both the nature and effects of refugee policy. An experiment directly compares the effects of correcting misperceptions about existing refug...

Do crackdowns by destination countries deter refugees? Much of the existing literature conflates containment measures (forcibly restricting refugees in their home region or country) and deterrence policies (discouraging refugees by making the destination appear less attractive). In addition, empirical studies have focused almost exclusively on West...

This introduction outlines the need for a Special Issue on the topic of the migrant/refugee binary, discusses the contributions of the six papers that make up the issue, and outlines an agenda for future research on this topic.

Researchers have investigated the effects of ethnic heterogeneity on a range of socioeconomic and political outcomes. However, approaches to measuring ethnic diversity vary not only across fields of study but even within subfields. In this review, we systematically dissect the computational approaches of prominent measures of diversity, including p...

This concluding chapter uses the empirical evidence presented in previous chapters to reflect on the influence of foreign policy and ethnic politics on countries’ approaches to refugees. It considers the implications of these findings for a reconceptualization of the relationship between sovereignty and rights. The chapter also addresses the conseq...

By analyzing the case of Turkey as a refugee-receiving country, chapter 5 allows a comparison with the more typical Egyptian case laid out in chapter 4. One of only a handful of countries that retains a geographical limitation to the 1951 Refugee Convention, Turkey has experienced several mass refugee influxes and boasts one of the largest refugee...

This introductory chapter lays out the book’s central question: why do states sometimes assert, and at other times cede, their sovereign prerogatives in the face of refugee flows? The overview of refugee rights around the world presented in the chapter reveals two puzzling trends: governments treat some refugees well and others poorly (the “discrim...

This chapter provides the theoretical answer to the puzzles posed in chapter 1. It starts by defining the central dependent variable, asylum policy. To compare asylum policy across countries and refugee groups, it introduces a set of indicators that cover admission at the border, freedom to reside outside camps, access to the labor market, and othe...

In chapter 3, a global dataset is used to answer two questions relating to refugee status determination. First, when are countries likely to delegate decision-making on asylum applications to the UN Refugee Agency? And second, when they retain these decision-making functions themselves, why do countries accept or reject asylum applications? Using a...

Chapter 4 considers refugee treatment, broadly conceived, in Egypt. Egypt is a “typical” refugee recipient: it is a developing country that has signed on to the 1951 Refugee Convention and hosts a relatively small number of refugees per capita. The chapter begins by reviewing the conventional wisdom about Egypt’s asylum policy, that is, that it has...

To examine the mechanisms that shape asylum policy at a more fine-grained level, chapter 6 expands the analysis to cross-cutting pressures within the Kenyan parliament. Kenya is often considered a “crucial” case: it hosts one of the largest refugee populations in the world; it is home one of to the largest refugee camps in the world; and it is the...

What explains state responses to the refugees they receive? This book identifies two puzzling patterns: states open their borders to some refugee groups while blocking others (discrimination), and a number of countries have given the United Nations (UN) control of asylum procedures and refugee camps on their territory (delegation). To explain this...

What is the relationship between a government's respect for the rights of its own citizens and that government's regard for refugee rights? On one hand, we may expect that a country with high human rights standards will also offer a higher quality of asylum. Domestic laws that protect citizens’ rights may be extended to refugees, for example. On th...

Why do countries welcome some refugees and treat others poorly? Existing explanations suggest that the assistance refugees receive is a reflection of countries’ wealth or compassion. However, statistical analysis of a global dataset on asylum admissions shows that states’ approaches to refugees are shaped by foreign policy and ethnic politics. Stat...

While there is a large literature on attitudes toward immigrants, scholars have not systematically examined the determinants of attitudes toward refugees. Often, refugees are simply treated as a subset of immigrants, under the assumption that attitudes toward both sets of foreigners are similar. In this article, we examine whether there are distinc...

Even as Turkey took in over 3 million Syrians at great expense, Turkish officials were referring to these individuals as guests rather than refugees. Despite significant legal developments in the country, and particularly the formalization of a temporary-protection regime, this choice of labels reveals the influence of underlying political trends o...

The recent surge in refugee arrivals to Europe has underscored the importance of identity concerns, with politicians and ordinary citizens alike expressing fear that admitting foreigners may result in unacceptable demographic and cultural change. However, scholars have not systematically examined the impact of ethnic diversity on attitudes towards...

This thesis deals with constructivist and English School accounts of humanitarian intervention. Literature from both of these schools contends that a "norm of humanitarian intervention" has emerged, whereby states should intervene to end massive human rights violations within other states. Accordingly, this thesis concerns itself with "norm entrenc...