Protecting the unprotected: Reconceptualising refugee protection through the notion on hospitality

The international refugee protection regime has come under increasing pressure in recent times, as a result of changing global realities. There have been a number of recent proposals to reform the regime in response to new challenges. Yet these schemes founder at the point where state co-operation is required for implementation. At a time when the rights of vulnerable individuals are increasingly precarious, states appear more unwilling than ever to offer protection. As a result, protection has become focused on legal requirements and technicalities, with only occasional consideration of its moral and ethical implications. This is a major challenge to the spirit in which refugee protection was originally conceived as a concept in international law. In this article, I attempt to rethink international protection to emphasise its ethical dimensions alongside its legal, technical and political aspects. I explore the contribution that an ethics of hospitality could make to the rights-based framework through which protection is traditionally approached. I argue that hospitality offers a way to reconceptualise the relationship of the state vis-à-vis the individual that addresses current conceptual and practical shortcomings. In this way the paper opens up potential new ways of thinking about how to ensure the security and safety of some of the world's most vulnerable people