Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

We construct novel measures to assess (i) the extent to which European Union member states are using common standards in recognizing asylum seekers and (ii) the extent to which the responsibilities for asylum applications, acceptances and refugee populations are equally shared among the member states, taking into account population size, gross domestic product (GDP) and GDP expressed in purchasing power parity (GDP-PPP). We track the progression of these measures since the implementation of the Treaty of Amsterdam (1999). These measures display divergent trends and we try to provide an interpretation of the dynamics that are constitutive of these trends.

Keywords

asylum statistics burden-sharing Common European Asylum System EU asylum policy refugee protection refugee statistics

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bocker

Havinga

(1998) Asylum applications in the European Union: Patterns and trends and the effects of policy measures. Journal of Refugee Studies 11(3): 245–266.

Coffey

Feingold

Bromberg

(1988) A normed measure of variability among proportions. Computational Statistics & Data Analysis 7(2): 127–141.

Czaika

(2005) A refugee burden index: Methodology and its applications. Migration Letters 2(2): 101–125.

European Commission (2007) Green Paper on the Future Common European Asylum System. COM(2007) 301 final, Brussels, 6 June 2007. URL (accessed 16 September 2011): http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/com/2007/com2007_0301en01.pdf.

European Commission (2008) Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of Regions: Policy Plan on Asylum – An Integrated Approach to Protection across the EU. COM(2008) 360 final, Brussels, 17 June 2008. URL (accessed 16 September 2011): http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2008:0360:FIN:EN:PDF.

Fitelson

(2011) The Coffey-Feingold-Bromberg measure: A normed measure of variability among proportions. URL (accessed 16 September 2011): http://fitelson.org/coffey-feingold-bromberg.html.

Holzer

Schneider

Widmer

(2000a) Discriminating decentralisation: Federalism and the handling of asylum applications in Switzerland, 1988–1996. Journal of Conflict Resolution 44(2): 250–276.

Holzer

Schneider

Widmer

(2000b) The impact of legislative deterrence measures on the number of asylum applications in Switzerland. International Migration Review 34(4): 1182–1216.

Matrix Insight Ltd, Thielemann

Williams

Boswell

(2010) What system of burden-sharing for the reception of asylum seekers – A study. URL (accessed 16 September 2011): http://personal.lse.ac.uk/thielema/Papers-PDF/EP-BS-Study-FullReport-final.PDF.

10.

Neumayer

(2004) Asylum destination choice: What makes some West European countries more attractive than others? European Union Politics 5(2): 155–180.

11.

Neumayer

(2005) Asylum recognition rates in Western Europe: Their determinants, variation, and lack of convergence. Journal of Conflict Resolution 49(1): 43–66.

12.

Treaty of Amsterdam Amending the Treaty on European Union, the Treaties Establishing the European Communities and Certain Related Acts (1997). URL (accessed 16 September 2011): http://eur-lex.europa.eu/en/treaties/dat/11997D/htm/11997D.html.

13.

Treaty of Lisbon Amending the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty Establishing the European Community (2007). URL (accessed 16 September 2011): http://www.lisbon-treaty.org/wcm/the-lisbon-treaty.html.

14.

Thielemann

(2006) The effectiveness of governments’ attempts to control unwanted migration. In: Parsons

Smeeding

(eds) Immigration and the Transformation of Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 442–472.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

1.31 MB

0.00 MB