Refuge in the Land of Liberty (PDF)

GREG BURGESS was a researcher in Australia's Refugee Review Tribunal before completing a doctorate on the history of political asylum in France at the University of Melbourne. He has taught Modern European History at the University of Tasmania and presently teaches World History and Historiography at Deakin University in Victoria, Australia.

'A compelling and balanced account of one of the most important contemporary problems, this is essential reading for anyone concerned with the conflicting humanitarian and economic issues in the problem of asylum.' - Pamela Pilbeam, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

'A powerfully instructive survey of how different regimes in France have resolved or denied the recurrent human tragedies which continue to haunt us today.' - Peter McPhee, University of Melbourne, Australia

'In this timely book, Greg Burgess examines the history of refugee asylum in France from the French Revolution to World War II. He demonstrates how the right of asylum, a concept and indeed a 'site of memory' that grants human rights to the individual, has often clashed with state policies in France. Burgess's important study takes us from the welcoming of Polish political refugees in the 1830s and 1840s to Spaniards fleeing Franco's armies in the wake of the Spanish Civil War, finding not humanitarian welcome but rather internment camps on the other side of the Pyrenees amid xenophobia and fear of political contagion. This is a well-researched and thoughtful book of consequence.' - John Merriman, Charles Seymour Professor of History, Yale University, USA

'Greg Burgess has produced a convincing and thoughtful history of these developments...a detailed analysis of the policy environment and of national debates...' Modern & Contemporary France