The European Union’s (EU’s) asylum system is riddled with factors that hold back its development. First of all, the responsibility-determination mechanism (the Dublin system) fails to share responsibility fairly between the Member States, and in addition largely disregards the realities…
Amid rising numbers of asylum seekers arriving at European shores over recent years, reception and processing facilities – especially in countries of first arrival – were often overburdened. Asylum seekers faced insufficient infrastructure for their reception and integration, leading in…
As former East Germany is now receiving refugees as part of the national distribution scheme, towns there need to adapt to accommodating refugees. There is a range of different attitudes in the East-German context – from the highly defensive to…
Current efforts to discuss and address the ‘migration crisis’ in Europe are marked by polemics, fed in part by imprecise and sometimes inflammatory terminology used to describe migrants. This also risks contributing to the erosion of migrants’ rights. The term…
In 2014 the total number of applications for asylum in Poland by nationals of all countries reached just over 8,000.[1] Compared to 428,000 in Hungary or 646,000 in Italy (two other states situated at the EU’s external border), the Polish…
An increasing number of children are migrating to Europe on their own in order to escape persecution, conflict, violence and poverty or seeking family reunification, educational or economic opportunities. Many are making very dangerous voyages, across land and sea, and…
In the European Union (EU), regular immigrants receive a residence permit and irregular immigrants receive a return order, an order to leave the country. Irregular immigrants “whose presence in the territory is known to the immigration authorities, but who, for…
The Australian practice of turning back asylum seekers has been quoted – often favourably – by political leaders in several EU states as an example to be followed in Europe. In fact, in the Australian context the issue of ‘boat…
The European Union (EU) has long prided itself on being a beacon of regionalism but its paralysis over the question of a common asylum system may represent the most severe failure in the project’s history. So far this year more…
Syrians fleeing the current conflict have been repeatedly told that they cannot ‘choose’ the state in which they seek long-term protection. In Australia, the idea that asylum seekers are ‘shopping’ for the best sanctuary forms a persistent part of the…