This commentary will be on Chandran Kukathas’ chapter. He makes a point of the distinction between refugees and other immigrants being fairly weak, especially when we try to appeal to our respective duties towards them. For example, we might have a duty to rescue for refugees, but we can conceive of instances where we have the same duty to rescue for other immigrants. It would be tidy if we only had duties of rescue to refugees, and we can contrive such outcomes by narrowing the scope of who counts as refugees – however, this turns out to be just as problematic because it excludes some of those we seem to owe duties of rescue to. Kukathas suggests that the category of refugee is used by states to exclude, but picture seems a bit misguided.

Indeed, states are concerned with the “advantage […] of the state” (p. 252), but it seems to me that the category of refugee is intended to distinguish two distinct duties: duties to rescue and duties to aid. Duties of rescue are more immediate and require some of the expedited treatment which comes along with the refugee status. Imagine, for instance, where a ship crashes near shore, and we are in a position to rescue its occupants. It seems we have a more urgent duty to those who cannot swim, since their lives are in immediate danger. Imagine that we are near enough to the shore that many of the passengers can swim back. We still have a duty to aid them – perhaps there is some danger of swimming back. Nevertheless, the duty is not as strong as the immediate threat of drowning for the passengers who cannot swim. Similarly, we have a duty to aid those non-refugees, but it does not take priority over the immediate duty to rescue.

The author is right to say that the distinction between the two duties is not very clear. This is why so many people we owe duties of rescue to are falsely put into the category of non-refugee. Again, going back to the illustration, this would be like mistakenly judging swimming ability and failing to rescue the drowning passenger. So a mistake in categorizing people as refugee or non-refugee suggests a failing in our ability to discern the relevant factors involved, but I do not think it suggests a failing of the categories themselves. It seems clear that once a threshold is met – perhaps immediate danger of one’s life – then it becomes clear that we have a duty to rescue.

The author makes a further point about the economic migrant who might also have some immediate danger to one’s life in escaping poverty. Using the illustration again, I think this is the equivalent to the good swimmers. In some sense of the word, they face immediate danger since they can (say) get a leg cramp and drown, but this sort of counterfactual seems more distant or less likely than the non-swimmer.

By and large, I think the category of refugee does exclude some in some sense, but not in any dramatic sense. When we rescue the non-swimmer, we exclude the swimmers in some sense; however, this is because the duty to the non-swimmer is more immediate (note: not weightier or stronger). Of course, perhaps the author meant this point to be a practical point, which I would sympathize more with.