Mette Louise Berg, Silke Zschomler and Laura Casu discuss their findings on recent trends in European immigration policy.
We recently conducted research with colleagues across Europe to find out how European governments responded to large numbers of protection applicants in 2015-16 compared to 2022-23.
We asked what the main differences were between the responses of European governments in the two periods. Are Europe’s asylum and integration policies for people seeking protection becoming more liberal, more lenient, or more restrictive? Are we becoming more selective or more universal? Is it characterized by an increase in temporary measures or by more permanent measures? Finally, are people leaving Ukraine treated particularly differently than other protection seekers? We looked at Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Norway, Poland, Sweden and the UK.
In most European countries, wars in Syria, Afghanistan and Eritrea resulted in large numbers of people arriving for protection in 2015-2016. In the years since, stricter border policies, the 2016 EU-Turkey Statement and Action Plan, and the COVID-19 pandemic have reduced the number of people able to cross the Schengen border.
In February 2022, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine led to the displacement of millions of people both within Ukraine and across the border to other European countries. At the same time, the number of asylum seekers from other countries has also increased in many European countries, with Syria and Afghanistan continuing to be the most important countries of origin.
What did we find? The number of people seeking asylum in European countries has varied significantly over the past decade, with 2015/16 and 2022/23 being the absolute peak years. Several countries included in the study, including Germany, Sweden, Austria and Norway, were among the countries receiving the highest number of asylum seekers arriving in Europe in 2015/16, both in absolute terms and in proportion to their population. .
Additional limitations: Race to the bottom?
Although 2022 brings a more unified response to Ukrainian refugees across Europe, there are significant differences in the rights and restrictions of Ukrainian refugees across countries. In some countries and in some policy areas, Ukrainian refugees have more liberal rights than other refugee groups. However, in other regions, Ukrainian refugees have more limited access to services in host countries and overall receive more temporary permits than in other regions.
Our analysis highlights the move towards more restrictive, selective and ad hoc policies. Almost all the countries we analyzed have introduced more restrictive policies regarding protected status since 2015. Restrictions have been imposed in a variety of policy areas, including protection grants, legal aid, family reunification, and financial support, to name a few. These restrictions have been described as a ‘national race to the bottom’, with countries competing to have the most restrictive policies, rather than a unified response across Europe.
Special measures for people fleeing Ukraine
The main policy changes in 2022 were related to displaced people from Ukraine. Here we find that the response across countries is much more unified, at least in terms of granting protection. All countries except the UK have implemented some form of collective temporary protection for displaced people from Ukraine. EU countries have activated temporary safeguards directives that are largely reflected in national law in Denmark and Norway. It provides temporary protection to Ukrainians for up to three years. The Nordic countries routed applications from Ukraine through their regular asylum systems, which require formal applications for protection. However, collective protection simplified the process and had elements of online registration and automated processing of applications. Rather than offering them a route through the regular asylum system, Germany, Poland and Austria have introduced registration procedures that grant them rights on registration or require only a Ukrainian passport. The UK has introduced three tailored visa-based regimes to allow Ukrainians and certain family members to come to or remain in the UK without enforcing temporary group protection that mirrors the EU. The scheme provides the right to remain in the UK for the first three years. However, Ukraine’s relevant regime does not grant refugee status to protection seekers. Additionally, people who enter or remain in the UK under all three schemes will not enter the asylum system.
The role of civil society
Civil society, private actors and NGOs played an important role in supporting people seeking protection and supporting the government in 2015/16 and 2022/23. Although there are differences between the Nordic countries and the rest, the support of civilians and civil society was essential in all countries during this period of large population influx.
Conclusion: Differential rights and restrictions, increased temporality
Most of the countries we looked at have introduced selective policies for displaced persons from Ukraine. But this selective trend was not a new phenomenon. Several countries had already introduced discriminatory rights and restrictions for various subgroups before and after 2015, distinguishing between permits and rights based on national origin, religion or mode of arrival.
We have also observed a general pattern in which most countries take a more temporary view of all protection applicants. This trend was already adopted in the asylum, immigration and integration policies of many European countries in 2015, but was especially noticeable through the activation of the EU Interim Directive and similar national legislation for Ukrainian protection applicants. Although most of the countries included in our analysis have moved towards more restrictive, selective and ad hoc policies for protection seekers, there are substantial differences between countries in the extent and scope of this overall trend and in the policy areas in which such changes have been made. . It is important to continue to monitor these trends and understand their impact on people’s lives and livelihoods.
Mette Louise Berg is a social anthropologist interested in migration, diaspora, and migrant transnationalism. urban diversity; gender, affiliation and generation; and social memory. Regionally, she specializes in Cuba and the wider Caribbean, Latin America, London and the UK. She is Professor of Migration and Diaspora Studies at the Thomas Coram Institute for Social Research at UCL.
Silke Zchomler is a Research Fellow in the Thomas Coram Laboratory, UCL Institute for Social Studies and the Institute for Global Health, and Associate Professor (Education) in the Department of Education, Practice and Sociology. Her research is situated at the nexus of internal and exclusionary mechanisms of migration and immigration, inequality, urban multiculturalism and diversity, language/language learning, and ‘integration’ processes.
Laura Casu is a PhD researcher at the UCL Institute for Social Research. Over the past 15 years, she has been conducting research on poverty reduction and reducing inequality, including research on migration and internal migration. Her research and impact evaluation work includes mixed methods studies in sub-Siberian Asia, Africa, Latin America, and most recently Europe. Her doctoral research focuses on food insecurity in the workplace in high-income settings.
Partners and Funding
The Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Studies led the study together with colleagues from UCL, the University of Eastern Finland, the University of Warsaw, the German Center for Integrative Migration Studies (DeZIM) and the University of Vienna. This study was funded by IMDi (Norwegian Inclusion and Diversity Agency).
Further reading
Comparative analysis and individual country reports can be found here: https://oda.oslomet.no/oda-xmlui/handle/11250/3112660
A recording of the launch event can be found here. Many people asked for protection. How is Europe responding? – FilMet (oslomet.no)
Featured image by Daniel Schludi via Unsplash
memo: The views expressed in this post are those of the author and not those of the UCL European Institute or UCL..
