Refugee Survey Quarterly
Volume 36, Issue 2, 2017, Pages 84-109

The international refugee match: A system that respects refugees' preferences and the priorities of states (Article)

Jones W. , Teytelboym A.
  • a Royal Holloway, University of London, United Kingdom
  • b Institute for New Economic Thinking, Oxford, United Kingdom

Abstract

There is an urgent need to overcome the political deadlock preventing States from substantively participating in burden-sharing in the international refugee regime, and, in particular, finding solutions to the European refugee crisis. We propose a centralised clearinghouse - a "two-sided matching system" - to match refugees with States. Drawing on the success of matching in domains, such as education and healthcare, we outline the principles underlying matching system design and illustrate in general terms how they could be applied to refugee protection. This matching system respects the priorities of States and gives agency to refugees. Matching systems can operate independently or alongside other burden-sharing mechanisms, such as tradable refugee quotas (as suggested by Fernández-Huertas Moraga and Rapoport). We then move to consider two specific empirical cases: international resettlement and the European migrant crisis. © The Author 2017.

Author Keywords

Market design resettlement Matching Europe burden-sharing Forced migration Refugees EU

Index Keywords

international migration resettlement policy refugee Filicophyta European Union Europe forced migration crisis management

Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85021084933&doi=10.1093%2frsq%2fhdx004&partnerID=40&md5=0e86bf56a1223eb5f3032118e61001f4

DOI: 10.1093/rsq/hdx004
ISSN: 10204067
Cited by: 4
Original Language: English