Forced To Flee: A Victimological Analysis Of Refugee Vulnerability
- IJLLR Journal
- Dec 14, 2025
- 2 min read
Joel James J, The Tamil Nadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University
ABSTRACT
The contemporary global refugee crisis constitutes one of the most urgent human rights challenges of the twenty-first century, marked by unprecedented levels of forced displacement, intensifying geopolitical conflicts, and increasingly restrictive state responses. Refugees flee persecution, armed conflict, ethnic cleansing, and structural oppression, yet displacement rarely ends their vulnerability; instead, it transforms victimisation into a continuous transnational process characterised by physical, psychological, sociocultural, and legal harm. Victimology provides a crucial analytical framework for understanding this continuum by illuminating how harm is produced not only through direct violence in refugees’ countries of origin but also through dangerous transit routes, coercive border practices, administrative discretion, and exclusionary social environments in host states. This article engages classical and contemporary victimological theories—including structural and critical victimology, trauma-informed victimology, and criminological perspectives such as labelling and social disorganisation theories—to examine how refugees experience primary victimisation in conflict zones, secondary victimisation through hostile asylum regimes, and tertiary victimisation resulting from xenophobia, statelessness, and social marginalisation. Drawing on jurisprudence from international bodies such as the ECtHR and UNHRC— including Hirsi Jamaa v. Italy, Soering v. United Kingdom, and Teitiota v. New Zealand—as well as Indian cases such as National Human Rights Commission v. State of Arunachal Pradesh and Mohammad Salimullah v. Union of India, the article demonstrates how legal gaps, particularly India’s absence of a codified refugee protection framework, perpetuate structural victimisation. Addressing gender-based persecution, child-specific vulnerability, intergenerational trauma, and the criminalisation of migration, the article argues that refugee victimisation is rooted in global inequalities of power, access, and protection. It concludes by proposing victimology- informed reforms grounded in human rights, restorative justice, and trauma- sensitive governance as essential pathways toward a humane and effective refugee protection regime.
Keywords: Refugee Victimisation; Structural Victimology; Non- Refoulement; Statelessness; Trauma; Human Rights; India.
