Asylum Cooperation Research Articles

COVID-19, wall building, and the effects on Migrant Protection Protocols by the Trump administration: the spectacle of the worsening human rights disaster on the Mexico-U.S. border

The COVID-19 pandemic has repercussions well beyond the confines of borders. National border policies can thwart international efforts to combat the spread of infectious diseases. These problems are especially relevant for the United States with the spectacle of President Trump’s “big, beautiful border wall” used as leverage to maintain political and economic power domestically and globally while confronting the coronavirus pandemic. The focus of this paper is the implementation of Trump’s Zero Tolerance Policy, Migrant Protection Protocols, and the Asylum Cooperation Agreement, all aimed primarily at migrants and refugees, the homo sacer, from Central America to prevent entrance into the U.S. using the border security apparatus. These policies have adverse consequences for people dwelling throughout the hemisphere, particularly borderlanders, as the COVID-19 pandemic spreads into the Americas.

Understanding European asylum cooperation under the Schengen/Dublin system: a public goods framework

Recent developments in European Union (EU) asylum cooperation raise important questions about the nature of cooperation and the potential problems facing collective action in the realm of EU internal security. The emergence and the subsequent stability of the Schengen/Dublin system is especially puzzling, given the highly inequitable distribution of costs and benefits that this system entails among the participating states and begs the question as to why those states that are likely to face a disproportionate ‘burden’ under the system would have agreed to it. This article seeks to provide an alternative approach to answering this question by drawing on a public goods framework. We argue that a simple focus on free-riding and exploitation dynamics, as emphasized in the traditional collective action literature, falls short as an explanation and instead demonstrates how more recent theoretical contributions to the public goods literature can offer new insights into the origin and evolution in cooperation in this sensitive policy area.

Asylum Cooperation among Asymmetric Countries

This article argues that cooperation to tackle the consequences of large asylum migration inflows is possible only among fairly symmetrical countries. Highly asymmetric countries have no incentives to join and remain in a stable coalition. The distinction between cost and spillover asymmetries shows that financial transfers may release constraints on participation, and thus make asylum cooperation feasible, only if they are focused on tackling this asymmetry. This result becomes relevant when applied to the context of the enlarged European Union. I argue that there is the potential for a future cooperative burden-sharing regime for asylum, particularly if unanimity is replaced by the double majority principle in European Council votes, as suggested in the EU reform treaty.

Which European Public Order? Sources of Imbalance in the European Area of Freedom, Security and Justice1

The creation of the Single European Market has been accompanied by an intense discussion on whether market-creating measures have been privileged over market-correcting ones by the institutional system of the EU. The creation of an ‘Area of Freedom, Security and Justice’ (AFSJ) launched by the Treaty of Amsterdam poses a similar question which, however, has remained heavily under-researched: will the balance between policing competencies and individual rights shift towards the former at the expense of the latter? Recent work on the ‘new raison d’état’ and the strengthening of national executives in processes of Europeanisation points in this direction. This essay explores the parallels between the Common Market and the AFSJ with regard to the relationship between the structures and substance of governance. The balance between security and individual rights is scrutinised in the main pillars of the AFSJ: asylum cooperation, judicial cooperation in criminal matters and police cooperation.

'Passing the Buck': European Union Refugee Policies towards Central and Eastern Europe

In the light of the abolition of border controls in the internal market, EU member states have developed a common system of redistribution for the treatment of asylum seekers. The central instrument of this is the 'safe third country' rule. While much of the contemporary debate on Western European asylum policies concentrates on the exclusionary character of this new instrument, only little attention is paid to its impact on the Union's neighbouring states. This article addresses the extent to which intergovernmental harmonizations in asylum and immigration matters have expanded to thefieldof external relations and triggered the adoption of corresponding policies in other European states. Here, it distinguishes between the transborder effects of intergovernmental forms of cooperation (Schengen, TREVI), activities under the Third Pillar of the European Union, and bilateral processes between EU Member States and third countries. The paper shows that the expanding use of the 'safe third country' rule implies the unquestioned incorporation of a 'wider' Europe into this new system of asylum co-operation, which not only shifts its borders eastward but also weakens the international commitment to refugee protection.