MODERN REFUGEES AS CHALLENGERS OF NATION-STATE SOVEREINGTY: FROM THE HISTORICAL TO THE CONTEMPORARY

The image of refugees cramming at an armed border post of a neighbouring country, pleading entry so as to avoid being sent back to the horrors engulfing their place of origin, is profoundly associated with the 20th Century. The modern consolidation of national borders, coupled with States’ ability to unabatingly exercise sovereign control over who enters them, has turned border posts the world over, whether on land or at the parting of territorial waters, into flashpoints of the global refugee crisis. Elapsing a century since the 1915 Armenian exile, this volume explores the challenge posed by refugees to sovereign nation states, as they are faced with the dilemma of inhumanely refusing their entry thus rendering themselves morally-repulsive, or allowing their entrance thus ipso facto qualifying their own sovereignty