Why refugee burden-sharing initiatives fail: public goods, free-riding and symbolic solidarity in the EU

Traditionally, differences in states’ refugee protection contributions have been attributed to the variation in countries’ structural pull-factors such as their geographic location. However, policy choices, such as Germany's decision to open its borders for Syrian refugees in 2015, can also have a significant impact on the number of arrivals and constitute a puzzle that traditional approaches struggle to explain. This paper demonstrates that viewing refugee burden-sharing through the lens of public goods theory can provide significant insights about refugee protection dynamics in the EU, in particular in the context of a sudden mass influx of migrants that threatens internal security. By highlighting how free-riding and burden-shifting dynamics can undermine the provision of collective goods during a refugee crisis, a public goods approach can advance our understanding of why countries sometimes accept disproportionate responsibilities for forced migrants and how the effectiveness of EU refugee burden-sharing instruments can, and should, be strengthened.