European Asylum Policy Research Articles

Risk preferences and refugee migration to Europe: An experimental analysis

Although the large majority of Syrians fleeing the civil war remain in neighbouring or nearby countries, others embark on hazardous land or sea crossings in pursuit of the uncertain prospect of obtaining refugee status in Europe. Understanding in what ways Syrian migrants who stay in nearby countries differ from those who seek asylum in Europe can help to better target European asylum policies. We address this issue by combining two experimental databases of refugees in Egypt and Luxembourg. First, we measure original risk preferences on the Egypt sample and show that Cumulative Prospect Theory (CPT) is better suited for modelling refugee behaviour under risk than Expected Utility Theory (EUT). Second, we compare the risk preference parameters of the two samples under the CPT framework and find that, on average, refugees in Egypt are more loss averse and overweight low probabilities more than their counterparts who migrated to Luxembourg. These results suggest a possible self-selection process among refugees migrating to Europe based on their risk preferences, which challenges current policy schemes.

Integrative Organized Hypocrisy? Normative Contentions within the EU and the Refugee Migrant Crisis

In 2015 and 2016, 2.3 million individuals applied for asylum in Europe, the highest number since the creation of the EU. The unprecedented strain on the Common European Asylum policies (CEAS), along with the asymmetric pressure on external border countries and the lack of unified support for border controls, highlighted the tensions between member-state sovereignty and regional competence. According to Lavenex (2018), the Refugee and Migrant Crisis (RMC) was first and foremost a crisis of governance, expressing doubts about the EU’s ability to “fail forward” into further integration in the long-run because of “organised hypocrisy”, an unintended organisational strategy deployed to cope with otherwise irreconcilable differences between normative aspirations and real-life actions concerning asylum. This article revisits Lavenex’s premise of European governance and organised hypocrisy and argues for a more optimistic outlook on European integration. Using the infrastructural Europeanism framework as identified by Pelizza and Loschi (2023), this article argues that despite the legal and legislative gridlocks that surround important issues such as asylum, European integration in relation to asylum is ‘failing forward’ in no small part due to organised hypocrisy and not in spite of it.

Dismantling Hospitality - Literary Representations of EU Asylum Policy in Dina Nayeri’s Refuge

When we refer to nation-states receiving refugees as “host” countries, we necessarily evoke notions of hospitality, which the Oxford Dictionary defines as “the reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers with liberality and goodwill.” Yet the exploration of the impact of contemporary EU asylum policy in Dina Nayeri’s 2017 novel Refuge portrays a system far removed from such adjectives. Based heavily on Nayeri’s own autobiography, and hitherto underrepresented in academic research, the award-winning work portrays the journey of an Iranian refugee in Europe to make sense of her migrant identity, informed by her encounters with fellow members of the Iranian diaspora in the Netherlands. Through the friendships Nayeri’s protagonist forms, a vivid fictional representation is conjured of the damaging human impacts of policy areas such as the EU’s Dublin Regulation, referenced and rephrased in the context of the novel. Drawing from Mireille Rosello, this paper proposes a comparative reading of the legal and fictional texts, as analysed through the prism of host/guest relationships. It seeks to demonstrate the capacity of fiction to give voice to the victims of policy failures, as well to provide an affect-based accompaniment to legislation which by nature excludes the emotive language necessary to comprehensively capturing human experience. Ultimately, it explores how Nayeri’s novel calls into question the very relevance of the language of hospitality used in reference to contemporary European asylum policy.

