ABSTRACT
Asylum and refugee protection is ‘individualistic’ in several senses. First, even though group membership often figures into the justification for a claim to refugee protection, it is the individual in question, and not the group, who is typically thought to be owed protection. Additionally, refugee status determinations are typically made in an individualized way, rather than being applied to a group of people as a whole.28 In this section of the paper, I will address these issues, focusing first on the more ‘practical’ issue of status determination, before returning to the more ‘conceptual’ issue of whether providing relief to individuals, as individuals, suffices to meet our moral duties.
