On May 28, 2026, Prof. Neha Jain delivered a fascinating lecture titled “The Market Metaphor in Refugee Law and Policy” as part of the GILDS discussion series. In her talk, Prof. Jain analyzed an emerging trend in international refugee policy, which she terms “marketization”, a term which has its roots in the 1990s.
It refers to the increasing application of market logic to asylum law, as Prof. Jain impressively demonstrated using various examples, such as the controversial asylum agreement between Albania and Italy, the collapsed UK-Rwanda deal, or the U.S. deportation agreements with various third countries.
Above all, states in the Global North are outsourcing their responsibility for refugee protection to states in the Global South and, in return, compensating them with financial resources, development aid, or political support. According to Prof. Jain, this practice, along with the deliberate creation of legally abstruse grey areas by concluding such agreements on the basis of non-binding letters of intent to evade judicial review, also reflects and reproduces colonial patterns of thought and power relations.
Prof. Jain also identifies another problem with applying such market logic to asylum law: the systematic dehumanization of those seeking protection, who are treated as tradable “commodities” with negative value. A practice that is further aggravated by its selective application to different ethnic or racial groups of refugees.
In conclusion, however, Prof. Jain demonstrated through several examples that legal and civil society resistance can be successful and, above all, that invoking norms of international refugee and human rights law could constitute an effective strategy for combating “refugee markets”.
Following the lecture, there was time for a stimulating discussion, during which participants took the opportunity to delve deeper into the complex ethical and legal issues surrounding asylum policy.
The Institute for International Law and International Relations of the University of Graz would like to thank Prof. Neha Jain for her insightful lecture as part of the GILDS series. Further thanks go to all participants for the lively discussion.