English ‘iron rod’ welfare versus Italian ‘colander’ welfare: understanding the intra-European mobility strategies of unaccompanied young migrants and refugees

The experiences of unaccompanied young migrants and refugees challenge the idea of a common European asylum policy but also show that traditional welfare typologies used to account for differences in welfare across states fail to account for the lived experiences of this group. They do not consider the shifting categorizations of young migrants in institutional terms, nor how the stratification of their social rights plays out over place and time. Moreover, current welfare typologies give inadequate attention to the increasing intersection of the labour market and opportunities for regularization, the relative importance and role of the state in the welfare mix, and the nexus of access to welfare and immigration enforcement. This article draws on qualitative longitudinal research in England and Italy to argue that rather than experiencing welfare through the lens of Liberal (England) versus Conservative or Mediterranean (Italy) regimes, unaccompanied young migrants and refugees in these countries are better understood as navigating different systems of ‘iron rod welfare’ and ‘colander welfare’. In England, the nexus between welfare and legal status is policed by an iron rod on one side of which exists a plethora of social rights, but on the other the risk of a proactive detention and deportation regime. In Italy, meanwhile, the holes of the colander denote gaps in protection but also possibilities to navigate alternative welfare strategies independently of the state. The ability to act independently of the state is an important but under-theorized capability for this population, for whom the state is a more ambiguous actor than is traditionally considered in European social policy.

Reflections on mental healthcare for an asylum seeker population caught in limbo on the Greek island of Samos.

A psychiatry trainee reflects on a period of work on the Greek island of Samos with the international medical non-governmental organisation Medécins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders, providing mental health and psychosocial support to asylum seekers. The clinic provided services to asylum seekers who were living in a crowded refugee camp, many of whom were experiencing symptoms of severe mental illness. The author reflects on the nature and severity of these presentations, and questions the role of psychiatry in treating mental illness that is clearly exacerbated by circumstances resulting from European asylum policies.

L2 French learning by Eritrean refugee speakers of Tigrinya

AbstractThis study reports data on 47 Tigrinya speaking Eritrean refugees learning French. L2 French proficiency is assessed through the placement test Ev@lang, a standardized grammar test, and fine corpus analyses. Analysis of individual factors shows that, whereas school education, number of years in Switzerland, and French classes attended play no role in proficiency, age penalizes learning and, critically, multilingualism facilitates it. Corpus analyses replicate difficulties commonly reported in the literature with root infinitives, determiner omission and gender errors. Productions also depart from previous reports as we observed a low rate of subject drop, a high rate of gender errors involving animate nouns, and the overuse of the feminine, in line with Tigrinya grammar. Finally, our data provide preliminary evidence of the validity of Ev@lang in assessing French proficiency in refugees, an issue which is becoming critical with the increased role of language skills in European asylum policies.

Why Does No Common European List on Safe Country of Origin Exist Despite Numerous Efforts Aimed at the Harmonisation of European Asylum Policy?

Why Does No Common European List on Safe Country of Origin Exist Despite Numerous Efforts Aimed at the Harmonisation of European Asylum Policy?

Understanding the impact of European asylum and migration policies: A promise of a dignified life

Understanding the impact of European asylum and migration policies: A promise of a dignified life

Consolidating the European asylum regime’s coercive trajectory until the pandemic

How have European asylum policies developed during the COVID-19 pandemic, from the perspective of the long-term political trajectory of the European asylum regime? When the pandemic broke out, EU member states had for three decades been trying to resolve the shortcomings of the 1990 Dublin Convention. The weaknesses in the regime persisted both due to the overloading of frontline member states and the efforts to control secondary flows of asylum seekers within the EU. The pandemic has provided neither a hiatus nor a turning point in this regard but has produced a fluid situation that precipitated the United Kingdom’s withdrawal and the consolidation of the long-term trend of coercion of asylum seekers, between member states and at their external borders.

Disproportionate Surveillance: Technology-Assisted and Automated Decisions in Asylum Applications in the EU?

