Asylum as Geopolitical Currency: Rents and Incentives in Contemporary Migration Governance

Abstract

This article examines the political economy of asylum as an emergent logic reshaping the contemporary international refugee regime. Building on the post-War II foundations of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the analysis traces how escalating displacement, geopolitical asymmetries and governance externalization have progressively eroded the universalist, rights-based architecture of asylum. Through a reconstruction of the concept’s theoretical lineage – introducing refugee rentierism and situating it within debates on rentier-state theory, migration diplomacy and global governance – the article argues that states increasingly convert the presence, containment or potential mobility of refugees into strategic rents. Drawing on a transdisciplinary framework that incorporates international political economy, global governance, international law and critical migration studies, the analysis maps a series of key cases – including the EU-Turkey Statement, EU partnerships with North African states, the UK-Rwanda plan, the Italy-Albania protocol, the Australia-Nauru offshoring model and recent U.S. initiatives in the Darién region. These practices reveal the instrumentalisation of refugees as geopolitical assets, enabling states to secure financial transfers, diplomatic concessions or domestic political capital while outsourcing protection obligations to peripheral regions. Normatively, the rise of refugee rentierism undermines the authority of international law, entrenches global inequalities and accelerates the delegalization and fragmentation of the asylum regime. The article concludes that refugee rentierism is not a marginal trend but a structural transformation that shifts asylum from an inalienable right to a transactional instrument, challenging the future viability of a universal protection system and calling for renewed commitments to global justice, solidarity and responsibility-sharing.