James C. Hathaway

Do states have a duty to assimilate refugees to their own citizens? Are refugees entitled to freedom of movement, to be allowed to work, to have access to public welfare programs, or to be reunited with family members? Indeed, is there even a duty to admit refugees at all? This fundamentally rewritten second edition of the award-winning treatise presents the only comprehensive analysis of the human rights of refugees set by the UN Refugee Convention and international human rights law. It follows the refugee's journey from flight to solution, examining every rights issue both historically and by reference to the decisions of senior courts from around the world. Nor is this a purely doctrinal book: Hathaway's incisive legal analysis is tested against and applied to hundreds of protection challenges around the world, ensuring the relevance of this book's analysis to responding to the hard facts of refugee life on the ground.

Do states have a duty to assimilate refugees to their own citizens? Are refugees entitled to freedom of movement, to be allowed to work, to have access to public welfare programs, or to be reunited with family members? Indeed, is there even a duty to admit refugees at all? This fundamentally rewritten second edition of the award-winning treatise presents the only comprehensive analysis of the human rights of refugees set by the UN Refugee Convention and international human rights law. It follows the refugee's journey from flight to solution, examining every rights issue both historically and by reference to the decisions of senior courts from around the world. Nor is this a purely doctrinal book: Hathaway's incisive legal analysis is tested against and applied to hundreds of protection challenges around the world, ensuring the relevance of this book's analysis to responding to the hard facts of refugee life on the ground.

The first edition of The Law of Refugee Status (published in 1991) is generally regarded as the seminal text on interpreting the refugee definition set by the UN's 1951 Refugee Convention. Its groundbreaking analysis served as the bedrock for not only much judicial reasoning, but also for a burgeoning academic literature in law and related fields. This second edition builds on the strong critical focus and human rights orientation of the first edition, but undertakes an entirely original analysis of the jurisprudence of leading common law and select civil law states. The authors provide robust responses to the most difficult questions of refugee status in a clear and direct way. The result is a comprehensive and truly global analysis of the central question in asylum law: who is a refugee?