Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Considering the considerable dynamics of EU migration policy both at the constitutional and legislative level, and the potential constraints for governments to pursue certain policies domestically as the result of European integration, more attention is merited to explain why and how member governments have managed to maintain control over the (legislative) process. This paper analyses how the German government remained in charge over the process and safeguarded its key preferences with regard to the development and implementation of the “safe third country” concept at both at the national and European level. Our paper explores the boundaries and interplay between Europeanisation and European integration and thus seeks to contribute to the wider Europeanisation debate. We look at the Europeanisation of asylum policy, both as a top-down process (domestic change caused by EU leveldevelopments) and as a bottom up process (whereby Member States transfer their policies to the European level in order to avoid costs when “down-loading” European policies at a later stage in the process). The latter dimension as well as the interaction between the two-levels has so far received insufficient attention in EU/Europeanisationresearch. The “down-loading” of a security oriented European policy has been a means to legitimise reforms of the German constitutional right to asylum. The reform replaced the liberal and open asylum system of the post-War era with a restrictive system, finding its expression in the institutionalisation of the “safe third country rule”. SinceGermany was one of the first countries in Europe to overhaul its asylum system it became the “pace-setter” in the policy-making process at the EU level. It successfully up-loaded/exported its policy reforms of the early1990s to the European level and thus avoided high adaptational costs (e.g. another constitutional reform). We thus argue thatwhile German asylum policy has been Europeanised at the beginning of the 1990s, the recently adopted common asylum standards with regard to the safe third country concept have been “Germanised”. We argue that the policy transfer from the EU to the domestic and vice versa can be explained by three factors: (1) the discourse, (2) theinstitutional set-up/context, and (3) exogenous and functional pressures.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: After the September 11 terrorist attacks, in response to the Bush Administration that strongly accused Canada of being an Heaven for asylum seekers and a Club Med for terrorists, amazing emergency measures were hastily taken in order to increase the inner and boarder Security. American calls for a greater cooperation between the US (exchange of information and harmonization of immigration policies) have been heard: firstly, some traditional rights and freedoms of every Canadian were significantly reduced; secondly, there has been a quick 180-degree turn in the immigration and refugees procedures in order to strengthen them. All this created frustrations and oppositions from everywhere within the country. For many reasons, there is a greater concern regarding the commitment to detain more and more people as a measure of security and deterrence, in part as the response to September 11 terrorist attacks. Fist of all, although Canada's detention and practices are less draconian than those of our neighbours, the detention process has in itself always had systemic weaknesses that have not been improved until yet. As Canada often looks good by comparison (i.e. horror stories on detention conditions in France, Australia, Great Britain or United States), its international reputation as a very best Country for migrants makes it somehow difficult to change the inner system. If there is no place for improvement, the system is bound to regress, as a consequence: the willingness to detain more and more people longer and longer with broader powers given to immigration agents, whereas past and current problems have not been solved yet, appears as problematic. Detention in Canada is a grey zone, not well known, thus misunderstood and then underfunded. In this special context, the erosion of the migrants' fundamental Human Rights is bound to happen.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The migration of political asylum seekers into the United States has always been a salient political topic, however; social scientists have yet to examine this process in its entirety and in the context of political changes since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. A previous study by Rosenblum and Salehyan (2004) shows that humanitarian and strategic interests enter into the decision, but that study focuses only on decisions made by asylum officers. Asylum decisions are made by both asylum officers and by Immigration Court judges, who have the final say. Here we examine both paths to asylum, using data from a global set of countries, from 1999-2004. We find that human rights practices in the home country, which (if one takes seriously the wording of legislation) should be among the strongest determinants of asylum success, decreases substantially in importance after September 11. The waning importance of human rights is more pronounced at the asylum officer level than for the Immigration Courts after the attack on the World Trade Center. We also find that language heritage, specifically for asylum seekers from English, Spanish and Arabic-speaking countries, substantially affects asylum acceptance rates for both decision makers with interesting changes occurring between the two time periods of our study.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Immigration law in the United States, similar to jurisprudence in all nation-states that admit asylum seekers, differentiates voluntary and forced migration. Voluntary migration may include temporary travel for the purpose of leisure or study or permanent migration for employment or marriage. Constitutive of the forced migration experience and codified in refugee law is a claim of persecution in order to gain asylum. Immigration law enacts a boundary reserving refuge for those who articulate persecution as the motivating decision to cross a national border. In this paper, I address how immigration law in the United States constructs a boundary between forced and voluntary migration based on a narrative of persecution that may not reflect how and why asylum seekers cross nation-state borders. My findings draw from empirical research conducted in Los Angeles, California from August 2001 through April 2003 where I attended asylum hearings at the Los Angeles immigration court and interviewed asylum officers, immigration judges, immigration attorneys, service providers, human rights activists, and asylees.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: While aiming to preserve domestic security, the Department of Homeland Security is also influenced by the humanitarian concern of making immigration interviews a social space where aliens have a fair chance of demonstrating their fear of persecution. Immigration
policy has been schizophrenic in its aims, vacillating between opening and closing the door to new arrivals. The restrictionist sentiment that provided the basis of America�s earliest immigration laws provided a template for the creation and administration of refugee policies and asylum law. This paper examines the role of ideological biases in judgments about the credibility of applicants for asylum. This study focuses on how officers think about cases and the situational and cultural influences on the decisions asylum adjudicators render. For persons attempting to enter this country for asylum, certain social group memberships such as nationality, make it more or less likely that their case will be referred to an asylum officer. For those that do get as far as an asylum interview, a host of social psychological phenomena ranging from perceptual biases to attribution processes shape how these individuals who come in contact with the asylum system are viewed and ultimately treated. Several areas are given particular consideration in this analysis of asylum decision-making: (a) schemas and the processing of claimant information, (b) culture and attributions made regarding claimant behavior, and (c) external constraints officers face in processing cases. This paper is based on a variety of qualitative methods including, ethnographic observations of asylum hearings and interviews, and in-depth interviews with claimants and asylum attorneys. It is hoped that this paper illuminates the extrajudicial factors that affect asylum claimant�s ability to establish a credible fear of persecution, and some of the difficulties refugees face in gaining legal entry to America.