Abstract
Following the 2015 refugee crisis, concerns about the integrity and the sustainability of the asylum system have deepened. Policies that aim to deter ingenuine asylum seeking through economic and social rights restrictions, and the swift return of those whose protection claim has been rejected, have consequently increased. However, this goal is in tension with moral claims of asylum seekers during the asylum process, and also with a potential right of rejected asylum seekers to remain, if they have developed social ties in the receiving society during the lengthy asylum process. Taking the perspective of an ethical policy maker, this working paper develops guidelines towards a policy response to the dilemma between maintaining the integrity and sustainability of the asylum system and the moral rights of rejected asylum seekers. The working paper argues that restricting the rights of asylum seekers and reducing the length of the asylum process raise ethical concerns and practical problems. Rejected asylum seekers should be treated differently depending on their normative attitude to the refugee system. Those who have made their claim in good faith should have a social membership-based right to remain in the host society. By contrast, those rejected asylum seekers who have made disingenuous claims in bad faith should be legitimately returned.
Highlights
This working paper engages with the question which rights are owed to rejected asylum seekers
In the post-2015 era policies of toleration and initiatives to regularize irregular migrants are – with few exceptions for workers in key sectors during the Covid19 pandemic – deemed out of question across European Union (EU) member states (Kraler 2018). These restrictive trends have culminated in the heightened ambition of EU states to return rejected asylum seekers, i.e. to return persons who have made a claim for international protection but whose claim has been rejected as an outcome of their asylum process, and who have become irregular migrants
We want to emphasize that our normative proposal is situated at a midlevel between ethics and policy. It is intended as an ethical guideline for policy debates. This contribution addressed the policy dilemma of how to reconcile the moral rights of rejected asylum seekers with the objective to maintain the integrity of the asylum system
Summary
This working paper engages with the question which rights are owed to rejected asylum seekers. Not returning rejected asylum seekers compromises the rationale of the asylum system which is based on an adjudication process, examining the validity of asylum claims, and return those rejected It is with the objective of safeguarding a fragile protection regime in mind that we search for a solution for the policy dilemma concerning rejected asylum seekers: protecting the moral rights of rejected asylum seekers while maintaining the integrity of the current refugee protection system. Engaging with this dilemma the working paper is structured as follows: In a first step, we outline the dilemma in the field of asylum in depth. Before concluding, we consider ethical and practical objections to placing an emphasis on the normative attitudes of migrants in the determination of rights of rejected asylum seekers
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