The situations of refugees and displaced people cry out for moral repair. Uprooted by severe threats to their lives and liberty, they are forced to undertake perilous journeys only to face either the limbo of encampment or insecurity in urban settings in the global South, or to encounter frequently hostile asylum systems in the global North. While some eventually gain protection, very many live indefinitely without the “minimum conditions of human dignity.” This is a large-scale global crisis: As of June 2025, there were 42.5 million refugees (a figure that does not include the larger number of people displaced within the borders of their states of origin).
The causes of this displacement and the range of actors responsible vary considerably. Some are uprooted primarily by local or domestic factors, such as governmental campaigns of persecution. The flight of others is provoked by the actions of external states, as displacement prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrates. In a globalized world, many cases of displacement are the product of a complex interplay between domestic and international factors. The plight of those expected to be displaced by the effects of climate change is attributable to the structure of the global economy that is powered by excessive carbon emissions.
In common moral thought, when people face such stark forms of harm, we believe that those who caused that harm have an obligation to rectify it. Let us call this the principle of reparation. This principle is deeply embedded in our legal systems, and it also motivates political calls to repair the lingering effects of slavery and colonialism.
Despite the severity of these harms, this principle of reparation is only partially and inconsistently applied to the context of displacement in public and academic discussion. In contrast, public and political discourse on asylum and immigration is often state-centered or nationalistic, asserting that the principle of sovereignty entitles states to curtail their assistance to the displaced. Those who do recognize a clear responsibility in this context often frame this as a humanitarian duty, arguing that states have a general duty to protect refugees and displaced people on account of the immediate suffering they face. This approach allocates responsibilities on the basis of which states have the capacity to assist, rather than whether they had any prior role in causing displacement in the first place.
In recent years, political theorists—such as Matthew Price, Serena Parekh, and David Owen—have started to challenge the dominance of this humanitarian picture of responsibilities to displaced people. One clear way to mount such a challenge is by appeal to the principle of reparation canvased above, for a reparative approach involves looking beyond the fact of displaced people’s current need to the processes that brought it about. As we have seen, the displaced face severe and unjust harms, often involving human rights violations, that certainly fall within the scope of reparative justice.
Yet how should this reparation be offered by states? An answer to this question can begin by asserting that it should be offered by those states responsible for the displacement in question in the most fitting form possible. There are, in principle, a range of policy measures that can be used to offer reparation to refugees specifically, such as the durable solutions of voluntary repatriation, local integration, and third-country resettlement that are pursued by the United Nations refugee agency. It is even conceivable (while unlikely in practice) that controversial and morally risky measures, such as military intervention, might have some reparative role in halting atrocities and thereby enabling refugees to return to their homes. However, one clear tool with reparative value is asylum, which offers immediate protection to refugees, while also potentially offering them a pathway to membership in another state. Asylum may compensate refugees for their losses as well as act as a powerful expression of accountability by the state that caused their plight.
This reparative approach to asylum might seem intuitive or obvious, at least to those sympathetic to an ethic of responsibility towards the displaced. However, it creates a number of complex ethical and political challenges that need to be grappled with. For instance, there are both theoretical and practical problems surrounding causality, agency, and prioritization. First, although in many cases the causal link between a state’s action and refugee flight is clear-cut, in others it is considerably murky, notably in historical cases such as those where refugee-producing conflict is arguably rooted in past patterns of colonial rule, as well as in the intervening agency of post-independence governments. Second, given the moral importance of respecting refugees’ choices, it is important to recognize that they may actively not want asylum in the state that caused or contributed to their flight. Third, given the common moral belief that reparative obligations are particularly stringent, a reparative approach to asylum has implications for which refugees a state should prioritize: might this approach leave refugees bearing only humanitarian claims for asylum deprioritized, even if their need may be greater than that of reparative claimants?
We can respond to this problem of causality by arguing that causal indeterminacy is not a reason to abandon the pursuit of reparative justice for refugees but is a reason to engage creatively to develop processes to allocate responsibility: Such allocations may ultimately need to rely on a political, deliberative process involving refugees themselves rather than any quasi-scientific determination of causal links. We can respond to the problem of agency by pointing to alternative ways in which states responsible for displacement may offer reparation to refugees even if they are protected elsewhere, such as through monetary or material compensation, or measures to enable their voluntary repatriation should that be their preferred option. Lastly, we can respond to the problem of prioritization by arguing that, while powerful states generally have the capacity to protect both reparative and humanitarian asylum claimants, in a climate of genuinely scarce resources, it is possible for urgency of need to outweigh the obligation to offer reparation in some cases.
A reparative approach to asylum may also pave the way towards broader reparative arguments within the field of global justice. Some have argued that migration should also be considered as a form of reparation, especially for the historical legacies of colonialism. Emerging work proposes a reparative responsibility to protect (R-R2P), including a duty to protect refugees fleeing mass atrocity crimes, in which former colonial powers recognize a responsibility to protect those fleeing from atrocities that are rooted in their past rule. There is also scope for considering reparative responsibilities to address forms of displacement that stretch beyond forced migration. For instance, some have argued that displacement may occur without movement, when people experience a loss of place and/or home while remaining in their habitual locations. This opens out potential avenues for theorizing reparative responsibilities to address displacement that have been hitherto neglected.
Overall, a reparative approach to displacement has significant normative and practical relevance in global affairs. It applies to historical cases of colonial legacies and the afterlives of failed military intervention, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan, and also to forced mobility linked to the unfolding climate crisis. If justice is to be done for the world’s displaced, it is vital to attend closely to states’ duties of reparation towards them.
James Souter
James Souter is a lecturer in political theory and international politics at the School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds. He is the author of Asylum as Reparation: Refuge and Responsibility for the Harms of Displacement (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) and is currently working on the normative implications of understanding displacement as a phenomenon that may occur without movement.
