How to read the chart above, and the words it uses (for hosted here).
How to read the data
Each country’s figure is the number of recognised refugees living there at the end of the year. Larger, richer countries are not always the ones hosting most. Regional and world lines add up the countries that report.
Key terms
Refugee
A person who has fled across a border from persecution or war and is recognised as such.
Host country
The country where a refugee currently lives.
UNHCR
The United Nations refugee agency, which gathers the counts.
Who has a stake
Each interest, then readings from the Catholic library and the Classics library that bear on it, oldest first. Choose a group to read.
Safety from what they fled, a lawful place to stay, work, schooling for their children, and the hope of going home or of a settled life.
Their own safety and order, housing, schools, clinics and jobs, and the cohesion of the place. Hosting often falls on neighbouring communities that may themselves be poor. Concern for safety is a legitimate interest; it says nothing about whether any particular refugee is a danger.
Order at the border, lawful conditions of entry and stay, public budgets, and answerability to their own citizens, alongside their commitments to those who ask for protection.
Its people’s safety and the chance of their return, the loss of skills when many leave, and the ties and support that migrants keep with home.
Whether and how to share the costs or to resettle people, weighed against their own capacity and the consent of their public.
For discussion
What does a host community owe the stranger, and what may it ask in return for its own safety and order?
How should a government weigh the claim of those who flee against its answerability to its own citizens?
If hosting falls mostly on the neighbours of a crisis, what do better-off countries farther away owe, and to whom?
