Pusterla, Francesca and Pusterla, Elia R.G. (2016) EU Member States and the 2015 Migrant Crisis between Risks to State Fragility and Challenges to Solidarity. In: ECPR Standing Group/External Conference, 15.06.2015, Trento - Online.
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Abstract
This paper questions whether the socio-economic-political trends of EU Member States explain governmental attitudes to the management of the 2015 European Migrant Crisis. The European Union and its Member States are dealing with an unprecedented humanitarian crisis where hundreds of thousands of refugees, migrants and asylum-seekers, especially from North Africa, the Middle East and Near East, have left their countries in search of shelter and better life conditions. Although this crisis has put EU Member States under similarly severe humanitarian pressure, governmental reactions to cope with it vary. This allows placing state governments in an opening/closing axis in terms of hospitality and solidarity to asylum seekers. Referring to the IR literature on domestic preferences and state sovereignty and vulnerability, the normative argument made here is that (only) in the event of internal difficulties to states, a lower propensity to hospitality cannot be blamed. Consequently, EU Member States with negative socio-economic-political trends can be less ready to receive refugees for reasons of risk calculation, where the risk is here conceived as an expression of the positive/negative trend in terms of the last decade of domestic outcomes of states measured through the Fragile State Index. Accordingly, Member States experiencing negative socio-economic-political trends may perceive enhanced fragility and greater risks associated with the humanitarian crisis and may be less open to set up policies of hospitality and solidarity. Therefore, this paper hypothesises that Member State attitudes towards the humanitarian crisis may depend on the domestic vulnerability and risks of state “fragilisation”. In other words, the worse the domestic socio-economic-political trends – and higher the risks of domestic weakening – the less open Member States are expected to be towards asylum and integration policies. Accordingly, the Fragile States Index measurement of domestic risk provides quantitative data to statistically test the working hypothesis.
| Item Type: | Article in conference proceedings or Presentation at a conference (Lecture) |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | Social studies Social studies > Politics |
| Department/unit: | Dipartimento economia aziendale, sanità e sociale > Centro competenze anziani |
| Depositing User: | Roberta Torriani |
| Date Deposited: | 03 Dec 2021 13:58 |
| Last Modified: | 03 Dec 2021 13:59 |
| URI: | http://repository.supsi.ch/id/eprint/13025 |
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- EU Member States and the 2015 Migrant Crisis between Risks to State Fragility and Challenges to Solidarity. (deposited 03 Dec 2021 13:58) [Currently Displayed]
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