Affinity? Poland’s former PM Ewa Kopacz telling lawmakers that 80 out of 160 Christian refugees from Syria that Poland had recently taken in, had left for the West, September, 2015. Czarek Sokolowski / Press Association. All rights reserved.The global refugee regime contains no set of legal rules requiring a fair distribution of refugees between states during a crisis or otherwise. Although the preamble of the 1951 Convention on Refugee Status recognises the need for international cooperation, there is no permanent mechanism to enforce the sharing of responsibility for receiving refugees.
Considering this lack of strong legal obligation, the conditions under which states engage in responsibility-sharing have long been subject to examination by scholars. Some emphasise that states undertake cost-benefit calculations on a case-by-case basis, where the political and economic consequences of receiving refugees determine a state’s willingness to cooperate in responsibility-sharing. Others instead claim that international norms guide state decision-making and influence whether a state finds it appropriate to cooperate in a given situation.
In this article, I consider a further factor which is neglected in analyses of responsibility-sharing for refugees: state identity. By ‘identity’, I mean broadly a state’s self-definition. Using examples of refugee crises in Europe, I suggest that it is worthwhile considering whether state identity shapes responsibility-sharing. My aim is to highlight an interesting avenue for further exploration.
