Leaders and Shirkers: Comparing Refugee Rights in Liberal States

Refugee protection efforts have been shown to suffer from substantial collective action problems due to the capacity of restrictive policy measures adopted by one region to shift refugee responsibilities to other regions. Host state’s protection obligations are only triggered once a refugee comes within its jurisdiction.  The procedures for dealing with such obligations at that point are generally lengthy and costly for host countries.  Most states do not see themselves being under similar  obligations for forced migrants outside their territory., Accordingly, there is an incentive for governments to use restrictive policies unilaterally in an attempt to limit the number of forced migrants reaching their borders, while at least indirectly, encouraging migrants to seek protection elsewhere.  The new IMPALA (International Migration Policy And Law Analysis) dataset on humanitarian migration policy offers unprecedented opportunities for researchers to systematically examine such dynamics.  It enables researchers to assess the relative restrictiveness of refugee policies across states and over time.  This paper will analyse asylum and refugee rights across key dimensions (such as on detention, the interpretation of the refugee definition, appeal procedures, etc.) in a sub-set of OECD countries in Europe, North America and the Pacific region with the aim to compare and contrast refugee protection efforts across countries and over time, to explain policy trends and test claims about international free-riding.