Asylum Policy Research Articles

‘At least they are welcome in my home!’ Contentious hospitality in home accommodation of asylum seekers in Finland

ABSTRACT This article discusses hospitality towards asylum seekers as a political and contentious act. Accommodating asylum seekers in local homes is one of the pro-asylum mobilisations that emerged across Europe following the ‘summer of migration’. Based on interviews with local hosts in Finland, this article demonstrates that offering accommodation is often motivated by an explicit mistrust in state asylum policies and a will to make a statement in support of the right to asylum. Home accommodation challenges the norm of housing asylum seekers in reception centres, isolated from the rest of society. Thus, it provides valuable social and spatial resources in the struggle for asylum. Departing from the understanding that questions of asylum and home are inherently political, and following feminist citizenship theorisation that connects the domestic with the political, this article and the concept contentious hospitality contribute to challenging the discursive division between public and private.

Exploring the link between personality traits and European attitudes towards refugees

Attitudes towards refugees are formed via complex interactions between socioeconomic factors, perceptions of cultural threat and personality traits. Yet despite the widespread social changes the European refugee situation has generated throughout the continent, no previous literature has adequately examined these interactions in that context. This study addressed that gap by testing the relationship between personality traits and European attitudes towards refugees in the context of the European refugee crisis by conducting an ordinal regression analysis of data obtained from online surveys that we distributed in four European countries (N = 6,000).Questions were aligned with descriptors used in the Five Factor model of personality traits and a proxy of the Honesty-Humility trait used in the HEXACO model. Our results indicate that Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Honesty-Humility are negatively associated with refugee prejudice. Findings about Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness are mixed. Moreover, our results revealed that intercultural contact has a positive impact on attitudes towards refugees and that the valence of this contact plays a more significant role than the frequency of contact. Given that attitudes towards refugees have been found to correlate with asylum policy preferences, these discoveries are of considerable value to people working in asylum policy settings, as they provide them with a more nuanced understanding of the factors influencing election results; especially during a period where refugee resettlement is a salient issue.

Attitudes Toward Asylum Policy in a Divided Europe: Diverging Contexts, Diverging Attitudes?

The large inflow of asylum-seekers in recent years has heralded a diversification in adopted asylum policies across European societies. Although a growing body of research has addressed these versatile approaches and their implications for the European integration project, insight into the social basis of these restrictive or open asylum policies remains underdeveloped. Hence, the current study provides detailed insight into public preferences for asylum policies and offers a new understanding of how these attitudes are affected by diverging socio-economic realities across Europe. In addition, this paper considers the role of individual factors that coincide with publicly adopted frames in contemporary asylum debates. In particular, to explain how contextual differences reflect on opinion climates, the impacts of the policy, economic, and migratory context are studied. On the individual-level, we focus on threat perception and human values, which represent humanitarian, economic, and cultural frames. To explore these relations, data on 20 countries from the European Social Survey Round 8 (2016) are analyzed through a multilevel structural equation modeling approach. Results indicate that, on the contextual-level, only unemployment rates have a significant impact and, rather surprisingly, lower unemployment rates provoke a more negative opinion climate. Yet, this relationship seems to be largely driven by some specific countries that are characterized by large unemployment rates and relatively positive opinion climates simultaneously. The migratory and policy context, on the other hand, do not influence attitudes toward asylum policy. This indicates that it is not necessarily the countries facing the largest inflow of asylum-seekers or issuing the most positive decisions on asylum applications that have the most restrictive opinion climates. As shown by the important roles of human values and threat perceptions, which represent widely adopted frames, public discourses seem much more important in explaining attitudes toward asylum policy across Europe.

The Newly-Recognised Refugees Most at Risk of Homelessness in England

AbstractThe contribution of this paper is to analyse statistical data to assess whether homelessness among people who have recently been granted refugee status in England is concentrated amongst particular groups of these refugees. The methodology was quantitative analysis using logistic regression of the Home Office’s Survey of New Refugees (SNR), which they carried out in 2005-7. We tested the relative role played by pre-migration demographic factors, post-migration life experience factors, and government immigration policy in accounting for patterns found, and drew on literature to interpret the meaning of our statistical results. Our analysis clearly suggests that refugee and asylum policy contribute to homelessness among newly-recognised refugees. This interpretation is supported by the qualitative evidence from services providing assistance to refugees, and evidence put to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Refugees (2017). Action to address the housing problems of refugees moving on from accommodation provided for asylum seekers should be considered a high policy priority, albeit that associations between homelessness, household size, and age also present intervention opportunities.

How do refugees and asylum-seekers experience Huddersfield as a ‘town of sanctuary’?

