Abstract
The migration crisis affecting Europe since the war in Syria began is the greatest challenge facing our continent since the Second World War. In the last three years, the number of applicants for international protection in Spain has grown exponentially. Our refugee system has been unable to scale up its supply at the same rate and 20,000 requests have accumulated without response. In addition, the EU has set up a mechanism to relocate 160,000 asylum seekers from Greece and Italy in the rest of the member states (hotspot approach). Of the 17,337 refugees Spain pledged to offer asylum before September 2017, only 744 have been received so far. This article analyzes the strategy the Spanish government has followed to increase the housing capacity of our refugee system. The main conclusion drawn from this case study is that the strategy of expanding supply based on outsourcing the refugee system via subsidies to NGOs is ineffective and, therefore, unsustainable. If the Spanish government wants to solve this problem it will have to launch a program to build new public refugee centers in the short to medium term. This article develops recommendations for the sustainable planning of this plan in the construction system (prefabrication) and in terms of the need to set minimum standards for the centers.
Highlights
Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 14.1)
The New Urban Agenda states that “ the movement of large populations into towns and cities poses a variety of challenges, it can bring significant social, economic and cultural contributions to urban life” (28th bullet point), which obviously impact on the sustainable development of cities
We are going to use the case study as our methodological research tool to analyze the policies developed by the central Spanish government to provide accommodations for international protection seekers in the first stage of the integration and reception process, especially the strategy developed by the central administration to increase the supply of lodgings to cover the major increase in demand over the past three years
Summary
Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 14.1). Neither the Refugee Convention (Geneva 1951) nor its additional Protocol (New York 1967) nor any other standard of international law deals with how this should be done. It is the responsibility of sovereign states to regulate based on the obligations acquired at the international level as included in the Spanish Constitution of 1978 Available online: http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/ files/publications/other/dp-global-refugee-policy-conference.pdf (accessed on 7 August 2015). Available online: http://jrs.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/10/30/jrs.feu032.full.pdf?keytype= ref%2520&ijkey=CcbhCsDFpOK0mIB (accessed on 31 May 2017). [CrossRef]
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