ABSTRACT
The introduction outlines the book’s motivation, method and core propositions. It shows how the book relates to current challenges of refugee law: growing numbers of displacement, refugee camps, the difficulties that persons face to access protection, the issue of responsibility-sharing between states and debates whether the distinction between refugees and other migrants is still meaningful. Those challenges are often seen in isolation. The book connects them to the basic structure of the refugee concept at the boundaries of the legitimacy order of the territorial state. The introduction offers a brief overview on the arguments of each chapter. From the origins of the refugee concept over its codification in the twentieth century and its ongoing contestations, the book moves to the concepts of citizenship and democracy as key determinants of legitimacy in the modern state. On that basis, the third part examines the access of refugees to political voice in different situations from institutional and non-institutional forms of participation in the state, over the complex of refugee camps, to the representation on the international level.
