Global Division of Responsibility Sharing: How Refugee Systems Operate Through the Economic Management of Mobility and Immobility

In 2023, there were approximately 32 million refugees globally. Nine out of the ten countries with the highest origins of refugees were in the Global South; conversely, only three of the ten countries hosting the highest numbers of refugees were in the Global North. In this study, we introduce the conceptual framework of a global division of responsibility sharing to describe how functions of Global North countries as permanent “resettlement” countries and Global South countries as perpetual countries of “asylum” and “transit” constitute unequal burdens with unequal protections for refugees. We illustrate—theoretically and empirically—how the structural positions of state actors in a global network introduce and reify a global division in refugee flows. Empirically, we test and develop this framework with network analysis of refugee flows to countries of asylum from 1990 to 2015 in addition to employing data on monetary donations to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from 2017 to 2021. We (1) provide evidence of the structure and role of intermediary countries in refugee flows and (2) examine how UNHCR monetary aid conditions intermediary countries’ role of routing and transit. We illustrate how network constraints and monetary donations affect and constitute a global division in the management of historic and contemporary international refugee flows and explore the consequences of this global division for refugees’ access to resources and social and human rights.