Brad K. Blitz

Migration and freedom

Migration and Freedom is a thorough and revealing exploration of the complex relationship between mobility and citizenship in the European area. Drawing upon over 170 interviews, it provides an original account of the opportunities and challenges associated with the rights to free movement and settlement in Croatia, Italy, Slovenia, Spain and Russia. It documents successful and unsuccessful settlement and establishment cases and records how both official and informal restrictions on individuals’ mobility have effectively created new categories of citizenship.

Stateless by any other name: refused asylum-seekers in the United Kingdom

This article maintains that there are certain aspects of the UK asylum system which may lead to statelessness-like situations. In order to understand how this can happen, we reconsider Hannah Arendts concept of statelessness, which entails three losses of home (exile), state protection (basic rights) and having a place in the world (political rights). Through interviews with refused and long-term asylum-seekers in Oxford and London, and one focus group, we examine the impact of negative asylum-application decisions on applicants’ access to rights. The main finding of this research is that, when denied state protection, refused asylum-seekers endure an existence not unlike stateless people. This study calls into question the application of key principles of human rights as they relate to refused asylum-seekers, especially the tenets of dignity and non-discrimination, and the right to family life.

Statelessness and Environmental-Induced Displacement: Future Scenarios of Deterritorialisation, Rescue and Recovery Examined

Abstract This article examines the prospect of environmental displacement and the creation of stateless populations in the context of low lying islands in Melanesia (Carteret Islands and Vanuatu), Micronesia (Kiribati) and Polynesia (Tuvalu), and the Maldives. It reviews the literature on environmental displacement and statelessness before evaluating pre-emptive attempts at ‘national rescue’. This article concludes with a reconsideration of the ideas of deterritorialisation and ‘national moorings’ in light of the obligations on receiving states to respect the human rights of stateless people.

Health challenges in refugee reception: dateline Europe 2016

The arrival of more than one million migrants, many of them refugees, has proved a major test for the European Union. Although international relief and monitoring agencies have been critical of makeshift camps in Calais and Eidomeni where infectious disease and overcrowding present major health risks, few have examined the nature of the official reception system and its impact on health delivery. Drawing upon research findings from an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded project, this article considers the physical and mental health of asylum–seekers in transit and analyses how the closure of borders has engendered health risks for populations in recognised reception centres in Sicily and in Greece. Data gathered by means of a survey administered in Greece (300) and in Sicily (400), and complemented by in-depth interviews with migrants (45) and key informants (50) including representatives of government offices, humanitarian and relief agencies, NGOs and activist organisations, are presented to offer an analysis of the reception systems in the two frontline states. We note that medical provision varies significantly from one centre to another and that centre managers play a critical role in the transmission of vital information. A key finding is that, given such disparity, the criteria used by the UNHCR to grade health services reception do not address the substantive issue that prevent refugees from accessing health services, even when provided on site. Health provision is not as recorded in UNHCR reporting but rather there are critical gaps between provision, awareness, and access for refugees in reception systems in Sicily and in Greece. This article concludes that there is a great need for more information campaigns to direct refugees to essential services.

Evaluating Transitions: Human Rights and Qualitative Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe

THE POLITICAL RESTRUCTURING OF THE FORMER socialist states since 1989 has transformed Central and Eastern Europe into a region which scores particularly well when evaluated against political procedural criteria of democratic consolidation: elections are contested peacefully and fairly; there is an active civil society and an autonomous economic sector; and the rule of law is generally respected. Nonetheless, there are several areas where the legacies of former ideologies, policies and governmental structures continue to undermine the substance and quality of democracy enjoyed in these states. In particular, procedural accounts of democratic consolidation can underestimate the degree to which normative developments are institutionalised in domestic human-rights enforcing bodies, including courts and police. Focusing on two cases, those of Slovakia and Slovenia, this essay introduces the notion of ‘qualitative democracy’. This is examined in the context of the judiciary’s capacity to address complaints in Slovenia and the degree to which Slovak authorities have been able to protect the rights of Roma minorities. The central premise of this essay is that the state’s capacity to guarantee the protection of human rights to all is an essential indicator of democratic success. The extent to which there is an observed lack of effective enforcement of human rights is explored, and claims of consolidation are therefore called into question. The idea of ‘quality’ as a measure of democracy is particularly relevant both to new EU member states and Central and East European countries undergoing pre-accession reforms. It is explicitly recorded in the European Union’s social policy agenda and has been part of the Lisbon strategy (European Commission 2005), but it also finds expression in earlier studies of political transition where it serves as an indicator of internal change and consolidation (O’Donnell et al. 1986; Linz & Stepan 1996). ‘Qualitative democracy’ emphasises democratic maturity as a guide to consolidation. It exposes both the operations of the state and its normative character and supplements procedural accounts of democracy which prioritise the conduct of elections and the smooth functioning of the rule of law for effective transition and the EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES Vol. 63, No. 9, November 2011, 1745–1770

The politics of evidence-based policy in Europe’s ‘migration crisis’

ABSTRACT Increased migration across the Mediterranean to Europe during 2015 was associated with growing interest in generating new research evidence to assist policymakers in understanding the complexities of migration and improve policy responses. In the UK, this was reflected in funding by the Economic and Social Research Council for a Mediterranean Migration Research Programme. Drawing on evidence from the programme, this volume explores the nature of Europe’s ‘migration crisis’ and the extent to which the development of new migration management policies was grounded in evidence about the causes, drivers and consequences of migration to Europe. The authors conclude that there is a substantial ‘gap’ between the now significant body of evidence examining migration processes and European Union policy responses. This gap is attributed to three main factors: the long-standing ‘paradigm war’ in social research between positivist, interpretivist and critical approaches which means that what counts as ‘evidence’ is contested; competing knowledge claims associated with research and other forms of evidence used to construct and/or support policy narratives; and, perhaps most importantly, the politics of policymaking, which has resulted in policies based on underlying assumptions and vested interests rather than research evidence, even where this evidence is funded directly by European governments.