Refuge Lost: Asylum Law in an Interdependent World

Cynthia S. Gorman of West Virginia University reviews Refuge Lost: Asylum Law in an Interdependent World by Daniel Ghezelbash. As Europe deals with a so-called ‘refugee crisis,’ Australia’s harsh border control policies have been suggested as a possible model for Europe to copy. Key measures of this system such as long-term mandatory detention, intercepting and turning boats around at sea, and the extraterritorial processing of asylum claims were actually used in the United States long before they were adopted in Australia. Refuge Lost examines the process through which these policies spread between the United States and Australia and the way the courts in each jurisdiction have dealt with the measures. Daniel Ghezelbash’s innovative interdisciplinary analysis shows how policies and practices that ‘work’ in one country might not work in another. 

Read the book review at https://doi.org/10.1177/0197918318818530