Comment on Lukasz Dziedzic: What Is Owed to Refugees when Attributing Responsibilities to States in Institutionalized Responsibility Sharing Regimes?

This paper comments on a talk given by Lukasz Dziedzic at the 2018 ZiF Workshop "Studying Migration Policies at the Interface Between Empirical Research and Normative Analysis", September 2018, in Bielefeld. Dziedzic addresses an important question: When states form a scheme of fair distribution of refugees, do they have to take into account the interests and preferences of the refugees? Or is getting protection from somewhere the only moral claim that refugees have? Although I don’t disagree with Dziedzic’s conclusions and proposals, I doubt that some of his arguments are useful to justify his conclusions. Furthermore, I claim that the focus on the European Union puts him (and others) at risk of fallacies. Dziedzic’s paper is available under doi: 10.17879/95189437167