Abstract

This article examines the relations between national interest and norms by tracing the views of the United States toward non-refoulement from 1945 to 1951. Using a constructivist approach, this article rejects a widely held assumption that national interest and norms are constraints to each other, and argues that national interest and norms constitute and shape each other. This article demonstrates that securitization of forced migration in a wider US national interest did not undermine non-refoulement norms during the early Cold War period, in contrast to the securitization of forced migration for narrow domestic national interest that advocated forceful repatriation of refugees and asylum seekers to the country of persecution. Studying the role of non-state actors, this article suggests that civil societies within the United States exerted influence on the Congress and the Truman administration to shape the US attitudes to non-refoulement, while intergovernmental and international organizations failed to exert an independent influence on the US national interests and contribute to the development of non-refoulement as a new norm.