"Intentional Ambiguity around Refugees: Purposeful Discrepancies between Law and Implementation in the Middle East"

The Department of Political Science invite you to attend “Intentional Ambiguity around Refugees: Purposeful Discrepancies between Law and Implementation in the Middle East” with Lillian Frost, from Virginia Tech University.  

Why do states adopt ambiguous policies toward refugees that say one thing in law but another in implementing regulations? Although it is well known that states often adopt ambiguous policies toward refugees, particularly in first-receiving states, much less is known about what constitutes an ambiguous policy and why first-receiving states adopt such policies over time. This is particularly the case when analyzing refugees’ rights after they have entered a receiving state, rather than their ability to enter or not. This paper argues that states adopt ambiguous policies toward refugees in response to constraints and pressures from dominant stakeholders (i.e., the most influential and interested actors in a policy area) on the state’s executive leaders (e.g., presidents, kings, prime ministers, etc. and their closest advisors) before the policy’s adoption. When these policymakers face conflicting constraints or pressures from dominant stakeholders about granting a specific right, then they can please both sides by drafting the policy’s law to placate one side and its implementation to please the other, producing a policy of intentional ambiguity.

Lillian Frost’s research interests include citizenship, forced migration, law and society, gender, and Middle East politics. She studies the legal and practiced dimensions of citizenship as well as variations in citizenship policies toward migrant groups and women. She has received numerous grants and fellowships supporting her research. These include a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellowship at the European University Institute, Peace Scholar Dissertation Fellowship from the United States Institute of Peace and Minerva Research Initiative, Middle East Initiative Pre-Doctoral Research Fellowship at Harvard University, and Fulbright Fellowship for dissertation research. She also regularly presents at academic conferences, including the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association, Middle East Studies Association, and Law and Society Association. In addition, she has given talks on her research at a variety of universities, including Harvard University, University of Washington Seattle, Maastricht University, and University of Pennsylvania.