Understanding the Tide: A Comparative Analysis of Political Responses to Refugee Inflows

My dissertation researches the response of governments confronted with considerable refugee inflows. I will investigate why countries react differently to refugee inflows in a comparative study of three different areas of the world: Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. The current refugee crisis in Europe has put into evidence the ineffectiveness of the European common asylum and migration system, in the specific, and of the whole international refugee system, in general. Presently, there is no legal nor institutional mechanism that permits an ordered and well-distributed inflow of asylum-seekers towards safe countries. This is due not simply to the nature of the conflicts from which people flee that very often do not allow for a well-thought response from part of their victims. In reality, this is mostly due to an international refugee system that sets the overwhelming majority of the burden of supporting asylum-seekers on the areas geographically close to the country people are fleeing.

My research will identify key independent variables that can help me explain why governments in a specific area decide to accept, or not, refugees within their territory. My assumption is that to each specific area corresponds a set of independent variables. So far, I have identified four possible independent variables that might help explain why certain governments are more prone than others to accept refugees in a given context: the degree and quality of media attention given to a certain conflict; the medium-term perceived social and economic effects on the country hosting refugees; the current level of migration towards the hosting country; and the relation between the sending and hosting governments. The addition or removal of independent variables during the course of the research should be considered. My aim is to explain how a set of independent variables shapes the response of governments to refugee inflows.