Right Of Asylum Research Articles

Women’s challenges and gender inequality implications in the UK Home Office’s streamlined asylum process

This conceptual article scrutinises the challenges faced by women seeking asylum in the UK, focusing on the impact of the Home Office’s streamlined asylum process. Despite mention of gender-based issues in official guidelines, the system exhibits hostility and inadequacy in addressing the unique obstacles women encounter. Through a posthuman, practice-based theoretical framework, the article examines recent gender-based concerns raised about the Home Office’s use of questionnaires, machine translation, and informal linguistic assistance in lieu of interpreted asylum interviews for selected nationalities. It also highlights the implications of technologisation and bureaucratisation on linguistic access, arguing that the revised asylum-seeking process not only reinforces women’s marginalised position but also diminishes crucial resources like interpreting, in turn contributing to gendered power asymmetries between asylum seekers and the justice system. The article contends that this approach transfers the burden of language understanding to women, contributing to a climate of sociomaterial exclusion that curtails the rights of female asylum seekers to be adequately heard.

To Dream Europe

At his last conference in France, on 8 June 2004, in Strasbourg, under the title “Le souverain bien – ou l’ Europe en mal de souveraineté”, Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), always very concerned about Europe and the future of Europe, dared to admit that he dreamed of “a Europe whose universal hospitality and new laws of hospitality or the right of asylum would make it the Noah’s Ark of the 21st century”. Through the question of unconditional hospitality – which, as I try to point out, emphasizes the singularity of Deconstruction as a philosophical idiom and through which Derrida rethinks, with a very different amplitude and justice, the “universal hospitality” of Kantian inspiration – it is the silhouette of hope and of responsibility of Europe, shaped by this dream of Derrida, that I try to sketch here.

Frontex as a hub for surveillance and data sharing: Challenges for data protection and privacy rights

The European Border and Coast Guard Agency, more commonly known as Frontex, was established in 2004 with “a view to improving the integrated management of the external borders of the Member States of the European Union.” It was tasked with the responsibility of providing technical support and expertise to Member States in the management of borders. Over the years its mandate has increased considerably through amendments to its legislative framework. This expansion has taken place against a background of serious allegations concerning Frontex's role in violating the fundamental rights of asylum seekers through its involvement in pushback operations – the practice of stopping asylum-seekers and migrants in need of protection at or before they reach the European Union's external border. While Frontex's complicity in pushbacks has been widely examined by academics, its transformation into a major surveillance and data processing hub and its compliance (or lack thereof) with the fundamental rights to privacy and protection of personal data have received limited academic attention.This paper traces the evolution of Frontex over the years and fundamental rights implications of the transformation of its role.

Fragmentation of Hope through Tiny Acts of Bureaucratic Cruelty - Another Kind of War on Afghan People Seeking Asylum in Sweden

This article analyzes the micro-powers of Swedish “cruel” and “non-cruel” bureaucrats using various logics of control, “tiny acts” enacted with pens, computers, and imposed assignments to condition asylum-seeking peoples’ lives and fragment their hope. Based on interviews with asylum-seeking Afghans and observations of their meetings with authorities, I argue that the bureaucratic treatment of Afghans in Sweden is a form of state-sanctioned racist violence and “departheid” executed to exclude discredited people from the welfare state. The article draws attention to a rapid downhill slide regarding asylum rights in Sweden since 2015 and the harm caused to asylum-seeking people.

The Italy-Libya Memorandum: stripping away the right of asylum in the Italian legal system

