Back to Blogging/Response to "Xenophobia to the Rescue?"

Okay so I've been meaning to get back to blogging for a while now but I keep letting myself get distracted by other things (job/school work/travel), but I wanted to write up my two cents concerning a question posed by Steve Saideman concerning xenophobia and intervention and was looking for a way to avoid working on an assignment for my economics course.

So Prof. Saideman asks whether or not intervention motivated by xenophobia is a good thing. I guess the first thing is that it seems to me that it would be just as self-interested as any other reason for intervention. Just like an intervention for strategic interests (US in Iraq for oil) or under the umbrella of the R2P doctrine (guilt from inaction during Rwanda), xenophobic intervention has the intervening states' interests at heart and not those of the victims on the ground. I do, however, see a difference in that a state intervening out of fear of an influx of refugees benefits from a sustainable peace being achieved. This would mean remaining involved afterwards to ensure that the country does not fall back into conflict. For example, France and Italy cannot afford to continually hold back the wave of refugees that would accompany sustained conflict in North Africa. A relatively quick end to the fighting and then some amount of peacebuilding assistance would be in their best interests so that a sustainable peace could be achieved and the flow of refugees could be reversed.

The danger, though, is that xenophobic intervention could lead to a focus on the refugees and directing one's efforts to turning away refugees and subjecting them to dangerous conditions. The 1951 Refugees Convention requires states to allow people to apply for asylum once they set foot on their land. By preventing refugees from landing, countries can avoid having to provide shelter to these people (until their status is determined). Such has already been the case as a boat of Tunisian refugees sunk off of the coast of Italy, killing 35, and another boat, carrying 1800 refugees from Libya was turned away and escorted into international waters. There have been other cases, especially in southeast Asia, where boats of asylum seekers have been forced to turn around and brave international waters in vessels (and conditions) that are unsafe and unsanitary.

So to bring it back to the original question, I would suggest that xenophobic intervention directed at tackling the problem(s) at the source of the refugees (conflicts) is "okay" whereas those acts of intervention aimed at preventing refugees from reaching their shores are bad forms of xenophobic intervention. (I do, however, find it distasteful to label some xenophobic actions as "good". I would say that a better term is needed).

... I guess I have to get back to my econ assignment now that I've thrown my two cents in (sigh)...