Kelsey Norman: Host State's Reception of Migrants and Refugees by Governance Uncovered

In this episode, host Ellen Lust talks to Kelsey Norman, who is a Fellow for the Middle East and Director of the Women's Rights, Human Rights & Refugees program at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.

Kelsey and Ellen discuss Kelsey's new book Reluctant Reception, in which she asks, "How do host states respond to refugees?". In doing this, she moves beyond the traditional focus in refugee and migration literature of looking at the global North and focuses on countries normally seen as transit countries that migrants cross on their way to their country of destination. More specifically, Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey.

She terms their response "strategic indifference", meaning that the state projects indifference towards migrants, which allows it to expand little resources towards managing refugees.
Kelsey argues that it is important to look at state responses since, contrary to popular belief, most refugees in these countries reside in urban settings and not in refugee camps - and are, therefore, under the authority of the transit country's state rather than international organisations.

Ellen and Kelsey also discuss how different nationalities are perceived and valued and if that leads to different reception treatment by the transit country.