
Dr Walter Bartl
Visiting Research Fellow, January - March 2024
Home Institution: Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg
Walter Bartl is project coordinator at the Institute for Higher Education Research Halle-Wittenberg and senior lecturer at the Institute of Sociology at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. He studied sociology and political science at the Universities of Potsdam and Lancaster. He received his PhD in sociology from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg where he also obtained his postdoctoral lecture qualification (Habilitation). His research interests include the genesis and use of numbers in politics, spatial justice research, and knowledge transfer. Recently, he co-edited a book on The Global Politics of Census Taking: Quantifying Populations, Institutional Autonomy, Innovation (together with Christian Suter and Alberto Veira-Ramos) that is forthcoming with Routledge in 2024.Recently, he was a vising fellow at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and at the NCCR – on the move at the University of Geneva.
Project title: Commitments to Asylum Norms and Policies of Physical Responsibility Sharing
While the majority of states have committed to global asylum norms, and some have even included similar commitments in their national constitutions, the contributions of states to physical responsibility sharing are highly unequal. This raises the question of fair shares of political territories, not only at the international level but also within individual nations. The settlement pattern of asylum seekers naturally gravitates toward urban areas, where state infrastructure and populations are more diverse. Responding to this settlement trend, several European states have implemented refugee dispersal policies aimed at altering this pattern. However, in doing so, they face the challenge of striking a balance between the right of refugees to free movement and the policy interests they pursue. These policies significantly impact both refugees and local communities, influencing not only refugee rights but also shaping the political geography of immigration politics.
There remains a lack of comprehensive understanding regarding these refugee dispersal policies. To address this gap, the research project at IASH aims to make three key contributions: Developing a conceptualization of refugee dispersal policies as systems of sub-national responsibility-sharing within asylum governance. Collecting data on the dispersal policies of 30 European states to create an original policy index measuring the restrictiveness of dispersal policies. Explaining cross-country (and potentially historical) variations in the restrictiveness of dispersal policies. Special attention will be given to the relationship between states' commitment to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and/or the 1967 Protocol, their contributions to international responsibility sharing, and their domestic policy regarding physical responsibility sharing in asylum policy. Additionally, a second line of inquiry will explore notions of spatial justice expressed within the text of national constitutions.