This book has explored the extent to which the key treaty in international law for the protection of refugees – the Refugee Convention – is capable of accommodating claims based on the deprivation of economic and social rights. The impetus arose, in part, from the identification of an emerging class of case that has begun to challenge the distinction between economic migrants and refugees, and a recognition that, while such cases raise important conceptual and interpretive challenges, recent developments in refugee law may have permitted an openness to encompassing this new type of claim.

As explained in Chapter 1, the notion that the distinction between economic and political factors is not as clear and stark as is often portrayed both in the rhetoric of states and even in judicial and executive decision-making, is not a new proposition. On the contrary, a body of migration literature has explored the interconnectedness of economic and political factors in producing migration flows and has highlighted the difficulty in distinguishing between forced and voluntary migrants, given the close connection between migration and a range of human rights violations. However, while these insights have long been acknowledged in the wider literature, they have seldom been applied to the Refugee Convention; rather, it has often been assumed that the Refugee Convention simply does not accommodate claims based on the severe deprivation of socio-economic rights and thus appropriate international responses must lie elsewhere.