Teaming Up or Tearing Apart? Interstate Solidarity and Refugee Protection in the EU

The controversial results of EU migration governance call for a normative analysis of the constraints that member states should respect when it comes to responsibility sharing for the protection of refugees. By taking a novel internationalist approach to the ethics of migration, this paper aims at providing a normative characterisation of existing duties among EU host states in response to their failure to deliver fair and effective responsibility sharing solutions in asylum matters. My aim is to lay the foundations for a normative argument about interstate obligations based on a duty of solidarity. Consistent with this, I first provide an overview of EU asylum practices, underlining the missing link between the commitment to solidarity and the achievement of fair sharing mechanisms. In the second part, I examine the concept of solidarity by defining performative, attitudinal, and moral conditions for solidary interstate action. In the third and last part, I define the process leading to solidarity in the EU based on the notion of team reasoning. In particular, I argue that solidary action is possible when each member of a self-identified group of states decides to act as a member of a team. My conclusion is that team reasoning shows the course of action that might generate interstate solidarity in EU asylum policies.