The book provides a comprehensive legal assessment of four different types of safe pathways to protection in the EU: the asylum visa, resettlement, ad hoc humanitarian admission and sponsorship programs. It investigates the effects these pathways can have on the asylum paradox, that is the paradoxical interplay in current EU asylum policy between the granting of territorial protection on the one hand and the prevention of access to territory on the other.

Based on the assumption, that the asylum paradox is the result of a conflict of responsibility principles, the book develops an analytical tool, a responsibility framework, for the analysis and assessment. Overall, the book identifies normative differences, depending on the specific pathway and its details of implementation.