Since the 2015 refugee “crisis,” much has been made of the distinction between the legal category of refugee and migrant. While migration scholars have accounted for the increased blurring of these two categories through explanations of institutional drift and policy layering, we argue that the intentional policies utilized by states and international organizations to minimize legal avenues for refugees to seek protection should also be considered. We identify four practices of policy “conversion” that have also led to the increasingly problematic distinction between migrants and refugees: (1) limiting access to territory through burden-shifting and other practices of extraterritorialization; (2) limiting access to asylum and local integration through procedural and administrative hindrances; (3) the use of group-based criteria as a basis of exclusion; (4) the inclusion of non-Convention criteria within resettlement schemes. Drawing upon a historical institutionalist approach and a wide array of empirical sources—including 3 years of combined primary field research conducted in Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey between 2013 and 2016—we demonstrate that states are actively pursuing a greater degree of control over the selection of refugees, in practice making refugee resettlement closer to another immigration track rather than a unique status that compels state responsibility.

中文翻译：

---

将难民转变为移民：制度变迁和国际保护政治

自从2015年难民“危机”以来，已经对难民和移民的法律类别进行了很多区分。尽管移民学者通过对制度变迁和政策分层的解释来解释这两类问题的增加，但我们认为，还应考虑国家和国际组织为减少难民寻求保护的法律途径而使用的有意政策。我们确定了政策“转换”的四种做法，这些做法也导致了移民和难民之间越来越多的问题：（1）通过转移负担和其他域外做法限制进入领土；（2）通过程序和行政方面的障碍限制寻求庇护和地方融合的机会；（3）使用基于群体的标准作为排除的基础；（4）将非《公约》标准纳入移民计划。基于历史的制度主义方法和广泛的经验来源，包括在2013年至2016年之间在埃及，黎巴嫩，摩洛哥，突尼斯和土耳其进行的为期3年的初次综合研究，我们证明了各州正在积极追求控制难民的选择，实际上使难民重新安置更接近另一个移民途径，而不是迫使国家承担责任的独特地位。