Refugee Sponsorship’s Unrealised Objectives and Unanticipated Benefits: A New Perspective on the Meaning of “Complementary” Pathways?

Abstract

Abstract This article adds new knowledge to sponsorship literature by uniquely examining sponsorship’s potential to deliver systemic benefits to the international refugee protection regime. While there are myriad sponsorship actors with manifold motivations, this article draws on an empirical study to show that civil society organisations are the most likely actors to support sponsorship for its capacity to strengthen refugee protection systems. I argue that sponsorship has facilitated systemic benefits but not in the ways civil society envisaged. Civil society aims to use sponsorship to significantly increase resettlement numbers and shift the national electorate’s attitudes to refugees from hostile to welcoming to place pressure on governments to adopt more compassionate refugee policies. However, these outcomes have not been achieved and are unlikely to manifest because sponsorship is not significantly scaling and, in some countries, is stagnating or declining. Nevertheless, sponsorship has had unanticipated benefits for refugee protection systems. Sponsorship has provided resettlement for refugee populations that otherwise have no access to resettlement, strengthened civil society enabling more effective advocacy for refugees and introduced a unique state-citizen infrastructure for resisting anti-refugee violence. These findings provide new perspectives on the meaning of “complementarity” in defining and debating the role of complementary pathways.