This research aims to understand the experience of asylum-seekers and refugees (ASRs) within the juxtapositional climate of welcome, as promoted by the City of Sanctuary (CoS) movement, and deterrence, as per asylum policies, within a dispersal area that has signed up to support the CoS aims. The literature review highlights that ASRs face many challenges to establishing themselves in their new communities; many of which are institutionalised under the dispersal policy as they are often dispersed to areas of social deprivation. Aside from enabling relationship development between ASRs and local people through sanctuary practices, the literature offers little about the practical ways that CoS benefits ASRs and there is no consensus that the movement mitigates the challenges they face. The research used a phenomenological strategy as it aimed to build a clear picture of how things exist from the perspectives of the participants. It adopted an interpretivist paradigm using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Data was collected from three participants using semi-structured interviews. The participants identified as ASRs in line with policy definitions and were aged between 23 and 42 years. The research revealed that despite the adverse effects associated with dispersal, it is not always perceived negatively by ASRs and suggests that ASRs have some level of confidence in the Home Office’s dispersal decision. Liminality emerged as one aspect of the asylum process that adversely impacts both the present and future prospect of ASRs’ ability to settle into their community and plan for their future. It has also revealed that the participants' ideal of sanctuary, is more than the notion of safety. It includes being understood and the perceived feeling that they can trust those around them; an ideal of sanctuary contrary to the feeling that the asylum system produces.

When public opinion drives national asylum policymaking: The case of Kurdish asylum seekers in Japan

AbstractHow does public opinion influence national asylum policymaking? This article analyses the change in Japan's asylum policy towards Kurdish asylum seekers from Turkey in the mid‐2000s. Although the conservative government of Japan has maintained a strict asylum policy, the government exceptionally applied an ad hoc and more generous policy to Kurdish asylum seekers. After the deportation of two Kurdish asylum seekers to Turkey was politicised in the mid‐2000s, Japan's stringent asylum policy was continuously attacked by criticisms, expressions of doubt, and requests for reform from the public, media, humanitarian activists, and opposition parties. As a result of mounting public criticism, the government suspended the deportation of Kurdish asylum seekers and expanded the opportunities for them to be pardoned from deportation. In Japan and many other democracies, asylum policymaking is complex, but the study concludes that public opinions can be an important factor in its evolution. Certainly, it has significantly influenced the change in Japan's policy towards Kurdish asylum seekers in the mid‐2000s.

Seeking Asylum in Germany: Do Human and Social Capital Determine the Outcome of Asylum Procedures?

Abstract Although the Refugee Convention and European asylum legislation state that decisions regarding asylum applications should be determined solely based on persecution and other human rights violations, the outcomes of asylum procedures may be subject to socioeconomic selectivity. This article is the first to analyse whether the human and social capital of asylum-seekers affect the results of decisions regarding their asylum applications and the length of asylum procedures based on a comprehensive longitudinal survey of 5,300 refugees in Germany. We find that socioeconomic and social capital resources increase the probability of approval of asylum applications and reduce the length of asylum procedures. Moreover, human capital is particularly rewarding for asylum-seekers from countries subject to severe political and civil rights violations, whereas social networks are more conducive when the case for protection is rather difficult to prove. Finally, asylum-seekers with a higher socioeconomic status before migration seem to be better positioned to efficiently instrumentalize social networks during the asylum process. Throughout the analysis, we control for variables that capture the violation of human rights and other forms of violence, changes in asylum policies and country-of-origin-specific fixed effects. The results are robust to different specifications and are representative for asylum-seekers arriving in Germany between 2013 and 2016. Altogether, similar to other claim-making processes, the asylum process seems to promote social inequality due to socioeconomic and social capital resources.

Captive While Waiting to Be Free: Legal Violence and LGBTQ Asylum Applicant Experiences in the USA

In this article, I demonstrate how US asylum practices and immigration regulations impact lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) asylum applicants in distinct and traumatic ways. I conducted interviews with 18 LGBTQ applicants from Caribbean and African countries in 2018. In the analysis, I show that legal mechanisms intended to curb fraud—including work restrictions and shifting asylum timelines—produce traumatic outcomes for LGBTQ asylum applicants in four ways: isolation and loneliness, prolonged uncertainty, mental vulnerability, and physical vulnerability. This trauma is compounded by broader systems of homophobia and transphobia that make disclosing gender identity and sexual orientation difficult and prevent the development of protective social networks within immigrant communities and white, US-born LGBTQ spaces. I argue that legal procedures are not necessarily preventing or flushing out fraudulent cases; they serve as regulatory practices predicated on heteronormativity and inflict legal violence on LGBTQ asylum applicants. This work has implications not only for the scholarly study of sexuality and immigration, but also for immigration reform, starting from how particular kinds of migration are conceptualized at the bureaucratic level. Reconceptualizing asylum policy will require a shift in focus from fraud to protection, from assuming illegitimacy to ensuring human rights for all.

