Searching Refuge in Thailand or Brazil: Long-Distance Refugees and the Emergence of Global Asylum Hubs in Middle-Income Countries

Abstract

Abstract Using UNHCR data, this article documents the diversification of asylum routes over the 1987–2017 period and its effects on the diversity of refugee populations in receiving countries. We coin a specific terminology, ‘local’, ‘regional’, and ‘global asylum hubs’ to characterize countries as being embedded in local, regional, or global refugee mobility networks. We show that only high-income countries were global asylum hubs up until the 1990s, but that a trend towards the diversification of asylum routes has created a number of global asylum hubs in middle-income countries since. These findings undermine the commonly held assumption that the reception of highly diverse refugee populations is a characteristic unique to high-income countries. We present two cases studies, from Thailand and from Brazil, to illustrate the radical diversity of refugee management models adopted by middle-income countries, which have become global refugee hubs, a situation that contrasts with the relative uniformity found in high-income countries.