ABSTRACT
The introductory chapter sets the scene for the rest of the book. Beginning with a brief overview of mass displacement and global refugee policy developments in the present day, it then identifies the focus of the book: the term ‘the refugee problem’. This term is used by wide range of actors, seemingly without any need to explain exactly what they mean when using it, I posit that there are actually multiple ‘refugee problems’ to which these different actors refer, but the somewhat unreflective use of this term has led to the conflation of two very different problems: the problem of the refugee, and problems for refugees. While these two problems are of course related, conflating the two has meant that the solutions pursued to the problem of the refugee are presumed to automatically also solve the problems that refugees face. The rest of the book explores to what extent this is the case, through employing the work of Michel Foucault and Hannah Arendt, two of the twentieth century’s most influential political theorists, in a way that brings together a broad range of important critiques in Refugee Studies scholarship, summarised in this chapter, which have problematised the humanitarian focus and credentials of the refugee regime, and the construction of ‘the refugee’ as a voiceless, non-political subject.