Support for rejection and reception policies toward asylum seekers in Italy: The role of conservative ideologies and legitimizing myths

ABSTRACT Based on Social Dominance Theory (SDT), this study investigates the relationships between ideologically conservative attitudes (social dominance orientation, SDO; right-wing authoritarianism, RWA), legitimizing myths (false belief in asylum seekers as bogus; perception of in-group threats), and citizens’ support for restricted reception and rejection of asylum policies. A sample of 539 people living in Italy filled in an anonymous questionnaire administered using a cross-sectional design. The results support the expectations, showing that people high in SDO and RWA were more likely to hold the belief that asylum seekers are making false claims and to perceive that the latter pose a threat to the in-group, which in turn increased support for both of restrictive policies. Findings suggest that conservative ideologies can positively affect citizens’ support for restrictive asylum seeker policies based on both rejection and restricted reception by supplying ideological justification for not accommodating them in the host society.

The Unintended Consequences of U.S. Asylum Policy

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump ran on a platform in which he vowed to fight illegal immigration, famously promising to build a wall along the southern border of the United Stat...

4 Migration research and analysis: Growth, reach and recent contributions

4 Migration research and analysis: Growth, reach and recent contributions

Holding the European Asylum Support Office Accountable for its role in Asylum Decision-Making: Mission Impossible?

AbstractThe Common European Asylum System (CEAS) seeks to harmonize national asylum procedures. The initial implementation design of the CEAS, reflective of the theory of executive federalism, foresaw that national authorities were to conduct asylum processing and implement the harmonized norms. The implementation design of the EU asylum policy has, nevertheless, started to shift. An integrated European administration is emerging. One area this is pronounced in is asylum decision-making, where patterns of joint implementation have surfaced. This term broadly refers to staff and experts deployed by the European Asylum Support Office (EASO), an EU agency, working alongside national administrators, including on the processing of asylum claims. This Article scrutinizes the emergence of joint implementation patterns in EU asylum policy and the resulting accountability challenge, drawing both from legal analysis and political science theories. I also refer to administrative practice as documented in secondary sources. EASO is currently subject to a mosaic of accountability processes. Two main pitfalls emerge: the intricate balance between accountability and independence; and accessibility for the individual. Against this backdrop, I focus on extra-judicial accountability through the European Ombudsman which, combined with the envisaged internal “individual complaints mechanism” within EASO, could go some way in ensuring applicants’ procedural rights.

Associative Solidarity, Relational Goods, and Autonomy for Refugees: What Does it Mean to Stand in Solidarity with Refugees?

Associative Solidarity, Relational Goods, and Autonomy for Refugees: What Does it Mean to Stand in Solidarity with Refugees?

The EU Regulatory Competition in Asylum Law

Abstract This paper deals with the principle of subsidiarity in asylum law. It exposes some of the most important ‘push’ factors that have been considered by the European Union (EU) as arguments for the centralisation of asylum law. Through the application of an economic approach, this text examines the need for harmonization of asylum standards to reach the goal established in Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union. An economic methodology is used to investigate the application of the subsidiarity principle by considering some of the most important economic criteria for both centralisation and decentralisation, and by applying the findings to the asylum law. Specifically, this paper considers the Tiebout model, the problem of the ‘race to the bottom’, the reduction of transaction costs, and the importance of the protection of refugee human rights. These theories are commonly used in the cases of a specific issue with a transboundary nature, which produces [negative] international externalities. In addition, they reflect the significance of equal conditions within the EU Member States as well as the role of the EU as a sui generis organisation protecting human rights. It should be noted that this paper does not deal with the basic normative question of whether or not refugees deserve protection, but it aims to expose the advantages and disadvantages of an EU asylum policy. In its conclusion, the paper discusses the advantages of a centralised EU policy that also allows, within certain conditions, some type of competition between the Member States.

