A comparative analysis on the European Union's policies towards refugees : policies, strategies and discrepancies the case of Bosnia, Syria and Afghanistan (original) (raw)
THE GOVERNANCE OF SYRIAN REFUGEES IN EUROPE
The civil war in Syria erupted in 2011, leading one million refugees to request asylum in Europe. The European Member States, bounded by the United Nations' 1951 Refugee Convention, are obliged to host refugees. The high influx of refugees put pressure on border states; and a management of refugees is needed to reduce this pressure. This article addresses the Governance of Syrian Refugees in Europe. In order to do so, a framework by Borras and Edler is adopted. The framework is based on three pillars; actors involved, instruments' utilized and the legitimacy of these instruments. The article focuses on three main actors; United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), European Commission (EC) and the Public; and their interaction with each other and Member States. Financial instruments are mainly utilized by UNHCR and the EC to hold Member States accountable for accepting refugees as well as to provide support, whereas the public uses lobbying to influence Member States and other actors involved. The three pillars explain the behavior of these actors in the current governance scenario and the complexities and obstacles which are hindrance to a smooth and stable governance of refugees. In that essence, the article highlights an arising dilemma between ethical/political agreements, and individual interest in the current structure of governance of Syrian Refugees in Europe.
The European Development Response to the Refugee and Migration Crisis
International Organisations Research Journal, 2018
This paper is focused on the European development response to the refugee and migration crisis. European development aid was impacted by the refugee and migration crisis and appeared to be a tool to smooth the consequences of the crisis in Europe. The author conducted semi-structured interviews with scholars, policymakers and representatives of civil society and came to conclusion that the European Union (EU) and its members, instead of developing a strategic programme to resolve this structural issue, used a tactical solution to achieve the short-term goal of stopping migration. Short-term motivations prevailed over a long-term strategy and resulted in the politicization of development aid in policy papers: there was a significant change in the discourse regarding migration and development assistance. While EU members have indeed excessively used official development assistance (ODA) to host refugees in their countries, EU development programmes in African countries have been largely relabeled as "migration-related." So far there is no evidence-based research that redistribution of aid beneficiaries has taken place as a result of the policy to tackle the "root causes" of migration. This paper first outlines the European policy framework on development assistance which is aimed at migration management. Then it identifies the EU initiatives to mainstream migration into the development agenda, and considers members' use of ODA to cover domestic expenses for refugees and asylum seekers. The paper concludes by outlining the key concerns regarding instrumentalization of aid.
The EU׳s Regional Refugees Approach: A Double-Edged, but Promising Approach
2023
The European Union has drawn on its migration policy in the Middle East and North Africa as a method of region-building that takes resilience as its "Governing Principle" when responding to crises. The central theme of resilience is to keep refugees closer to their home instead of flowing into Europe. This approach might be promising, yet it has both positive and negative effects. In the absence of adequate resources, resilience building may exacerbate the economic, political and social vulnerabilities already existing in these countries. In addition, resilience does not seem to put an end to the refugees' suffering which, in turn, leads to increasing demands for better services, which could ultimately lead to violent riots that endanger the security of these states. Hence, resilience may seem to jeopardise rather than safeguard the security of these hosts. However, considering the case of displacement from Syria, the article focuses on the EU's approach to refugees in its neighbourhood, and attempts an in-depth analysis of the EU's refugee cooperation with Jordan, one of the key regional hosts, to argue that while resilience might be an approach with opposing effects, the EU and Jordan are working to make it a promising one. Their focus is to maintain a balance between the interests of refugees and of local communities. More importantly, the role of resilience in preserving Jordan's economic and social stability and its social cohesion makes it a more promising approach than simply providing humanitarian assistance.
Refugees in Europe Consequences of the Challenges
Intense refugee flows into Europe created some internal and international problems. In order to identify and propose solutions to them, this issue will be analyzed on both political and economics perspectives. The role of the individual as a refugee in the international politics creates some problems such as procedural disharmony and unjust burden sharing between states especially with inadequate regulations like Dublin Regulations. From the public policy perspective, access to basic health care services is one of the most problematic issues since data collection requires great international cooperation to get a proper data to prevent infectious diseases. Providing public services comes with a price and unjust distribution of the refugees creates short-run economic struggles for the host countries. However, there are also some benefits that refugees provide to European countries in the long term with being a part of the labor market especially in the countries which suffer from shortage of the youth population. In this sense, education of the refugees is necessary because it makes easier and more rapid the process of refugees’ integration to the both society and labor market. The problems are interwoven; therefore, the solutions should not only be a single focused harmonization but a complete one for the EU case since the EU states have already been in a steady integration process.