Abstract Since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 in the United States, the association between migration and security has been continuously strengthened, with multiple States working to tighten their border controls. In the European Union (EU), this trend has been shown by the frequent overlap between asylum application and migration policies and the agenda concerning border control, security, and terrorism. This securitization of migration discourse is claimed to justify the use of controversial practices to examine asylum applications. Against this background, the article reflects on the use of technology-assisted and automated decisions in this area. In particular, it questions whether the existing safeguards provided in the EU data protection framework ensure asylum seekers’ rights to privacy and the protection of personal data. In doing so, the article seeks to offer a more nuanced understanding of European asylum policy and the potential flaws therein that allow individuals’ fundamental rights – enshrined in the EU Charter and the European Convention on Human Rights – to be infringed. In conclusion, the article engages with the debate relating to the use of automated decisions, in particular those based on artificial intelligence, and whether they should be excluded from certain policy areas, such as migration.

Educating ‘others’: Drawing on the collective wisdom of intercultural experts

Forty invited interculturalists (both academics and non‐academics) from nine countries engaged in developing a coherent culture of dialogue and collective action to address the challenge of redefining intercultural education provisions with regard to the needs of refugee children. The method of cooperative inquiry to elicit theoretical and professional expertise from the participants was adopted. This inquiry was based on four dimensions of reflective practice, drawing on experiential, presentational, propositional and practical knowledge. The intercultural experts (seen as ‘co‐researchers’ and/or ‘co‐subjects’) who participated engaged in a rigorous intercultural and reflexive dialogue developed in four distinct phases. The first two phases took place in their own local contexts and the final ones in a forum organised in Greece. During the forum, the participants’ diverse knowledge and experience were renegotiated to ascertain the ‘collective wisdom’ of the group and to address issues of otherness and approaches to refugee education, teachers’ training and mediation. The consensus reached by the participants included the following: the need for local communities to be supported so as to avoid and mitigate any hostility towards refugees; the urgency of a common European asylum policy; the realisation of the ‘other’ as a social construct based on hierarchical connotations and defined by diverse (meta)narratives; the urgency for providing formal/mainstream education to secure a pathway to social citizenship for refugees; the adoption of culturally responsive education practices to empower intercultural learning using refugee children’s own cultural knowledge and collaborating with parents; and the need for systemic intercultural and mediation training for teachers.

Health, time, and space constraints: The drawn‐out story of Syrian transient itinerants seeking asylum in Greece

AbstractThe effective provision of healthcare for asylum seekers is not only a concern for Syrians in Greece but also goes to the heart of European refugee policy. Through secondary data analysis, this article examines how underlying deficiencies in European asylum policies in Greece have translated into challenging life conditions and healthcare barriers for Syrian asylum claimants in Greece. While time and space have been two dimensions that directly constrain the lives of Syrian asylum seekers, the imbalance of care among different healthcare providers has also led to healthcare constraints. The imbalance of care arising from an abundance of uncoordinated functionaries managing the migrants’ healthcare has caused tensions and confusion in healthcare deployment. This article argues that it is more appropriate to refer to Syrian asylum seekers in Greece as Syrian transient itinerants seeking asylum. The aim of the new term is to make the invisible visible—that is, to highlight the fact that the protection of Syrian asylum seekers is not always fully guaranteed in Greece.

Impact of the new pact on migration and asylum on child refugees and unaccompanied minors

In the wake of the refugee and migration crisis in 2015, the European Union changed its legislation with a view to improving the protection of refugees, as well as children and unaccompanied minors. As part of the changes, the European Commission proposed the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, which drastically amends the Common European Asylum Policy. The Commission also withdrew the Proposal to amend the Dublin III Regulation on grounds of being contrary to the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union concerning the transfer of a child to the country of first entry. The New Pact on Migration and Asylum envisages procedures to take place at the external borders of the EU and exempts unaccompanied children and children under the age of twelve together with their families from border procedures. Such setting of the age limit of a child outright contradicts the definition of a child under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, which determine it as any person under the age of eighteen is considered a child. A burning issue is the current practice of treating asylum-seeking children and minors principally as asylum seekers and not children. While they may be asylum seekers, they are children and minors first, and as such must be protected primarily by international law relating to their protection. Although the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees also applies to children, nowhere is the term refugee child explicitly defined. Comparably, while the Convention on the Rights of the Child does recognize the term refugee child, it provides limited guidance to States Parties to identifying and assessing the refugee status of the child. In arguing that the New Pact on Migration and Asylum should be in line with international refugee law and the Convention on the Rights of the Child and abide by the principle of the best interest of the child, this paper will attempt to answer the following: Is the New Pact on Asylum and Migration in compliance with the principle of the best interests of the child? Does it protect the asylum-seeking child as required by international and European law?

