ABSTRACT
Within much of the literature on migration, the construction of a dichotomy between the position of refugees and economic migrants has been widely accepted. This is equally true in the context of legislative systems, where rights are differentiated between refugees, with recognised protection under international law, and economic migrants, subject to regulatory regimes that are conditional on: requirements for additional labour; the circumstances under which that labour is sourced; and the countries from which it is sought. That there should be such differentiation is generally accepted, since there are strong imperatives, particularly within the general context of increasingly restrictive state policies on migration that are premised on the ability to create a ‘space’ within the debate on migration, that allows those who ‘genuinely’ fear persecution to reach asylum.
