A Comparative Legal Approach to the Protection of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the European Union: With a Focus on the Principle of Non-Refoulement

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shabnam Haji
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Refugees And Asylum Seekers

The Dead are Coming

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Stümer
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
The Other ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Political Exclusion ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Fortress Europe ◽  
Refugees And Asylum Seekers

The escalating death tolls of migrants seeking to enter Europe are a dramatic testimony to the cynical, dehumanizing, and violent fortification of the European Union, whereby refugees and asylum seekers have become the emblematic figures of contemporary political exclusion. Rather than emerge as a peaceful, open, and postnational community, fortress Europe increasingly relies on a process of (re)walling, evoking the legacy of the camp and redrawing colonial boundaries. Europe’s borders serve as expressions of “necropower” and contemporary biopolitical attempts at subjugating and distinguishing forms of “bare life,” as they regulate forms of life, death, and living death. At the same time, these “necropolitics” remain hidden by the necrogeography of the borderscape. The author argues that this deathscape escalates bare life into bare death as a form of nonrelational death enabled by the constructed otherness of the Muslim refugee. Reading this politics of bare death against Sophocles’s Antigone, this article considers how Europe’s deathscape is mediated and challenged. The author examines the art collective Center for Political Beauty and its controversial project of transporting the bodies of deceased migrants from Italy to Berlin in order to give the dead “dignified burials.” The author suggests that the artists engage a form of “corpse politics” using the ritual of the burial as a way to reintegrate the death of the other. This opening of the European soil enables a reimagining of European sovereignty, acknowledging the relations denied by bare death. The nomos of the earth is reinterpreted as a nomos of the soil, reenvisioning a Europe beyond borders and welcoming “difference” as the grounds for responsible politics.

Harmonisation of Asylum Law and Policy within the European Union: A Human Rights Perspective

2002 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-184
Author(s):  
Hannah R. Garry
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Member States ◽  
Asylum Policy ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Amsterdam Treaty ◽  
Asylum Law ◽  
The Eu

From 1986 to the present, there has been a dramatic increase in the numbers of asylum applications within the borders of the European Union largely from Eastern European countries and former colonies in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Reacting to the influxes of the 1980s, European States began to implement and coordinate policies to control entry of asylum seekers. Within this climate, the EU has moved towards harmonisation of asylum policy and procedure as necessary for its pursuit of an ‘area of freedom, security and justice’ without internal borders for the purpose of greater economic and political integration. In light of the current restrictive attitudes and practice towards asylum seekers in the individual Member States of the EU, the harmonisation of asylum policy through the institutions and law of the EU may prove to be problematic from a human rights perspective. This paper first traces the development of a common asylum policy within the EU through the Maastricht Treaty and the Amsterdam Treaty. Second, this paper analyses the implications of harmonisation after the Amsterdam Treaty with reference to the international obligations of the Member States under international human rights and refugee law. Third, this paper critiques the development of various current asylum policies and practice through intergovernmental development of ‘soft law’. Through this overview and analysis, it is argued that further steps towards harmonisation will continue to reflect European concerns with security, economic prosperity, and cultural homogeneity unless the moves towards supranationalism within the EU framework lead to a deliberate effort to make respect for human rights the core of asylum law and policy.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Post-return Monitoring – A Missing Link in the International Protection of Refugees?

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-386
Author(s):  
Jari Pirjola
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
The European Union ◽  
International Protection ◽  
Missing Link ◽  
Return Policies ◽  
Human Rights Protection ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
Irregular Migrants ◽  
Refugees And Asylum Seekers

Abstract Post-return monitoring of rejected asylum-seekers is the missing link in the protection chain for rejected asylum-seekers. In the European Union, for example, the rights of rejected asylum-seekers are well guaranteed and monitored in the pre-return and return phases. Systematic monitoring of forced returns stops when the deportee arrives at the airport of his or her country of origin. The sending countries do not know what happens to rejected asylum-seekers and irregular migrants upon return. International human rights organisations have started to pay attention to this gap in the international protection system. Ignorance by States in this regard deprives them of important insights from the viewpoint of human rights protection and return policies. This article explores what comprises post-return monitoring, what kinds of post-return monitoring projects have been carried out so far and how post-return monitoring could be implemented in the future. The article also discusses the role of post-return monitoring in the refugee determination procedure. It is argued that post-return monitoring could both strengthen the protection of refugees and asylum-seekers and assist States in creating effective, transparent, and morally responsible return policies.

Resistance to Immigrants and Asylum Seekers in the European Union

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Marcel Coenders ◽  
Marcel Lubbers ◽  
Peer Scheepers
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
The European Union

scholarly journals African Asylum Seekers in Europe: The Interplay between Foreign Aid and Governance in Origin Countries

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordi Ripollés ◽  
Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Development Aid ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Trust Fund ◽  
Governance Quality ◽  
Official Development Aid

AbstractThis paper empirically investigates the effects of governance quality on the number of African asylum seekers in Europe over the period 1996–2018 and evaluates the extent to which official development aid acts as a catalyst. With this purpose in mind, different gravity model specifications and estimation approaches have been employed. The obtained results suggest that the asylum flows are strongly determined by governance quality in the country of origin and that this effect does depend on the amount of foreign aid received from developed countries. Moreover, it is also found that development aid is only effective in reducing asylum applications coming from countries with good governance. Moreover, we find no differences in the estimated elasticity of foreign aid on asylum claims for the beneficiaries of the European Union Emergency Trust Fund (EUTF) for Africa, the main aim of which has been to improve living conditions of potential migrants in their countries of origin.

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