On the 2nd of November 2022, the Italy-Libya Memorandum on migration was renewed for the following 3 years, giving continuity to the close collaboration between the two countries to stem the flow of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers onto the Italian territory. Libya, in fact, is the main point of departure for migrants and refugees wishing to reach the Italian shores. This paper argues that, with the Memorandum, Italy adopts a ’pullbacks’ strategy which essentially translates into the practice of collective expulsion and refoulment. Nevertheless, it is in the prohibition of such practices that lies the indispensable premises to guarantee the effectiveness of the protection of the right to asylum, as safeguarded by international, European and national legislation. In fact, the Memorandum externalises the border across the Mediterranean and empties the right to asylum of its meaning, since it is structured in such a way as to make it impossible for people to reach European territory. It also denies the reality of mixed migration flows, precluding, a priori, the possibility for some migrants to be recognised as beneficiaries of international protection, while relying on the actions of a country, Libya, which has not signed the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees, has no functioning national asylum system and cannot be considered a ‘Place of Safety’ due to proven human rights violations perpetrated in its migrant detention centres. This paper further argues that the Italy Libya Memorandum is in line with the securitarian migration policies and the strategy of borders’ externalisation by the European Union (EU), which entrenches itself in a fortress on whose borders violence is carried out. In this context, bilateral agreements such as the Memorandum risk creating legal black holes whose purpose seems to be to circumvent the responsibilities stipulated at different levels of legislation. The jurisprudence of the Italian legislative system and of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) seems to be paving the way for a more conscious approach to migrants and might fill in the void created by the solidarity crisis of the European approach to immigration, but not without the support of a policy approach focused on restoring the Italian constitutional structure of the right to asylum.

Problems with the Asylum System and Their Solutions: Take Case of Colombia v. Peru on the Right of Asylum as an Example

The right of asylum in international law refers to the right of citizens of one country to enjoy asylum in another country, and in the interaction of sovereign states, the right of asylum is usually applied in the context of a citizen of a country requesting to enter another country or having entered another country for political reasons and in an emergency, and is approved by the government of another country. For a long time, there have been debates on the definition, establishment conditions and examination procedures of the right of asylum, and there have been many differences in the determination of the application of the right of sanctuary in practice. Based on the study of the Colombia v. Peru asylum case and the literature related to the right of asylum, this paper uses the comparative research method and the case analysis method to discuss the differences between the academic research on the right of asylum in the past and the present, and analyzes the problems and challenges of the asylum right system in the current international environment based on real cases, and finally provides suggestions for clarifying the criteria for determining the right of asylum in the form of a convention and formulating strict review procedures.

Between fearmongers and Samaritans: Does information provision affect attitudes towards the right of asylum in Germany?

AbstractWe utilise data from a self‐designed survey that includes information experiments to elicit the German public's attitude towards the right of asylum. The survey was carried out in 2018. We randomly assign 2048 interviewees to different groups and ‘treat’ each group with different information about the asylum seekers that came to Germany in 2015 and 2016. Treatments involve information about (i) the total number of asylum seekers, (ii) the fiscal costs and (iii) potential long‐term benefits associated with accepting refugees, (iv) the share of Muslim asylum seekers and (v) the share of war refugees. Providing information about the fiscal costs associated with accepting refugees, and, to a lesser extent, about the share of Muslim refugees, significantly increases the likelihood of opposing the right of asylum. These effects are more pronounced for middle‐income earners, respondents with a low level of education and female respondents. Deviations of people's beliefs from the actual numbers can affect their attitudes: Respondents who underestimated the share of Muslim refugees are more likely to call for abolishing the right of asylum.

The Right of Asylum Viewed from the Constitutional and International Viewpoints

This paper aims to address the forms of displacement/departure of the population that leaves its country of origin as a result of the violent circumstances created in the place of displacement or the place of escape. As well, this paper aims to deal with the provision of protection for people who flee in search of shelter and to study international obligations of the states based on the international norms including their laws . The purpose of this study is to consider treatment of refugees who leave their country of origin due to violence, war or any humanitarian reason. The main issues addressed in this study are causes of displacement, treatment of refugees according to the international law and their definition, international laws for refugees, and responsibilities of states regarding displacement and migration. During the research, we used several methods without which the research would not have been possible: the method of theoretical analysis, method of comparison, and quantitative method. This study identified the causes or triggers that lead to immigration, including violence and human rights abuses that are increasingly intertwined with ethnic and religious hostilities. Security, effects from international terrorism and the lack of border control can be the main causes. This study is applicable in the field of international relations, particularly to researchers who deal with global crises related to migration issues. Also, this study can be applied to categories that deal with refugees and people who deal with the issue of asylum at different levels. Furthermore, this study can also be used by representatives of civil society, workers of international organizations such as UNHCR, representatives of international organizations that protect the rights of refugees and persons seeking international protection. The novelty in this study is the treatment of the complex nature of migration and identification of the factors that lead to massive displacement, crisis management, states’ care and obligations in providing international protection to refugees, respecting international conventions and agreements, and the internal legislation of states where this movement of refugees can occur. Keywords: the right of asylum, constitutional and international norms of migration, displaced persons, refugees. DOI: https://doi.org/10.55463/hkjss.issn.1021-3619.60.87

