As of 2025, there are 30.5 million people worldwide who are refugees or have refugee-like status according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (U.N.H.C.R.). The top five countries of origin are Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Sudan, and South Sudan, comprising around two-thirds of the total number of refugees worldwide [1]. While the most common cause of displacement for refugees from all five nations is past or ongoing warfare, the refugees’ reception in their countries of asylum—most frequently European states, that is if they receive asylum in the first place—varies significantly. Across Europe, political rhetoric has increasingly bifurcated refugees into two categories: the culturally compatible Europeans and the threatening outsiders.

This contrast reflects the rise in nativist, right-wing politics in Europe [2]. However, the divergent and discriminatory asylum policies are in principle a violation of the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol because they apply racial or religious criteria to asylum eligibility. The fact that a politicized and racialized standard has been used to evaluate the eligibility of refugees for asylum is not only a blatant violation of the post-World War II legal doctrine founded on The 1951 Refugee Convention, but also sets a dangerous precedent that could undermine international humanitarianism in the decades to come. As a result, systems of “Open Doors” and “Fortresses,” one being unconditional welcome and the other an orchestrated exclusion, have been selectively established and applied to refugees based on their racial and religious identity.

The Humanitarian Ideal

The 1951 Refugee Convention was established in response to the dramatic increase in the number of refugees following the humanitarian crises of the First and Second World Wars. The 1951 Convention intended to provide necessary protection for the fundamental human rights of people who faced persecution in their countries of origin. The 1967 Protocol amended the Convention to remove spatial and temporal limits, making refugee protection universal in principle. Until now, 149 state parties have ratified either or both treaties, including all major Western states [3]. 

The 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol, along with other complementary documents, establish the rights of refugees regardless of their religion, race, and national origin. Such rights include the right not to be expelled, to non-discrimination, to be issued government documents, and not to be punished for irregular entry, as well as other civil rights that ensure basic dignity. Additionally, the core principle of non-refoulement mandates that refugees cannot be returned to countries where they may face continued persecution and harm [4]. This principle is central to international refugee law and binding on state parties. Ideally, the acceptance of refugees who seek asylum is a responsibility of all participating state parties. 

Beyond the legal issues, these treaties represented a broader post-war moral imperative. Emerging from the atrocities of the Second World War, this humanitarian ideal was built on the gradually popular notion that human dignity is universal and inalienable, independent of origin. It established a global norm where protection of the vulnerable was a fundamental obligation of the international community. This distilled into the written treaties that agree to never again meet persecution with indifference.

The Open Doors

When Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine triggered an exodus of Ukrainian refugees in early 2022, Western governments reacted with a rare policy that starkly contrasted with their approach towards Middle Eastern refugees since the mid-2010s. Rather than channeling asylum seekers through the usual lengthy process, the European Union (E.U.) invoked the Temporary Protection Directive (TPD) for the first time. The TPD is an emergency measure that grants millions of displaced Ukrainians immediate rights to residence, work, social benefits, and health care. Within months, the program scaled to cover several million people: a number that, by October 2025, had grown to approximately 4.3 million across the E.U. In practice, the TPD completely bypassed asylum adjudication processes and granted immediate legal status [5, 6].

Public reaction to this policy was unusually supportive for a refugee operation of this scale. Eurobarometer and related surveys recorded very high approval rates for humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and strong public agreement with welcoming those fleeing the war; in many member states, a solid majority endorsed housing, financial aid, and social services for Ukrainians. These majorities often translated into local volunteer mobilization, municipal programs to find housing, and employer initiatives to hire displaced Ukrainians, which produced grassroots movements that reinforced political will [7].

Of course, support was not uniform. Polling over time showed discrepancies in some dimensions: while humanitarian support remained high, concerns about the scale and duration of host-country commitments increased, especially around housing and welfare spending. Still, this support allowed governments to rapidly protect Ukrainian refugees without the typical political risk associated with funding expensive welfare programs for non-citizens [8]. This demonstrates that when public sentiment aligns with strategic political interests, rapid, large-scale protection is politically and operationally feasible.

Had the E.U. chosen to practice the same standard for the treatment of non-European refugees, then the generosity towards Ukrainian refugees would be worth celebrating as an excellent model for the humanitarian ideal of asylum. Ironically, the very instrument that delivered unfettered humanitarian entry for some is the same legal apparatus that routinely defers, delays, and denies protection to those arriving from Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. In other words, the open doors only open selectively.

The Fortresses

For many non-European refugees, the dominant Western response has been marked by deterrence and externalization. Since the mid-2010s, the E.U. and several of its member states have outsourced border control and asylum processing to third countries, as exemplified by the 2016 E.U.-Turkey statement. This deal channeled billions of euros to Turkey in exchange for Turkey acting as a buffer for asylum seekers from the Middle East. In essence, it institutionalized the idea that stopping arrivals outside Europe was a legitimate substitute for admitting and protecting asylum seekers within it [9]. Public figures and international human rights agencies have widely criticized the agreement, claiming that Turkey provides unsafe, inadequate, and discriminatory conditions for refugees [10]. This situation highlights responsibility for violation of the 1951 Convention on both the E.U. and Turkey. 

Parallel logic led to the United Kingdom’s recent attempts to remove asylum seekers to third states. The so-called Rwanda Plan and its legislative offspring—including the “Safety of Rwanda” measures—explicitly externalized asylum obligations by sending people seeking asylum to another country before their claims were adjudicated at home. The plan met legal setbacks and global condemnation precisely because it attempted to commodify protection for human rights, treating asylum as a negotiable asset that can be traded for financial or political capital. As a result, U.N. agencies and courts repeatedly warned that such mechanisms risked breaching non-refoulement and the spirit of the 1951 Convention [11]. 

