Representing Refugees in Democratic Innovations?

Refugees are underrepresented in political decision-making on migration politics. Would the inclusion of refugees in democratic innovations such as citizens’ assemblies improve their underrepresentation or would it merely gloss over the more fundamental problems of refugee agency? I show that refugee inclusion in democratic innovations raises a number of political challenges relating to the institutions’ intended purpose, design, process, and competence. In this paper, I focus on one major problem: the problem of territorial presence. Many proposals restrict participatory entitlements to resident migrants and refugees, overstating the the “premium of territorial arrival” (Shachar 2020; Benhabib 2020). But how can we rethink democratic inclusion and representation in processes of migration politics without overemphasizing territorial presence? How can refugees and migrants who are still on the move be included and represented in times of shifting borders? I argue that rethinking refugee representation can contribute to democratizing both democratic innovations and migration politics. I build on a recent contribution to feminist democratic theory to call for the institutionalization of affected representatives, account giving and group advocacy in the context of refugee representation in democratic innovations (Childs/Celis 2020). Benhabib, Seyla (2020): The End of the 1951 Convention. Dilemmas of Sovereignty, Territoriali-ty, and Human Rights. Jus Cogens 2 (1): https://doi.org/10.1007/s42439-02000022-1 Celis, Karen/Childs, Sarah (2020): Feminist Democratic Representation. Oxford: Oxford Uni-versity Press. Shachar, Ayelet (2020): The Shifting Border: Legal Cartographies of Migration and Mobility, Critical Powers Series, Manchester: Manchester University Press.