In this work we will examine the reasons, covered with law and facts, about the recent migration crisis which had a tremendous influence on all EU and Western Balkan countries. The sole fact that thousands of refugees are being accepted to the EU without any border check in 2014 and 2015 caused the initial frustration of citizens in FYRO Macedonia, Serbia and Kosovo*. All these countries need endless paperwork in order to acquire a work permit in EU. On the top of this Kosovo* inhabitants can not even travel to EU without Visa. This lead to the exodus of thousands of Kosovo Albanians to the EU on a well known route. The famous Balkan route as it is called commonly has its roots back into the early 90’s when the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia (SFRJ) has started. War activities became an everyday activity in many regions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and later Kosovo and Metohija in Serbia. Still the borders of countries outside of ex Yugoslavia were not widely opened for refugees. On the European level the importance for regulating this was seen and a solution given in The 1990 Dublin Convention, later Regulation. Before this the main idea of refugees, in some situations dissidents, was seen in the fact that many skilled workers and craftsmen emigrated from the East (Communist) Europe to the West (Capitalist) Europe. Some of them being Political refugees (dissidents) but the main criteria for their status was mainly determined by a political or economical value they had. The value of such refugees was their knowledge, skills and competence which could be used for economic development and in some cases the bare prestige of having intellectuals fled from the communist oppression. In the 1990 Dublin Convention, the signing parties recognized the need to regulate asylum seeking. They introduced the rule of the first country of application, where the asylum seeker has applied for asylum. That means 2 that this first country of application will exclusively deal with the asylum seekers case and either accept or reject it, after what other Dublin countries will not give a chance for another try. Now this system lived successfully for many years until Hungary did not become flooded with illegal migrants in the summer of 2015. Even after the failure of the Dublin regulation it became evident that it is not useful for the present problem and a solution has to be sought. The Hungarian solution was the infamous border lock or in Hungarian “határzár”1 whereas the EU invented, or reinvented the solution from the colonial era, the EU’s “real” solution/problem had been introduced then in the form of a quota system. The fact is that Syrian citizens have a right to claim asylum in EU, but also in many countries prior to their arrival to EU as well. Also they never intended to claim it in e.g. Hungary but they are forced to since it became obvious that people cross the border and travel without any check to different EU countries to the west. Hungary was at some point blamed for its “law” enforcement using different tools and a border fence towards Serbia on the end. We have many other questions, in particular related to the fact that refugees have to travel in very inhuman conditions. If there is a country where they want to go and that country can accept them, why don’t other countries help them to reach it easier? Why they are becoming an easy prey for people smugglers and cross border crossings illegally? On the end we will try to answer the ultimate question, why Germany? Or in other words why they are welcome on the west of EU and not so much welcome on the east of EU, when we say east we don’t mean Hungary solely.
Refugee Protection in Europe and Beyond – Comparative Report
Global Migration: Responses and Consequences, 2020
This comparative report is based on the RESPOND country reports [deliverable D3.1] that discusses the developments regarding legislation, policy measures and practices on refugee protection, but most importantly the implementation aspect in ten countries covered by the project (Austria, Germany, Greece, Iraq, Italy, Lebanon, Poland, Sweden, Turkey and the United Kingdom) for the 2011-2019 period. This report aims to provide a comparative analysis of refugee protection, emphasising the implementation aspect as drawn from the experiences and perceptions of meso and micro level actors. In doing so, the report offers analytical insights for evaluating the implications of the dynamics of refugee protection, which has undergone many changes since 2011. Despite the largely shared regional, international and supranational obligations regarding refugee protection, the overarching pattern in the field of refugee protection is characterised by a restrictive approach. Although some countries were relatively more welcoming at the beginning Syrian displacement in 2011, such as Turkey (open-doors policy) and Lebanon, restricted access to national/federal territories, additional physical measures such as security walls and other actions such as push backs have become common, hindering the asylum procedure, particularly after 2015. Many countries have introduced additional procedural measures to prevent and restrain access to international protection as well as to speed up asylum assessments, such as accelerated procedures, fast-track-procedures, border procedures. Increased rejections and long waiting periods have become policies in themselves. Almost all countries tended to downgrade the rights of applicants and beneficiaries of protection. In general, all newly introduced amendments or regulations impose new restrictions or limitations to existing standards of rights. However, at the same time, some countries developed policies and practices to respond to the humanitarian crisis and welcomed refugees only from certain nationalities on the grounds of humanitarian or national reasons, through residence permits and family reunification. As for the RESPOND countries who are EU Member States, the observance of the so-called minimum EU-level standards, or even lower, has become common. All countries display an extremely complex and continually changing legal framework on refugee protection. The newly introduced additional procedures result in the fragmentation of the examination of claims through the categorisation of asylum seekers. This also resulted in stratified legal statuses with different procedures and specified rights, adding up to the traceable nationality-based discrimination against certain asylum seekers (e.g. Afghans), creating ‘desirable’ and ‘undesirable’ migrants/refugees.