Moral economy and deservingness in immigration policies. The case of regularisations in Italy

This paper has two purposes. The first is theoretical: to revise use of the concept of moral economy in migration studies, and the related concept of deservingness. I will identify different versions and meanings, showing their significant contribution to the understanding of migration issues, but discussing their lack of consideration of a particular aspect: the conflict between competing moral economies. The second and related purpose will be to apply the concept of moral economy to an analysis of the public debate on the recent measure, related to the COVID-19 pandemic, enacted to regularise unauthorised immigrants in Italy (May–August 2020). The measure, almost unique in Europe and in the Global North, has involved only workers, and workers employed in two sectors: agriculture and domestic/care services. This decision can be seen as a choice in terms of moral economy: some sectors and some immigrant workers have deserved more consideration than other workers. The empirical material is constituted by declarations and statements by social and political actors who took part in the debate, using moral-economic arguments to support their position. I will review this debate through the lens of competing moral economies and different notions of deservingness. In the conclusion I argue that in migration policies, relevant moral and political values are involved: human rights and national sovereignty, the right to mobility and citizens’ rights, the right of asylum and social cohesion. I wish for a more subtle use of the concept of moral economy to feed a better discussion of these crucial topics.

Extradition Law in Indonesia And its Urgency in Fighting International Crime

The legal instrument for extradition has been regulated in the Republic of Indonesia Law no. 1 of 1979 in general, extradition is a result of asylum rights, namely the right to obtain political asylum, but at this time extradition is used to penetrate state boundaries in the sense of applying national criminal law for criminals who flee the country abroad, and to To create a civilized international civil society that upholds the truth, it is necessary to implement the law which is a manifestation of justice and truth itself.

“Asylum is Not for Mexicans”: Unaccompanied Youth and Racio-Governance at the US Border

ABSTRACT In this article we engage and extend work on race and border politics via an analysis of unaccompanied Mexican migrant youth. Historically, until recently, Mexican youth have formed the largest group of unaccompanied minors attempting to move across the US-Mexico border. However, a set of structural political, socio-legal, and everyday institutional violences lead to their neglect, disregard and exclusion from rights to protections in both the US and Mexico. We use Yarimar Bonilla’s notion of “racio-colonial governance” (2020), in connection with antiracist and feminist US-Mexico border studies and feminist border geopolitics, to understand how these complex and interwoven systems are spatialised and racialised: shaped both by long histories of racism and colonialism, and entrenched by contemporary, geographically-specific racialised beliefs and practices. In particular, we show how place-specific processes of racialisation construct Mexican youth as dehumanised criminals, contaminants, and security threats in border crossing sites, shelters and detention centres, and in border cities. We draw upon research carried out along the Tamaulipas-Texas border by the co-authors between 2015–2020. In particular, we focus on 26 key informant interviews and 25 in-depth migration histories with repatriated Mexican youth. Many of these individuals were identified through a survey of 204 deported Mexican unaccompanied children conducted in three government shelters. We show how systemic racism across these linked border spaces and systems powerfully devalue Mexican youth migrants, normalising extensive institutional neglect, violence, and denying their internationally determined asylum rights and other forms of relief. Our youth-centred focus extends important existing work on migration and race by demonstrating how historically-produced racist stereotyping around criminality, worthiness, security, lost innocence, and childhoods-denied are shaped by place and institutionalised in the US-Mexico border-complex.

Germany, year 2020. The tension between asylum right, border control, and economy, through the imperative of deservingness

Abstract This article discusses the new asylum laws implemented in Germany from 2015 to 2020 and places them in the wider context of the bordering process developed in Europe to control migrants’ mobility since the year 2011. ‘Asylum packages’ and the Integration Act combine a restriction of asylum rights with measures to quickly channel refugees into the German labor market. Focusing on a specific regulation that aims at integrated rejected asylum-seekers through vocational training programs—the Ausbildungsduldung—this article highlights the contradictions from the attempts to meet the German economic needs and the efforts to enforce migration control. Moreover, this work highlights how the moral economy of deservingness, which underpins the practices of confinement and selection of the migrant population, influences the new laws. Ultimately, the asylum realm is deprived of being the source of the right to stay, whose conditionality became anchored to the needs of the German economy.

