refoulement

English

Etymology

Borrowed from French refoulement (“act of pushing something back (as gunpowder into a gun barrel, or water by a dam); act of water overflowing; forced relocation of a group of people; forced repatriation of asylum-seekers or refugees”), from refouler (“to cause to flow or turn back; to repress, suppress; to repulse; to trample on again”) (from re- (prefix meaning ‘again’) + fouler (“to impress, stamp; to trample, walk on; to mistreat, oppress”) (ultimately from Medieval Latin fullare (“to make cloth denser and firmer by soaking, beating and pressing, to full”), from Latin fullō (“one who fulls cloth, fuller”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleh₃- (“to blow; to inflate, swell”)) + -ment (suffix forming nouns from verbs, usually denoting resulting actions or states).[1]

Pronunciation

Noun

refoulement (countable and uncountable, plural refoulements)

  1. (international law, uncountable) Rendition of a person to an area (chiefly their country of origin) where they will face mistreatment, for example, expulsion of refugees into a war zone; (countable) an instance of this.
    Antonym: non-refoulement
    • 2020 August 26, Gabriel Ewepu-Abuja, “AYM [Afrika Youth Movement] receives UNESCO’s Support to Create Awareness on Migration, COVID-19 in Nigeria, 7 Others”, in Vanguard‎, Lagos, Nigeria: Vanguard Media:
      He also expressed concern that at the same time there could be cases of refoulement with asylum seekers being returned to their countries of origin, where they are at risk of persecution and in an apparent breach of international law.
  2. (archaic, uncountable) The forced relocation of a group of people; (countable) an instance of this.

Alternative forms

Translations

References
  1. “refoulement, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, March 2022; “refoulement, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

French

Etymology

refouler +‎ -ment

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /ʁə.ful.mɑ̃/
  • Audio(file)

Noun

refoulement m (usually uncountable, plural refoulements)

  1. (aviation) push back (air pushing back on an airframe)
  2. psychological repression
  3. (refugee law) in refugee law, the term for a country returning a refugee or refugee claimant to the country of origin or to danger; refoulment

Antonyms

Further reading
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