Who are refugees? Who, if anyone, is responsible for protecting them? What forms should this protection take? In the news we often see photos of people in transit, suffering untold deprivations in desperate bids to escape civil wars, state failure, and environmental disasters and find safety. But behind these images of transit, there is another, far less visible crisis: a crisis of arrival. Refugees in the 21st century have only three real options – urban slums, squalid refugee camps, or dangerous journeys to seek asylum – and none provide genuine refuge.

In this event, two leading philosophers will discuss the urgent ethical and political questions raised by the global refugee crisis. From the history of our thinking around refugees and our responsibilities to them, distinctions between different kinds of refugees, forms of international cooperation and the militant border regimes that police the movement of refugees, this conversation will explore how citizens, as well as states and politicians, have a moral duty to help resolve the global refugee crisis and to end the suffering and denial of human rights that refugees are forced to endure, often for years.

Serena Parekh is a Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion. She co-edits the journal, Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, and is the author of three books: No Refuge: Ethics and the Global Refugee Crisis (2020); Refugees and the Ethics of Forced Displacement (2017) and Hannah Arendt and the Challenge of Modernity: A Phenomenology of Human Rights (2008).

David Owen is Professor of Social and Political Philosophy at the University of Southampton. His recent books include What do we owe to refugees? (2020), Prospects for Citizenship (co-authored with Gerry Stoker et al., 2011), Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality (2007) and two co-edited volumes: Multiculturalism and Political Theory (2007) and Recognition and Power (2007).