Burden-Shirking, Burden-Shifting, and Burden-Sharing in the Emergent European Asylum Regime

In: International politics: a journal of transnational issues and global problems, Band 43, Heft 2, S. 219-240

Abstract

When the global refugee protection regime was constructed between the two world wars & was consolidated into the existing regime with the signing of the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, signatories committed to the protection of asylum seekers by refraining to return them to areas where their safety could be in jeopardy. They also recognized the importance of burden-sharing in refugee protection & assistance. Assisting recipient states both through financial & service provision through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, as well as through resettlement & repatriation programs, were formulated as ways to mediate the tensions between the sovereign prerogatives of recipient states on the one hand, & their humanitarian obligations on the other. This paper examines the context & content of these shared global norms with respect to asylum seekers & refugee protection in the EU. It illustrates the development of new practices, absent in the global regime, in the European context & highlights their diffusion to other contexts such as Central & Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean, & North Africa. It highlights patterns of shirking as well as shifting of responsibilities, made possible by the emergent shared norms & argues that these new shared (& partly exported) norms present an uneasy fit with the global regime & stand to weaken it. References. Adapted from the source document.