Howard Adelman locates the production of refugees and the discourses and policies that have emerged as a response to the movement or flow of refugees, asylum seekers and stateless people across borders to processes of globalisation, modernity and the political system of nation states:

In this chapter I support this argument as many others have done (Castles, 2003; Marfleet, 2006; Sales, 2007), but I also argue for the need to better explain and understand the processes, discourses and policies related to forced migration, the impact of humiliation and human rights (Lindner, 2006; Smith, 2006).

For Marfleet, the key themes or threads of analysis to explore forced migration include: the underpinning theory of globalisation and the ‘implications for patterns of forced migration’ (2006, p 5); the character and role of the liberal state and the role of politicians and state officials; refugee movement to the West; and the need for an interdisciplinary lens (refugee studies) when studying migration. This chapter takes up these threads, in particular the need for an interdisciplinary lens in order to examine the connections between globalisation, forced migration, humiliation and the possibilities for social justice.

Century of the refugee: processes of inclusion and exclusion

Adelman suggests that refugees characterise the 20th century because it was in this century that ‘the total globe was colonized and set on a course of being divided into self governing nation states’ (Adelman, 1999, p 90). And, given the twin forces of modernity and globalisation, the nation state epitomises certain contradictions. ‘On the one hand each nation state consolidated itself around a sentimental communal and sometimes atavistic sense of a homogenous nation. At the same time, the state was the vehicle of universal citizenship and, in idealist liberal belief, the upholder and defender of individual rights’ (Adelman, 1999, p 90).

Reflecting on the history of the movement of people across borders, Adelman argues that the Huguenots, who fled religious persecution in France, were archetypical refugees of modernity.