The End of Human Rights Dynamism? Judgments of the ECtHR on ‘Hot Returns’ and Humanitarian Visas as a Focal Point of Contemporary European Asylum Law and Policy

Abstract Two controversial rulings of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) deserve global attention, since they declined to scrutinize on human rights grounds the prevalent move towards enhanced border controls and externalization practices that define European asylum law and policy at this juncture. In ND and NT, judges deemed the Spanish policy of ‘hot returns’, without access to basic procedural guarantees, of those climbing border fences to be compatible with human rights. A few weeks later, the Grand Chamber thwarted enduring hopes for judicial innovation in MN when it reasserted a ‘primarily territorial’ understanding of State jurisdiction and declared inadmissible the claim of a Syrian family from the war-torn town of Aleppo to a humanitarian visa. While the decision on humanitarian visas means that ‘non-arrival’ policies cannot usually be challenged, critical inspection of the ND and NT judgment displays a confounding combination of restrictive arguments and dynamic elements beneath the surface of a seemingly clear-cut outcome. This lack of judicial precision, which was bound to cause heated debate about the practical implications of the judgment, reflects the basic tension between the prohibition of refoulement and the absence of a right to asylum in classic accounts of international refugee law. It will be argued that the judicial vindication of the Spanish ‘hot returns’ policy does not call into question non-refoulement obligations; it aims at identifying graded procedural standards for different categories of refugees and migrants. By contrast, the novel insistence on the abstract availability of legal channels of entry presents itself as a humanitarian fig leaf for the acceptance of strict control practices. At an intermediate level of abstraction, the two rulings mark a watershed moment, indicating the provisional endpoint of an impressive period of interpretative dynamism on the part of the ECtHR, which has played a critical role in the progressive evolution of international refugee and human rights law over the past three decades. Experts in asylum law who have become accustomed to supranational courts advancing the position of individuals will benefit from the insights of constitutional theory and the social sciences to rationalize why the former vigour has given way to a period of hesitation and potential standstill, at least in Europe. This analysis employs the perspective of strategic litigation to discuss contextual factors hindering the continued dynamism of human rights jurisprudence in Europe at this juncture.

European Union immigration law and the deportation of Gambian nationals from Germany

ABSTRACT Migration has a long history in Europe and it took centre stage in German politics since the 1970s. European Union (EU) immigration laws advocate for effective and efficient management of immigration in the EU. In this discourse, neoclassical economic theories were engaged to explain why people migrate and what are the factors that attract them to move. This research is aimed at examining the circumstances surrounding the deportation of Gambian nationals from Germany and assess EU immigration law to establish that Common European Asylum System which is neither a failure nor success in terms of implementation. This research adopts qualitative methods to discuss EU immigration law, Common European Asylum policy and provide an explanation of the actions of German government in the deportation of Gambian nationals from Germany. In conclusion, the Government of the Gambia needs to be serious about development and creates an initiative that will bring sovereign national wealth. The Government of the Gambia depends on EU for many processes such as budgetary support, development projects, etc. As long as the Government of the Gambia continues to depend on the EU for economic and social advancement, more Gambian migrants will continue to be deported from EU member countries.

