The EU Member States' Capability to Grant International Protection to Asylum Seekers: An Explorative Analysis (2010-2021)

Giuseppe Gabrielli, University of Naples Federico II
Maria Vittoria Forte, University of Naples “Federico II”
Rosa Gatti, University of Naples “Federico II”
Federico Benassi, University of Naples Federico II
Salvatore Strozza, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II

Asylum applications in European Union Member States have had a nonhomogeneous tendency in the last decade with an unequal distribution of refugee burdens within the EU, a solidarity deficit and a lack of uniformity in the EU Member States’ refugee protection systems. By using Eurostat data on 26 EU Member States and considering the period 2010–2021, divided into three sub-periods, the paper aims to describe the State’s capability to grant international protection, and some destination country factors significantly associated with it. We proposed the Impact Rate of International Protection, an original synthetic measure that relativises the recognition of protection status to the destination country’s population size and broke it into three multiplying indicators. We performed symmetric multivariate analyses identifying groups of countries with similar patterns among EU Member States and the changing approaches of the States during the 2014–2017 period. In this sub-period, more than half of the countries were characterised by administrative ineffectiveness and/or closure in the processing of asylum applications. Conversely, Sweden, Germany, Austria and Malta were largely committed to refugee protection. The adopted original regression model confirms the association of selected destination country factors with the State capability to grant international protection to asylum seekers.

Keywords: Migrant Populations and Refugees, International Migration, Spatial Demography, Neighbourhood/contextual effect analysis

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