NDPR Bradley Hillier-Smith The Ethics of State Responses to Refugees

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Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2026.03.3 View this Review Online View Other NDPR Reviews

Bradley Hillier-Smith, The Ethics of State Responses to Refugees, Routledge, 2025, 286 pp., $61.99 (pbk) ISBN 9781032833651.

Reviewed by Michael Blake, University of Washington

The concept of the refugee is currently under several distinct forms of pressure. Populists, in many wealthy states, have demonized the figure of the refugee and have succeeded in mobilizing popular opposition to the legal rights of refugees. Public support for the rights of refugees is at, or near, an all-time low. Philosophers, for their part, have increasingly begun to question whether refugees—as defined in contemporary legal instruments—represent a morally coherent group; the concept of the refugee, on this view, is best understood as an historic response to the atrocities of the 20th century and might be inadequate as a...