The European Union in times of migrant and refugee crises
Pachocka M., The European Union in times of migrant and refugee crises, w: Peculiarities of development in a globalized world economy, red. V. Beniuc, L. Rosca, Print–Caro – Institute of International Relations of Moldova, Chisinau 2016, s. 86–100, ISBN: 9789975309271. The paper presents two important crises – migrant and refugee ones – having been experienced by the EU and its member states at least since 2014. They are different in nature but they coexist and affect each other. The aim of the article is to briefly describe the current migrant and refugee situation in Europe, identify the main problems and challenges in this area as well as discuss the solutions proposed at the EU level and their implementation. A particular attention is paid to the European Agenda on Migration announced by the European Commission in May 2015 that was supposed to address the increasingly complex phenomenon of migration in a comprehensive way, incorporating both internal and external dimensions of policy in that field.
The European Refugees Crisis: How to Address it
2016
Firstly, I analyse the European legislation on asylum, the so-called “Dublin System”, finding three main issues affecting it a) the allocation of refugees between Member States; b) the differences between Member States in the treatment of asylum seekers and asylum applications; and c) the differences in the rights granted to the refugee status across Member States. I also show that these issues have serious consequences for both asylum seekers and refugees. Secondly, we examine the European Agenda on Migration that represents the official response of the EU to the present crisis. Finally, I present some proposal aimed to improve the European managing of refugees and asylum seekers. Following a moderated cosmopolitan approach, I propose the establishment of a limited citizenship for refugees that might be thought as a temporary citizenship conditioned to the possession of the refugee status. At this particular citizenship, one may apply different rights, but to face the issues encoun...
The Disaster of European Refugee Policy
This volume was written in the aftermath of the so-called refugee crisis which tested the ability of the European states, governments and residents to receive and grant protection to people fleeing war and conflicts. The absence of a comprehensive and coordinated response on the level of the European Union, unilateral and self-centred responses of its individual Member States to the challenges posed by mass migration, and the rise of xenophobic and racist sentiments within populations as well as in political programmes all revealed the level of solidarity and hospitality problems that both the European Union and its Member States have in coping with migration challenges. Through these developments, it became clear how fragile the Schengen Area, the Common European Asylum System and even the sole concept of asylum are. The unwillingness of certain EU Member States to agree with the solidarity-based quota system or to implement this system raised fundamental questions of why some of them even aspired to the European Union membership—was it only for the money? Was it for better and worse, or was it really just for the better, i.e. for the benefits deriving from the EU membership?
Refugees in the European Union: from emergency alarmism to common management.
Working Papers in Management, 2019
The refugee’s flows have alighted the European political debate boosting nationalistic forces in almost all countries. The aim of this paper is to show that the actual number of asylum seekers does not really allow to talk about a “refugee crises”. It argues, however, that the current European Union institutions and procedures are highly insufficient to manage successfully refugee’s inflows and asylum requests. A European foreign policy could have helped to prevent refugees’ inflows from war-thorn areas such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea, Libya and Syria. Once the problem is there, the procedures centred on the Dublin Convention are inadequate and the paper provides a few radical suggestions that are made for an EU-centred refugees and asylum seekers management and policy