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1. Diversity without adversity? Refugees’ efforts to integrate can partially offset identity-based biases

Author:
Anna Getmansky, Konstantinos Matakos, and Tolga Sinmazdemir
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC)
Abstract:
How can refugees overcome barriers to integration in the host country? Refugees often face economic, social, and political discrimination by the local population. Ethnicity, religion, and refugees' past involvement in political violence can further exacerbate these biases. We examine whether host country's citizens reduce anti-refugee attitudes if they know that refugees have made proactive effort to integrate by forging social ties with the locals and learning the local language. Unlike most of the previous studies, we examine a non-Western country-Turkey-that hosts the highest number of Syrian refugees (3.6 million). We field a conjoint survey experiment-a method previously applied to study migration attitudes in the West-to 2,362 respondents in Turkey, presenting them with profiles of Syrian refugees that vary by demographics, ethnicity, religion, and involvement in the Syrian civil war. Respondents rank each profile in order of support for social, economic and political integration. We find that although Turkey is a Muslim country hosting predominantly co-religious refugees, not all refugees are perceived equally. There is a significant bias against Arabs and Kurds compared to Turkomans, and against former pro-regime fighters. Although information on refugees' effort strengthens support for their integration, not all disadvantaged groups benefit equally from it. Such information has a more robust effect on boosting support for Kurdish refugees, and has a limited effect on support for integration of Arabs and former pro-regime fighters. Importantly, information on proactive effort also strengthens support for groups that experience less discrimination (Turkomans and non-fighters), thereby potentially exacerbating inequalities among the refugees.
Topic:
Religion, Refugee Issues, Refugees, Refugee Crisis, Discrimination, and Identities
Political Geography:
Turkey and Syria

2. The persistent refugee crisis in Europe. The legal and management framework of the European Union / La persistente crisis de los refugiados en Europa. El marco jurídico y de gestión de la Unión Europea

Author:
Adela M. Alija
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Security Studies Group (GESI) at the University of Granada
Abstract:
Although the most serious period of the refugee crisis in Europe was undoubtedly the year 2015, this persistent conflict remains unresolved, as the causes and factors that condition it remain unresolved. At this time, it has been demonstrated that the governance structures of the international system do not have the capacity to respond adequately to the new challenges. The phenomenon of forced migration is a clear expression of the complexity of today’s international scenarios. The refugee crisis, or migration crisis as it is also called, has tested, and continues to test, the foundations of the European Union, which is also going through a real existential crisis. This article analyzes, on the one hand, the situation, context and conditions of forced migrants and more particularly of refugees, and, on the other, the role that the European Union is developing in the face of this crisis, when it is going through serious difficulties. The legal and management instruments available to the European Union to face these crises are also analyzed.
Topic:
Security, Governance, European Union, Refugees, and Refugee Crisis
Political Geography:
Europe

3. Hypocritical Inhospitality: The Global Refugee Crisis in the Light of History

Author:
Luke Glanville
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Political authorities often claim that states have an absolute right to decide for themselves who enters their territory and the conditions on which they enter by mere virtue of their sovereignty. In 2018, for example, the then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, responded to the UN’s criticism of the Donald Trump administration’s practice of separating children from parents entering the United States without documentation, including those claiming asylum, with a typical appeal to sovereign prerogative: “We will remain a generous country, but we are also a sovereign country, with laws that decide how to best control our borders and protect our people. Neither the United Nations nor anyone else will dictate how the United States upholds its borders.”1 A brief glance at the history of sovereignty, however, reminds us of two crucial things. First, sovereignty is socially constructed, and its meaning and implications have changed and continue to change over time. Sovereignty need not entail, and historically has not entailed, an absolute right to regulate the movement of people in and out of one’s territory.2 Second, we are reminded of the deep and problematic ties between the history of sovereignty’s construction and the history of the European colonial project.3 Sovereignty was for a long time considered a privilege enjoyed only by Europeans and those non-Europeans whom Europeans deigned to acknowledge as civilized members of the “family of nations.” It was not until the second half of the twentieth century that Europe’s widespread empires were finally dismantled, self-government was granted to formerly colonized peoples, and the institution of the territorially bounded sovereign state spread across the globe. More than that, for centuries, the wealth of Europe’s sovereign powers was augmented, and the territories of their soon-to-be-sovereign settler colonies beyond Europe were acquired by means of violent conquest, subjection, enslavement, displacement, and, often, slaughter of nonsovereign indigenous peoples. The powerful once demanded hospitality from the vulnerable. They now deny it to them. That much is well known. What is less well known is that one justification that European imperial powers offered for the violent subjection of nonsovereign non-Europeans, at least for a time, was indigenous peoples’ violation of a supposedly natural and enforceable duty of hospitality. Today, many of these same powers—including European Union member states and former settler colonies, such as the United States and Australia—work tirelessly and expend billions of dollars to resist granting hospitality to forcibly displaced people seeking asylum at their borders or waiting in refugee camps and urban centers in developing regions of the world. The powerful once demanded hospitality from the vulnerable. They now deny it to them. This essay examines the hypocritical inhospitality of these wealthy and powerful states in four stages. I first outline how the notion of a duty of hospitality was deployed as a justification for European colonialism. Second, I contrast this historical demand for hospitality with the denial of hospitality by former colonial powers today, noting that they legitimate this denial by again imposing an expectation of hospitality on others. Third, I consider the justified limits to the duty of hospitality, explaining how Immanuel Kant and others usefully sought a formulation of the duty that would protect the vulnerable from the predations of powerful intruders while still requiring the powerful to provide relief to the displaced vulnerable. And fourth, I argue, given that certain states accrued vast wealth and territory from the European colonial project, which they justified in part by appeals to a duty of hospitality, these states are bound now to extend hospitality to vulnerable outsiders not simply as a matter of charity or even reciprocity, but as justice and restitution for grave historical wrongs.
Topic:
Refugee Crisis, Colonialism, Humanitarian Crisis, and Hospitality
Political Geography:
Global Focus

4. An Analysis of European Union Policy towards Syrian Refugees

Author:
Ameer Ayaz and Abdul Wadood
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Political Studies
Institution:
Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
Abstract:
In 2015, millions of refugees, mostly Syrians, knocked the door of Europe for protection against war and violence in their home countries. The number of refugees that entered Europe in 2015 made only 0.2 percent of total Europe’s population, considerably low number than other refugee hosting countries. In fact, for a continent as wealthy as Europe, the influx of refugees could be easily managed but European Union was unable to bring a common policy to cope with it. European Union already divided by the Eurozone crisis experienced further divisions due to refugee influx. The polarization in European politics and society reached the highest point since the Second World War. The failure of Social Democracy and center politics in solving the crisis created space for either right-wing or left-wing populist parties that won many seats in both European and national parliaments, while in some countries even managed to make governments.
Topic:
Multiculturalism, European Union, Refugee Crisis, Arab Spring, and Syrian War
Political Geography:
Europe, Middle East, and Syria