The Moral Economy of Asylum. Critical Reflections on the 2015 «Refugee Crisis» in Europe Didier Fassin

Abstract

Based on a reformulation of the classical concept of Moral Economy that problematizes discourses and practices of asylum, this paper poses a critical reflection of the so-called 2015 European «Refugee Crisis». It first proposes a historical scrutiny of the uses and meanings of the categories of refuge and asylum, which creates the analytical context to explore the transformations in the representations of the individuals involved in migratory movements as well as the social legitimacy of their claims. In order to do so, the paper analyzes the evolution of the right of asylum in Europe from a multiplicity of lenses —etymological, historical, geographical— as a preamble to the study of its decline in the last decades. The paper concludes that the tens of thousands of people crossing the Mediterranean from Africa and the Middle East, searching for protection, have not created any «crisis», but rather reveal to the public eye a situation that has already existed for many decades: the progressive withdrawal of European countries from the commitments acquired when signing the 1951 Geneva Convention.