Reconfiguring the Deserving Refugee: Cultural Categories of Worth and the Making of Refugee Policy

Studies on asylum give little explanatory power to the role of categories of worth in how lawmakers formulate asylum law in lack of a clear policy framework for determining eligibility for asylum status. This article contends that during periods of policy upheaval, distinctions of worth shift to forefront lawmaking: lawmakers renegotiate the moral boundaries between categories of deserving and undeserving refugees to give content in ambiguous law. In the United States, lawmakers drew on the concept of immutability—the notion that to be worthy of protection you must be targeted on account of traits beyond your control to change—to distinguish between “undeserving” Central Americans fleeing civil wars and gang violence, and “deserving” women subjected to gender violence. Understanding how categories of worth inform the formulation and implementation of law in periods of policy upheaval advances understandings of asylum policy and expands scholarship on the role of ideas about worth in processes of institutional change.

Sovereignty-based Arguments and the European Asylum System: Searching for a European Constitutional Moment?

Abstract The article expresses a twofold claim: a) sovereignty-based argument finds a fertile ground in EU’s weaknesses in terms of asylum strategy and b) sovereignty arguments in asylum issues can (and must) be confronted with the legal instruments afforded by the existing framework of EU law. To develop the argument, this article is divided into two parts. The first part addresses sovereignism in asylum law and policies, by exploring sovereignist claims and their translation into domestic legislation and policies, with specific reference to the Italian context. It then analyses the recent changes in asylum strategy, within the EU, to test to what extent arguments based on sovereignty stand as a bulwark against full cooperation among EU member states. In the second part, the article examines the legal instruments that EU institution can use and develop to implement solidarity and reduce the margin for the use of sovereignty-based arguments in asylum policies.

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield: Narratives on the road to asylum.

This study aimed to explore the ecological influences on subjective well-being identified by current and former community-dwelling asylum seekers engaged in the process of Refugee Status Determination in Australia. This article presents the qualitative component of a prospective mixed-methods study of 131 asylum seekers and refugees (T1, N = 131; T2, N = 56). The Framework Analysis method was employed to qualitatively analyse the narrative data derived from 187 semi-structured interviews documenting pre-, peri-, and post-migration experiences, and the impact of Australia's asylum policies and procedures. Four overarching themes comprising 15 sub-themes emerged: The Refugee Status Determination process (Waiting; Uncertainty; Worry); Psychosocial factors (Un/employment & gainful activity; Medicare; Accommodation; Family separation & loneliness; Loss); Health and well-being (Mental health; Physical health & somatic issues; Hopelessness; Helplessness); and Protective factors (Hope; Support & social connectivity; Religion). The complex interface between the Refugee Status Determination process, un/employment, and mental health concerns was the most salient finding. Policy implications are discussed in relation to the application of the Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees and the Guidelines on the Judicial Approach to Expert Medical Evidence.

Asylum Migration to the Developed World: Persecution, Incentives, and Policy

The European migration crisis of 2015–2016 and the migrants from Central America gathering on the US border since 2017 have created headlines and presented challenges for Western governments. In this paper, I examine the trends in, and determinants of, the number of asylum seekers applying for refugee status in the developed world. This must be understood against the background of an international policy regime that evolved in response to refugee crises and geopolitical imperatives. While policy has drawn a sharp distinction between refugees and other immigrants, that difference has become increasingly blurred among asylum migrants. In this light, I examine the interplay between migration pressures, public opinion, and asylum policies in recent decades.

Refugee crisis in Europe: determinants of asylum seeking in European countries from 2008–2014

ABSTRACT This article reviews determinants of migration attempts for asylum, using the push/pull factors framework, and examines how well this framework can explain asylum-seeking in European countries. Our analyses show that most pull/push variables offer sound explanations for asylum migration. Different political push variables and proximity variables have robust explanatory power. However, the business cycle measured by unemployment rate of origin and host countries does not explain refugee flow from one country to another. In this regard, asylum-related migrations differ from labour migrations, sensitive to job opportunities. These findings suggest that some countries are set to attract more asylum seekers due to their diverse features, and a higher solidarity among host countries is required to deal with this question at European level. It is also necessary for the EU’s asylum policy to be extended to the area of ‘push factors’, tackling the root causes of asylum-seeking.

Are third states pulling the strings? The impact of domestic policy change on EU-third state cooperation

ABSTRACT Since the launch of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in 2004, scholars have extensively analysed whether the EU’s external governance strategy is effective. In this paper, we propose a change in perspective and argue that domestic policy change in third countries is not merely a possible outcome of the EU-third state cooperation, but also a condition for the design of cooperation between the EU and third states in the first place. ENP states with a track record of domestic policy reforms are more likely to agree on a comprehensive reform agenda with the EU than states with no prior domestic reform activities. This implies that third states are 'pulling the strings', since their willingness and capacity for reform is the crucial determinant of close cooperation with the EU. We probe our argument in the field of asylum policy across all 16 ENP states and proceed with a within-case analysis of asylum policy reform in Moldova.