Sovereignty, Migration and the Law

This book examines how states justify the creation of physical, policy and legislative barriers of entry for migrants by drawing on a concept of sovereignty.

The movement of people across the world in search of refuge from persecution, war and poverty is accelerating. And as states confronted with this movement create physical, policy and legislative barriers to entry, they justify this exclusion by drawing on concepts of sovereignty. This book interrogates that justification in an historical and theoretical context using the case study of Australian law and policy since 1900, as well as instances from other Western countries that have routinely copied from Australia. But just as Australian migration polices are being replicated in the US, Britain and Europe, so, this book argues, is their employment of an anachronistic concept of sovereignty: one that is reasserted precisely because of its waning power in the face of globalization.

This book will be an important resource for law and political science scholars, researchers and students in the fields of migration and refugee law and policy, as well as to professional policy makers, government institutions, lawyers and international agencies with a particular focus on those fields.