asylum migration

asylum migration The international movement of refugees and persons who, while having suffered generalized repression, violence, and poverty, do not qualify as refugees under the strict requirements of the 1976 UN protocol. Currently, the only option for non‐EU nationals unable to use the family reunion scheme, but wishing to migrate to the EU is to claim asylum.

‘The total number of asylum applications, including dependants, to EU countries has remained relatively steady since 1999. As well as the United Kingdom, Belgium, Finland, the Irish Republic, Italy and the Netherlands each recorded a fall in applications between 2000 and 2001. Applications to Belgium and Italy, for example, almost halved, while applications to Austria increased by 65 per cent and to France by 22 per cent. In 2001 the United Kingdom received more asylum applications than any other EU country, closely followed by Germany. However, when the relative size of the countries' populations are taken into account, by looking at the number of asylum seekers per 1,000 population, the United Kingdom ranks joint seventh with Luxembourg. Austria has the highest rate at 3.7 asylum seekers per 1,000 population, while Portugal has the lowest, at less than 0.1 per 1,000 population’ (National Office of Statistics, Social Trends 33
).

Throughout the EU, there are marked differences in the place of origin of asylum seekers; refugees tend to join existing communities. The small size of the Yugoslav community in France (most of whom came from Serbia) mitigated against France taking in many refugees from the former Yugoslavia (Morokvasic, in M. Morokvasic and E. Hedwig (eds.) 1994). Rates of acceptance of asylum seekers are closely tied to the foreign policy of the receiving state; for example, in 1997, 66% of applicants from the former Yugoslavia were successful in the UK, as opposed to 23% in France.

More men claim asylum, as individuals, than women, but women often dominate in offical refugee programmes, as in Bosnia and Kosovo. Upon acceptance, men tend to be employed in the formal sector of the economy, while women are more likely to obtain work in the informal sector, often because of their status as dependants in family migration ( E. Kofman, in Fincher and Jacobs (eds.) 1998).

The 1999 UK Asylum Bill restricted the rights of asylum seekers, replacing vouchers for cash payments for subsistence, and forcibly dispersing asylum seekers throughout the country, away from Greater London and the south‐east.

The United Nations High Commissioner for refugees estimates that half the claims for political asylum in Europe are fraudulent and the pressure of increasing numbers of false claims has forced receiving governments into a more hardhearted attitude; only 4% of the claims made in Germany in 1990 were accepted as genuine, for example.