Gestión desbordada: solicitudes de asilo en Estados Unidos y los mecanismos de espera allende sus fronteras

The article analyzes the production of border waiting spaces generated by the U.S. asylum policy through the metering and the Migrant Protection Protocols. These mechanisms are understood as part of a migration management repertoire that hasturned several Latin American borders into waiting “buffer-territories.”The analysis focuses on migration contention and waiting in Tijuana, Baja California, and Central American and Haitian asylum seekers arriving at theborder from 2016. The research was carried out using a qualitative approach and specialized bibliographic review. The findings show how the two mechanisms articulate with each other and, together with the indefinite extension of waiting imposed by COVID-19, suggestsa sort of preamble to the cessation of the right of asylum in the United States.

Foreign Policy Orientation of the Bithynian King Ziaelas in Light of New Inscriptions from Kos

The appearance of this article was prompted by the discovery of a new block of inscriptions from the island of Kos, published in the 50th volume of the journal Chiron by D. Bosnakis and K. Hallof. Among these inscriptions, dating to 243 BC, of particular interest are two royal letters concerning the recognition of the right of asylum possessed by the temple of Asclepius in Kos. The first letter belongs to the king of Bithynia Ziaelas, and the second – to the Seleucid queen Laodice I, the mother of Seleucus II and Antiochus Hierax. Analysis of the contents of these documents compels us to rethink the commonly held assumptions about the foreign policy orientation of King Ziaelas from the second half of the 240s BC. Based on the already known earlier letter of Ziaelas to the citizens of Kos (IGXII, 4, 1, 209), together with the evidence of the Chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea (Euseb. Chron. Schoene, I, 251), many researchers believe in the existence of a long-term alliance between this Bithynian king and Ptolemy III Everget, formed at the beginning of the second half of the 240s BC and lasting at least until the mid-230s BC. Instead, given the observations made on the basis of the new royal letters by D. Bosnakis, K. Hallof, and the author of this article, we can speak of only a very shortlived political partnership between Ziaelas and Ptolemy III. Afterwards, Ziaelas quickly returned to the Seleucid political orbit. This conclusion follows from the absence of references to Ptolemy III in the new letter of the Bithynian king, combined with indications of contacts between the latter and Laodice I, openly hostile to Everget. This move by Ziaelas was probably dictated by the lack of tangible military or political support from the Alexandrian ruler. The fact of the rupture of the short-lived relationship between Ziaelas and Ptolemy III, together with the testimony of the already known sources, suggests that the king of Bithynia continued permanently in the Seleucid sphere of influence.

THE RIGHT OF ASYLUM IN THE PERIOD OF MODERN STATES FORMATION – SHORT HISTORICAL EXCURSION

This article outlines the right of asylum as a judicial institute in the early modern period, when modern states have been forming. Special attention is given to the dynamic struggle between the church asylum, as well as the church judicial system in general, and the state’s secular power. Specific attributes of the right of asylum and its evolution in time are studied from different viewpoints; understanding of the term and its content, legal continuity of the right of asylum, conditions, under which asylum was granted and the different forms of asylum. General observations and supported by specific historical examples and references.

II. Kirchliche Zufluchtsorte im Frühmittelalter

Abstract Church Spaces for Refugees in Early Medieval Ages. The paper deals with the spatial regulations of asylum. It shows that the spacious area of asylum of Late Antiquity was considerably reduced by many gentile Germanic kings. However, with the increasing Christianisation and the founding of monasteries and regional churches, the ability to grant asylum was extended to these churches, whereas in Late Antiquity in the Western Roman Empire, very likely only the episcopal churches – partly due to the lack of too many other churches – were qualified to grant asylum. In this way, a harmonization between profane and ecclesiastical places of refuge took place for just as “all” churches were (before?) all royal courts and not only the king’s residence were spaces of refuge. In the case of church spaces of refuge, it increasingly became a qualitative requirement that the church building or its parts (altar, gates etc.) had been sanctified by episcopal ordination. The reduction in the size of the asylum area did not initially go hand in hand with an impairment in the right of asylum. The bishop’s (priest’s) obligation to intercede or right to intercede was only levelled under emperor Charlemagne with reference to the competence of any worthy person to intercede.

