Refugee Resettlement in the European Union: an Examination of Factors Affecting Compliance with EU Refugee Policy Open Access

Abstract

In 2015, 1.3 million asylum seekers were in Europe. The resulting strain on European Union member states pushed the EU towards a policy of mandatory collective resettlement: the 2015 Relocation and Resettlement Scheme. Compliance with this plan varied greatly across the member states, with some countries going far beyond the number of refugees they were asked to resettle and some accepting only a small fraction of the number they were asked to. This paper places seeks to address the question of why there was such variation in the willingness of EU member states to comply with the 2015 Relocation and Resettlement Scheme. Contextualizing this question within the wider literature on collective action theory, this paper examines several different factors for their influence on member states compliance including economic factors, degree of member state embeddedness within the EU, population size and ruling coalition ideology. Looking across the EU and within the four case studies of Germany, Poland, Latvia and Austria, I found support for the role of both economic capacity and EU integration positively correlating with the willingness of a state to comply with the EU resettlement scheme.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction................1

Defining "refugee"...........2

Chapter 1: Theory........3

Refugee Policy as a Collective Action Dilemma......7

The EU, Supranationalism and Collective Action....9

Chapter 2: Research Design

Summary of Dependent Variable

EU Refugee Policy..................11

Table 1: Compliance ...............15

Explanation of Independent Variables............16

Figure 1: Unemployment and compliance..............18

Figure 2: GDP and compliance...................19

Case Selection.......................22

Table 2: Case Study Assessment Framework................24

Chapter 3: Case Studies......................25

Germany..........................25

Poland...............................29

Austria.............33

Latvia.............36

Analysis and Conclusion.................39

Table 3: Summary of independent variable outcome......40

References.....45

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School	Emory College
Department	Political Science
Degree	BA
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Political Science, General
Keyword	European Union Collective Action Refugee
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Lancaster, Thomas D, Emory University
Committee Members	Queen II, Edward L, Emory University Shapiro, William, Emory University

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