Every year millions of people leave their home countries to seek safety elsewhere. Refugees escape persecution, subvert international borders and sometimes cross oceans to seek safety. They then face a gruelling asylum adjudication system which determines whether they will receive support.
Once refugees have made these perilous journeys and are offered international protection, against all odds, some claim that they are then required to go even further: they must be grateful for it.
On his popular Fox News show in 2019, American commentator Tucker Carlson criticised US congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a refugee from Somalia, on precisely these grounds. “If anyone should love America, it’s Ilhan Omar”, Carlson opined, the “country rescued her from a squalid Kenyan refugee camp and made her a national figure … But Ilhan Omar is not grateful. She hates us for it.”
Albeit often in less strident terms, others have appealed to duties of gratitude to demand “good behaviour” from refugees. In 2006 a UNHCR representative warned a group of refugees in South Africa, “we understand the challenges you face, but at the same time we want to give you a sound word of caution. Be careful not to come across as sounding ungrateful.”
Writer Dina Nayeri has recounted how the idea of gratitude has followed her throughout her life. When telling her American teacher that she had recently lived in a refugee encampment in Italy she replied: “Awww, sweetie, you must be so grateful to be here.”
Refugees do often express gratitude to the countries that provide them with asylum. But do they actually have a duty to be grateful?
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A duty to feel a certain way might immediately strike someone as illiberal. However, let us assume, for the sake of argument, that such a duty can exist.
Philosophers typically argue that several conditions need to be met for a duty of gratitude to hold. First, a recipient must receive a benefit from the object of gratitude. Second, the benefit has to be freely given. Third, in most circumstances, the provider of the benefit should not be under a duty to provide that benefit.
Some philosophers, like Nicholas Rescher and Jason D’Cruz, have argued that these three conditions are met in the case of refugees.
Access to asylum is clearly a benefit. The fact that states have set up institutions to process refugee claims demonstrates their willingness to provide asylum. And, in many situations, states grant asylum not as a duty but as a humanitarian act. In 2016 the Canadian government dispatched hundreds of immigration officials to refugees camps in Jordan and Lebanon to process Syrian refugees to be resettled. They were not under a legal duty to do so, but understood their actions as part of a generous refugee policy.
However, when we consider these criteria against the modern asylum system, and the hardships typically inflicted on refugees, gratitude is questionable.
Barriers to entry
Many countries, including the UK, US and Australia, routinely detain refugees, deprive them of the legal right to work, subject them to subsistence living and prosecute them for entering unlawfully.
Even if asylum is formally granted, these restrictions are designed to make life in the host state as uncomfortable as possible. Do we owe gratitude to a benefactor who, while prepared to give us £100 that we desperately need, first puts us through a range of humiliating and dangerous steps?
It is true that asylum often enables refugees to escape a far more dire fate in their home country. But to determine whether gratitude is owed, we need to weigh how asylum states undermine the security and freedom of refugees against how they promote it.
It is also questionable whether states really grant asylum freely and willingly. Many states have erected a huge range of measures to stop refugees from arriving on their territory.
The UK, for instance, has in recent years restructured its asylum policy around deterring people from seeking assistance and penalising those who cross the border without the proper authorisation or documents, even when they do so to seek refuge. As a result, migrants must often follow dangerous routes to seek international protection.
Compensating for harm
While many see asylum as a charitable and discretionary act, most political philosophers have seen asylum as a duty.
It’s true that acting upon a duty may not necessarily remove the need for gratitude, but we argue that it does in certain cases. One of these is when the benefit in question is a form of compensation for harm.
States that accept refugees are often implicated in the circumstances that led to refugees needing protection in the first place. For example, through acts of foreign intervention such as in Afghanistan and Iraq, historical support for oppressive regimes, colonial legacies and contribution to damage caused by global warming.
By providing asylum, countries may be redressing the harms they have, often unintentionally, inflicted upon refugees. This fact is often ignored in discussions of gratitude, but it is intensely relevant. It would seem odd to say that one should be grateful for the return of £100 from a person who stole it from them.
The conditions of the modern asylum system do not lend themselves well to a duty of gratitude by refugees. But any such duties should be towards those countries that actively welcome refugees or on groups (like the organisations who save lives in the Mediterranean) that help asylum seekers bypass the web of restrictions designed to stop their arrival.
For many states, however, resentment rather than gratitude might be the most appropriate response of refugees.
Rebecca Buxton previously received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
Matthew J. Gibney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