In effect, the construction of fortresses to keep out refugees is deliberate and racially or geopolitically selective. For refugees who are non-white and non-European, the focus of asylum governance has steadily moved away from protection and toward prevention. Governments have learned to treat migration control as a display of authority, investing in walls, surveillance, and agreements that keep people out rather than safeguard their rights. What was once a universal legal framework for protection has been reshaped into a collection of strategic tools, adjusted whenever domestic or diplomatic interests demand it.

Geopolitics and Diplomacy

Geopolitical signaling and diplomatic interest are central drivers of the selective opening and closing of borders. Ukraine’s displacement was framed in Western states as an external assault on the territorial integrity of a European democracy, subsequently producing a clear antagonist and a recognizable strategic stake for NATO and E.U. members [12]. Protecting Ukrainians, therefore, conformed to core geopolitical narratives of defending Europe from a hostile, authoritarian force. Refugees thereby became legitimate political actors in a larger contest between states, as their status influenced international and domestic policy decisions. This framing rendered their protection morally persuasive and convenient.

Conversely, refugee movements originating in Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, and South Sudan are often viewed differently: as protracted internal conflict and fragile state collapse. Without an easily named external antagonist or a theatre that aligns with powerful states’ geostrategic interests, these crises are more readily framed as management problems. In other words, they are burdens to be deflected or outsourced. Indeed, international organizations flagged this calculus when they warned that schemes designed to relocate asylum responsibility effectively “shift” decision-making and responsibility rather than resolve the humanitarian realities those displaced persons face [13]. 

Diplomacy thus works in two ways. First, strategic alignment incentivizes generous protection when it advances broader foreign policy aims. Second, diplomatic bargaining commodifies displacement: money, security assistance, and migration deals serve to conveniently diminish legal and moral obligations when the geopolitical situation is elusive or risky. This produces protection policies driven more by interest than universal human rights.

Racialization

On the other hand, policy choices also reflect social and racial considerations. Studies show that the differential reception of refugees is embedded in a politics-media cycle that racializes deservingness. Research published in September 2025 identified that since 2022, Ukrainian refugees have been consistently humanized in elite outlets and visual media, while earlier waves of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa were far more likely to be framed through threat, criminality, and resource-burden narratives [14]. Another study of elite American newspapers also compared the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis with the 2022 Ukrainian refugee crisis, finding that Ukrainians were more frequently humanized in media depictions, while Syrians faced the opposite. The study also found that Syrian refugees were more frequently correlated with terrorism and perceived as unassimilable, particularly because they are Muslim [15].

This discursive divergence is consequential. As mainstream media present one group as victims and another as dangerous others, political actors find ready ground for differential policy. Populist and nativist parties amplify these frames: anti-immigrant messaging becomes a potent electoral leverage in contexts of economic insecurity and cultural anxiety. 

For example, in September 2022, the French far-right presidential candidate, Eric Zemmour, stated that Ukrainian refugees who have familial relations in France should be granted visas, while those from the Middle East should not receive the same treatment [16]. In August 2023, the ruling party of Poland, Law and Justice, established a similar double standard in the treatment of refugees based on nationality and religion. Despite hosting more than a million Ukrainian refugees, the government held a referendum in which one question asked, “Do you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa under the forced relocation mechanism imposed by the European bureaucracy?”. Party leaders announced this leading question in a video and accompanied it with “scenes of burning cars” and “a Black man [licking] a huge knife” [17]. These depictions serve to instill fear and racialized perceptions of refugees. Ultimately, the two cases of contrasting reception of refugees are based on the same rationale: that White, Christian Ukrainians will be easier to integrate than Arabic Muslims. 

The sudden centrality of migration in political campaigns across Europe, coupled with the electoral gains of parties that emphasize border control and cultural difference, both reflect and reinforce a racialized hierarchy of who counts as a neighbour and who counts as a problem [18].

Racialized rhetoric is not always explicit. It is often coded through appeals to “assimilation,” “culture,” or “security.” But its effects are simple. When policymakers and the public implicitly equate whiteness and Christianity with easier integration, this legitimizes the exclusion of non-White refugees.

Implications

The normalization of selective humanitarianism carries serious consequences for the future of international protection, including the weakening of global refugee law. When advanced democracies treat asylum as a privilege that can be withheld from certain groups, they erode the credibility of the international legal order they helped create. The 1951 Refugee Convention was intended to operate as a guarantee of equal protection; its uneven enforcement now signals that refugee rights exist only where politically convenient. Given that 71 percent of refugees are hosted in low and middle-income countries, such inconsistency may lead other states—many of which host far larger refugee populations with fewer resources—to question their own commitments [19].

This erosion of principle risks fracturing the international framework for asylum. Instead of a coherent system guided by shared norms, the world could see the rise of regional and bilateral arrangements where protection depends on geography, race, or alliance. Wealthier states will increasingly export their responsibilities through externalization deals, leaving poorer nations as permanent “holding zones” for displaced populations. Over time, this could cement inequality in access to safety and mobility.

Domestically, the shift toward selective hospitality also reshapes political culture. Every time a government publicly distinguishes between so-called “deserving” and “undeserving” refugees, it reinforces the notion that human rights are conditional. That logic rarely stops at the border. Once normalized, it can be extended to other vulnerable groups, including migrants, minorities, and even citizens who fall outside the dominant political identity. The politics of exclusion, therefore, becomes a negative feedback loop, with each series of discrimination justifying the next.

Reversing this trajectory requires a normative renewal of politics. States need to rediscover the conviction that humanitarian principles are binding even when inconvenient, and that universal rights lose meaning when applied unequally. A system based on solidarity rather than convenience is difficult to sustain, but its preservation will determine if the response to displacement is grounded in law and humanity or dominated by political expedience.