SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This chapter aims to critically interrogate foundational aspects of refugee law from a decolonial perspective. Considered within the context of contemporary debates on counterterrorism and border control in the United Kingdom, it argues that the way we conceptualize violence within the broader project of refugee protection underpins our complicity in the global ordering of violence and suffering. The chapter aims to reveal this dynamic and to propose teaching and conceptualizing of refugee law in a way that frames state violence more broadly than the ‘persecution’ detailed in the Refugee Convention. This approach seeks to ensure that the violence facing the refugee is not seen through the lenses of exceptionalism and crisis that govern refugee law, but rather within the broader frameworks of criminalization and the racial and economic structures of colonialism.