PSCI6365 - U.S. and International Asylum and Refugee Law

PSCI 6365 U.S. and International Asylum and Refugee Law (3 semester credit hours) This course explores U.S. and international law and policy related to the issues of migration, asylum and refugees. We will examine development of the international refugee regime and a variety of topics issues related to the regime, including: the ethics of refugee protection, legal and institutional protection, problems of protection, the Cold War, post-Cold War, and post-Sept. 11th contexts, and related issues such as internally displaced persons. We will examine several related case studies. We will then move our focus to receiving states, examining policies and systems in a variety of states before moving to a more specific focus on the U.S. system, examining in detail U.S. asylum policy and the core domestic actors which implement this policy, examining the competing dominant theoretical perspectives. We will examine the growing body of systematic empirical work that addresses core questions related to asylum decision making in the U.S. and other receiving states through quantitative analysis. (3-0) Y