Eiko R. Thielemann

Why asylum policy harmonisation undermines refugee burden-sharing

about the high number of asylum applications (compared to the mid-1980s) and their highly unequal distribution among countries. In Western Europe the absolute number of asylum applications rose sharply from about 150.000 in 1985 to more than 600.000 in 1992 before falling again, with ca 300.000 applications being recorded in 2000. Average annual asylum applications per head of population have been more than ten times higher in some of the most popular destination countries such as Switzerland and Sweden compared to the least popular ones such as Spain and Portugal. The relative distribution of asylum seekers across Europe has been quite volatile over the years, exemplified by the rapid rise of applications in the UK in recent years. Increasingly, differences in the relative restrictiveness of countries’ asylum regimes over time have come to be regarded as one of the principal reasons for disparities in asylum burdens and their variation over time. According to this view, host countries with a high relative number of applications will try to make their asylum policies more restrictive and other host countries will, as a result, become more attractive destination countries. This has sparked a heated debate about whether countries in which asylum applications have increased in recent years represent a ‘soft touch’ for asylum seekers and economic migrants using the asylum route alike. 1 It has also raised concerns that European countries as a result of the so-called ‘soft touch’ logic have become engaged in the competitive downgrading of refugee protection standards. In order to achieve a more stable and equitable distribution of asylum burdens and prevent a slide toward the lowest common denominator in protection standards, policy makers in Europe have turned to policy-harmonisation at the European level to achieve these objectives. Policy convergence in the field of asylum is seen as the key toward more equitable burden-sharing and less competition for the most effective deterrence measures. This article seeks to challenge the emerging consensus that sees EU policy harmonisation as a panacea for Europe’s burden-sharing problems in this area. It will be shown that the relative restrictiveness of a country’s asylum policy is only one

A Research Agenda for the Study of Migrants and Minorities in Europe

I. Definitions and Policy RelevanceMigration and minority policy issues are now at the forefront of the political debate in Europe. Both issues denote a dynamic and rapidly changing set of sensitive political, economic and social questions that affect domestic and international policy-making. They have developed a distinctly European and EU dimension, and the parallel processes of EU constitution-making and enlargement have underscored the relevance of these issue areas. The current political context in Europe – between the first and second round of the EU’s eastward enlargement and at a time when the whole notion of an EU constitu-tion and future enlargement (in particular in the case of Turkey) have been called into question by the French and Dutch rejections of the Constitutional Treaty – makes discussion about minority and migration issues particularly relevant. This special issue places these issues in a set of research trends and tries to define a new research agenda.The terms ‘migrant’ and ‘minority’ share an underlying definitional impreci-sion that blurs the respective fields of study and policy-making as well as the linkages between the two. Moreover, some countries (e.g. the UK) explicitly refer to migrants as ‘ethnic minorities’, thereby adding to the confusion. This special issue adopts sufficiently broad definitions of ‘migrants’ and ‘minori-ties’ to facilitate dialogue beyond narrow specialized circles without, however, glossing over meaningful distinctions. Thus, the term ‘ethnic minorities’ can subsume a range of migrant groups, while the term ‘national minority’ is reserved for established minorities claiming minority rights (e.g. forms of

Comparing Immigration Policies: An Overview from the IMPALA Database

This paper introduces a method and preliminary findings from a database that systematically measures the character and stringency of immigration policies. Based on the selection of that data for nine countries between 1999 and 2008, we challenge the idea that any one country is systematically the most or least restrictive toward admissions. The data also reveal trends toward more complex and, often, more restrictive regulation since the 1990s, as well as differential treatment of groups, such as lower requirements for highly skilled than low-skilled labor migrants. These patterns illustrate the IMPALA data and methods but are also of intrinsic importance to understanding immigration regulation.

Understanding European asylum cooperation under the Schengen/Dublin system: a public goods framework

Abstract Recent developments in European Union (EU) asylum cooperation raise important questions about the nature of cooperation and the potential problems facing collective action in the realm of EU internal security. The emergence and the subsequent stability of the Schengen/Dublin system is especially puzzling, given the highly inequitable distribution of costs and benefits that this system entails among the participating states and begs the question as to why those states that are likely to face a disproportionate ‘burden’ under the system would have agreed to it. This article seeks to provide an alternative approach to answering this question by drawing on a public goods framework. We argue that a simple focus on free-riding and exploitation dynamics, as emphasized in the traditional collective action literature, falls short as an explanation and instead demonstrates how more recent theoretical contributions to the public goods literature can offer new insights into the origin and evolution in cooperation in this sensitive policy area.

Measuring and Comparing Immigration, Asylum and Naturalization Policies Across Countries: Challenges and Solutions

Academics and policy makers require a better understanding of the variation of policies that regulate global migration, asylum and immigrant naturalization. At present, however, there is no comprehensive cross-national, time-series database of such policies, rendering the analysis of policy trends across and within these areas difficult at best. Several new immigration databases and indices have been developed in recent years. However, there is no consensus on how best to conceptualize, measure and aggregate migration policy indicators to allow for meaningful comparisons through time and across space. This article discusses these methodological challenges and introduces practical solutions that involve historical, multi-dimensional, disaggregated and transparent conceptualizing, measuring and compiling of cross-national immigration policies. Such an approach informs the International Migration Policy and Law Analysis (IMPALA) database.

