FitzGerald persuasively shows how states in the global North have developed comprehensive systems for shutting out asylum-seekers fleeing persecution and violence. Based on innovative conceptual work and detailed case studies, Refuge beyond Reach provides a powerful and disturbing account of the undermining of principles fundamental to the international refugee regime through the construction of an 'architecture of repulsion
David Scott FitzGerald is Theodore E. Gildred Chair in US-Mexican Relations, Professor of Sociology, and Co-Director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California San Diego. His research analyzes policies regulating migration and asylum in countries of origin, transit, and destination. FitzGerald's books include Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Americas, which won the American Sociological Association's Distinguished Scholarly Book Award, and A Nation of Emigrants: How Mexico Manages its Migration.