THE RIGHT TO INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION: A PENDULUM BETWEEN GLOBALIZATION AND NATIVIZATION?

ended

The vision of PROTECT is to discover ways of further advancing the international protection system within today’s turbulent political context. As a corollary to fluctuations in political cleavage systems of host countries, states’ policy approaches to international protection are drifting away from the humanitarian norms, objectives and methods provided by the current international law. The international refugee regime risks entering an era of decay because of declining citizen support, increasing party populism, growing government opportunism, and the subsequent scapegoating of international organizations. The United Nations’ Global Compact on Migration and the Global Compact on Refugees, which aim to introduce global governance and burden-sharing systems in the areas of migration and international protection, will have to be implemented in a context of international power relations between advocates of different visions of world order and notions international protection associated with them. In order to assess the challenges and opportunities that the Global Compacts pose, PROTECT will organize its research and dissemination efforts around three dimensions of international protection: (a) rights, (b) governance, and (c) public recognition. PROTECT aims to: (1) develop perspectives to international protection that address the challenges posed by the current politically turbulent context (2) assess the impacts of the Global Compacts on the right to international protection, discovering ways of reconstructing their relationships with the pre-existing legal frames that advance international protection (3) assess the impacts of the Global Compacts on the governance of international protection, discovering the most effective modes of global governance (4) assess the impact of the Global Compacts on the public recognition of the right to international protection, identifying the networks and discourses that hinder or facilitate support to international protection.