Speculative Justice as Decolonial Intervention. The Aesthetics and Politics of the Bureau des Dépositions

The Bureau des Depositions (Bureau of Depositions) is an ensemble of ten co-authors with varying legal and administrative statuses, the majority of whom were born and lived in Guinea, West Africa, prior to making their journey to France in 2016 or 2017 in order to demand asylum. The Bureau, declared an immaterial work, also comprises a series of performances and ongoing research-creation processes that are signed in co-authorship. This includes the performance Exercises de justice speculative (Exercises in Speculative Justice), through which the Bureau’s co-dependence is asserted in the face of deportation orders from France that threaten both the lives of the undocumented members and the work that is the Bureau des Depositions. Through the strategic use of French laws that protect the integrity of art works, author’s rights (droits d’auteur) are mobilised in order to petition for the co-authors’ right to remain in France, with the gamble here being that this could potentially be more effective than appealing to rights of asylum or the sanctity of human (non-citizen) life. As such, the Bureau seeks to create (legal) precedence and participate in the processual transformation of law and life. The performance is not simply about migratory violence, but is a speculative work whose «transformative properties» are used in order to protect the lives of the artists – a work that both points to the limitations of existing (Western) justice and exceeds it, suggesting an alternative conception of justice embodied by the Bureau. Having witnessed the Exercises in October 2020 in Marseille, we provide a narrative of the work, its genesis and precedents, and a series of reflections upon themes raised, including: the representation of minority speech within and beyond contemporary art, economies of testimony, intellectual property rights and collective creative practices, histories of sans papiers activism in France, the production of criminal lives, a politics of the living and the performance of justice. In our reading, the work enacts a decolonial aesthetics that intervenes through an alternative framework of representation and justice. An English translation of a partial score of the Exercises de justice speculative performance is also included.

Introduction

The plight of forcibly displaced persons may have lost the spotlight in the global news cycle due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the Middle Eastern refugee crisis has continued unabated. Nearly 80 million people have been forcibly displaced, including millions of Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Syrians, and Yemenis. In this special issue, anthropologists highlight different states of displacement – protracted, repeated and recent – amongst Middle Eastern populations that have fled to Germany, Greece, Jordan and Turkey. Amidst profound precarity, refugees manage to negotiate new geographies of displacement, re-create a sense of home, plan their reproductive futures, organise protests to claim their asylum rights, and engage in activism and solidarity. Featuring nuanced ethnographic studies, this special issue bears witness to refugees’ fortitude and resilience.

Reproductive Injustice at the Southern Border and Beyond: An Analysis of Current Events and Hope for the Future.

Reproductive Injustice at the Southern Border and Beyond: An Analysis of Current Events and Hope for the Future.

Deans of humanitarianism and perfidy. The collaboration of the Diplomatic Missions of Argentina and Chile with the Francoist cause during the Spanish Civil War (and after), 1936-1969

During the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, some thirty Diplomatic Missions opened their doors and create new sites for the reception of persecution victims under the protection of the right of asylum. However, beyond the humanitarian role, a tendentious collaboration of some of their delegates with the rebels could be seen from the beginning. Argentina and Chile, which held the Diplomatic Deanship in those years, were two prime examples of this. A good number of their representatives used various strategies to help the coup plotters of 1936, such as the refuge, care and irregular extraction of people or espionage. At the same time, they played a role that alternated between searching for consensus with other Diplomatic Missions (mainly the Latin American ones), which really meant demanding that those other legations follow their lead, and denouncing the excesses of the consolidated republican rearguard, especially on the international scene. A situation which tarnishes the image of the legitimate Spanish governments. Once the contest ended, many of those collaborators were praised and rewarded by the Franco regime, and other fascists regimes. This research focuses on demonstrating, based on original documentation and providing new and compelling data, that close (and proven) relationship.