Why are some countries across the Global North more open and accepting towards refugees than others? How can asymmetrical sympathies and differential treatments be better understood? We search for answers with an expert panel.

The welcoming response of European countries towards Ukrainian refugees from 2022 onwards has been marked by its strength and rapidity. This recent example recalls other moments of openness from past decades: the Western response to Kosovar refugees in 1999, or the response of some countries – including Germany and Canada – to Syrian refugees in 2015. Such responses are striking as they occurred simultaneously with restrictive policies enforced against other groups of protection seekers.

How can we understand moments of openness towards refugees in countries of the Global North? Why do these responses favor some groups and not others? How can we understand asymmetrical sympathies and differential treatment in the response to various groups of protection seekers?

In this episode of The Migration Oxford Podcast we explore these questions and more, in an effort to challenge the global responses to refugee crises and ask how we can make those responses more inclusive.



We welcome Isabelle Lemay, PhD candidate in International Development at the University of Oxford; and Professor Bridget Anderson, Director of Migration Mobilities Bristol, and Professor at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, University of Bristol (and former colleague at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) here at the University of Oxford) to this conversation. We discuss Isabelle’s recent work on the response of Germany to the 2015-2016 refugee crisis, and highlight key representations and perceptions of refugees that have been (re)produced by the media and the public.

For further readings on the concept of deservingness, please see Holmes and Castaneda (2016), at https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12259; for further reading on relatedness and implicatedness, please see Gibney (1999), at https://wayback.archive-it.org/2500/20231024042051/https:/www.fmreview.org/kosovo/gibney

https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/asymmetrical-sympathies-global-norths-response-protection-seekers

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• McNeil, R., Broadhead, J., Boagey, D., (2025), "Asymmetrical Sympathies: the Global North’s Response to Protection Seekers", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/asymmetrical-sympathies-global-norths-response-protection-seekers