The European Union Current Asylum Policy: Selected Problems in the Shadow of COVID-19

Recent years in Europe have generated situations requiring the European Union to take extra-coordinated action in the field of asylum policy. The sudden and growing influx of refugees to Europe in 2015 and 2016 has caused the collapse of the previous common European asylum system. The European Union has taken a number of measures to resolve this crisis situation. When the situation seemed to be under control, a new challenge emerged in early 2020. The first COVID-19 infectious disease case was reported in Europe, and on 13 March 2020 the WHO reported that Europe had become the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic. The measures taken by individual countries and the European Union to limit the spread of the virus have had a significant impact on many spheres of state and individual functioning, including the situation of persons seeking international protection. This publication consists of three parts. The first part discusses actions taken by the European Union in the face of the migration and refugee crisis that emerged in 2015 and 2016. The second part presents one of the limitations introduced in connection with preventing the spread of COVID-19, which has a huge impact on persons wishing to seek international protection, i.e., changes in the regime of crossing borders and entering the territory of particular countries. The third one points out selected problems experienced by persons seeking protection who already stay in the territory of EU Member States.

Humanitarian Protection as a European Public Good: The Strategic Role of States and Refugees

AbstractThe surge of refugees arriving in Europe has accentuated the malfunctioning of the common European asylum system: the lack of coordination between nation states and failure in the common protection of refugees were the main outcomes of the so‐called refugee crisis. This article builds on the literature on public goods and policy compliance in order to explain the failure of European countries to provide humanitarian protection to refugees. A sequential game‐theoretical model serves to demonstrate the strategic interaction between states and refugees in European asylum policy. The analysis demonstrates that although both groups of actors benefit from a functioning European asylum system, they also have few incentives to contribute to the public good. States aim to reduce their individual refugee burden and refugees seek protection in their preferred destination country. The findings suggest that an effective provision of refugee protection requires both member states and refugees to contribute mutually to the public good.

European asylum policy before and after the migration crisis

The migration crisis of 2015–2016 threw the European asylum system into disarray. The arrival of more than two million unauthorized migrants stretched the system to its breaking point and created a public opinion backlash. The existing system is one in which migrants risk life and limb to gain (often unauthorized) entry to the EU in order to lodge claims for asylum, more than half of which are rejected. Reforms introduced during the crisis only partially address the system's glaring weaknesses. In particular, they shift the balance only slightly away from a regime of spontaneous asylum-seeking to one of refugee resettlement.

Women-Friendliness in European Asylum Policies: The Role of Women’s Political Representation and Opposition to Non-EU Immigration

Based on the 1951 Refugee Convention, traditional conceptions of refugees typically referred to the politically active male persecuted for his obstructive acts against a communist regime. Yet, today’s asylum seekers are increasingly female with very different experiences of persecution and different reasons to flee their countries of origin. Not all states have updated their asylum policies to reflect the specific situation of women—an issue the refugee crisis in 2015 brought to glaring light. We develop a Women-Friendliness in Asylum Index (WFA), which reveals clusters of states within the European Union (EU) with a solid implementation of women’s rights in their asylum recognition and reception framework and others whom have yet to adapt their asylum policies to consider women’s needs. In addition, we show that women’s political representation is a key factor in explaining women-friendly asylum policies, whereas critical attitudes toward immigrants from non-EU countries retard the gendered revision of European asylum policies.

European Asylum Policies and the Stranded Asylum Seekers in Southeastern Europe

Abstract This article focuses on the restrictive European asylum policies and on their humanitarian consequences in Southeastern Europe. We discuss two interrelated topics: (i) the dynamic of the migration of asylum seekers to Europe and (ii) the specific position of Southeastern European countries and the situation of stranded migrants in the region. We identify central elements in the European asylum system and suggest that different parts of the system may be seen as a set of interacting lines of deterrence used to curb asylum migrations. It is argued herein that Greece and the other countries at the southern borders of the European Union have an idiosyncratic position within the European system of deterrence. Furthermore, we discuss how European deterrence policies and local responses influence the migration patterns of asylum seekers in Southeastern Europe. It is maintained that the deterrence measures have contributed to increasing the number of stranded asylum seekers in the region, especially in Greece with clear and regrettable humanitarian consequences.