Private sponsorship in refugee admission: Standard in Canada, trend in Germany?

[Introduction] In Germany, a new program for refugee resettlement with the involvement of private actors is currently being tested.1,2 The controversially discussed pilot project points to a trend towards privatizing refugee reception policies – a model that was established in Canada more than 40 years ago and is a central pillar of its refugee policy. In this article, we compare programs of public-private cooperation in Germany and Canada and examine the relationship between the state and civil society with regard to these active refugee reception policies: In what ways is private sponsorship taking on tasks in the field of refugee policy that generally fall within the scope of state responsibility? And can the Canadian model be a prototype for German refugee policies?