The Price of Europeanization: Why European Regional Policy Initiatives Are a Mixed Blessing

1From the creation of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in 1975, it has developed into the second most important policy area within the EU in budget terms taking up 35 per cent of the EU budget in 2000 (European Commission, 2000). While the European regional policy’s impact on the reduction of regional disparities has remained limited at best (European Commission, 2001) its impact on European governance, i.e. the question of how regional policy should be conducted in Europe, has been much more significant. Reasons for this can be found if one acknowledges the importance of three key dichotomies that have shaped the evolution of the European regional policy regime: (1) development versus compensation; (2) intergovermentalism versus multi-level governance; and (3) cohesion versus competition. A closer analysis of these dichotomies can help to eliminate certain myths that have been persistent in this policy area. First, it can be shown that European regional policy was not created to principally constitute a mechanism with which to achieve the reduction of regional disparities in Europe. Rather, an important part (some might say the most important part) of its raison d’etre has always been to act as a mechanism through which to compensate imbalances in member states’ netcontributions to the European budget. The article seeks to show that one can find ample evidence for this ‘compensation logic’ even after the recent reform of the Structural Funds in June 1999. Second, one needs to question the general claim that European policy-making is an area in which an intergovernmental logic of decision-making reigns supreme. While this might still be true for strictly budgetary decisions, the planning and implementation of EC regional policy constitutes perhaps the principal example of multi-level governance in the European Union (Marks, 1992; 1993; Marks et al., 1996), with devolutionary effects being felt even in highly decentralized states such as Germany. Finally, there is the myth that

Refugee protection as a collective action problem: is the EU shirking its responsibilities?

Abstract Refugee protection efforts have been shown to suffer from substantial collective action problems due to the capacity of restrictive policy measures adopted by one region as a means of shifting refugee responsibilities to other regions. Such responsibility-shifting dynamics have been identified between north and south as well as within these regions. European Union (EU) cooperation on asylum and refugee policies has been criticised for facilitating the adoption of restrictive policy measures and the creation of a ‘Fortress Europe’. Fears about the hollowing out of refugee standards have been coupled with concerns about the EUs free-riding on the refugee protection efforts of countries outside the EU. This paper shows that overcoming collective action problems between the Member States has indeed been a key motivation for EU cooperation in this area. However, a comparative analysis of EU asylum laws and refugee protection efforts with those of similar developed countries outside the EU leads to the rejection of some of the assumptions and implications of the ‘Fortress Europe’ thesis. While there is evidence of north/south burden-shirking and substantial room for improvement in the EUs asylum and refugee regimes, comparative legal research and the analysis of available UNHCR data on other OECD countries suggests that there is no evidence to support the claim that European cooperation has led to uniquely restrictive refugee policies and protection outcomes.

Buying into Myths: Free Movement of People and Immigration

The way in which free movement of people has become the central issue of the British governments renegotiation and referendum campaign on the UKs relationship with the European Union (EU) risks obfuscating at least three central issues: why immigrants are coming to the UK; what impact EU migrants are having on the UK; and what can be done to effectively regulate such inflows. It is, however, not just the eurosceptics and the British government, but also ‘in campaigners’ and other EU member states, who risk perpetuating a number of widely held misconceptions about free movement and immigration for political reasons. Buying into such myths risks undermining attempts to have a more honest and more evidence-based debate about immigration and migrant integration.

Beyond venue shopping and liberal constraint: a new research agenda for EU migration policies and politics

ABSTRACT European Union (EU) asylum and immigration politics and policies have witnessed a major change since their communitarization in the early 2000s. Studies on EU migration, however, do not agree on the impact that EU institutions now have on policy outputs and outcomes. While some argue that supranational institutions are able to impose ‘liberal constraints’ on member states, other studies consider them unable to shift the ‘policy core’ of EU migration policies. Many of these disagreements stem from unspecified theoretical assumptions and very different methods to assess influence and change. This research agenda demonstrates how drawing on new institutionalism and policy analysis literature can generate new insights in three important areas of migration policy research: the dynamics of preference formation of member states and EU institutions, the relative power and influence of member states and EU institutions, and their impact on the domestic politics and policies of member states.

Trading numbers vs. rights? Accounting for liberal and restrictive dynamics in the evolution of asylum and refugee policies

ABSTRACT The recent evolution of asylum and refugee policies in developed countries has been characterised by two apparently contradictory dynamics. Efforts to limit the number of asylum applicants have coincided with the strengthening of rights for asylum seekers and refugees inside existing protection systems. The ‘numbers vs. rights’ model seeks to explain such counter-veiling trends as a trade-off, as the result of attempts to manage costs within given budget constraints. The model suggests that high numbers of migrants will tend to go hand in hand with attempts to restrict their rights, while low numbers will typically be associated with more rights. This paper provides a critical analysis of the model when applied to asylum and refugee policies and examines its explanatory purchase through the analysis of longitudinal data on visa and asylum statistics. We argue that while the model provides an interesting framework through which to analyse executive decisions in this field, it underestimates the opportunities and constraints provided by the institutional context in which policy choices are made. We argue that ‘over-time’ variation in the influence of non-majoritarian institutions (in Europe, increasingly those operating at the EU level) provide a more compelling account of the dynamics of asylum and refugee policies over time than the political economy predictions of a ‘number vs. rights’ trade-off.