From needy refugee to disguised terrorist
Media representations of the Syrian refugees and Syrian refugee policy in Dutch and German media from 2011 to 2015.
University of Amsterdam Master Thesis European Studies
19/06/2015
Karin Kamphuis
Supervisor: Mrs. Prof. Dr. L. Bialasiewicz L.A.Bialasiewicz@uva.nl
List of figures.
Figure on front page: Kurdish refugees are fleeing to Turkey. Source: Frankfurter
Allgemeine (20/09/2014). http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/naher-osten/45-000-syrische-kurden-fliehen-in-die-tuerkei-13163860.html [Accessed 19/06/15]
Fig 1.1. Distribution of funds from the European Refugee Fund in million EUR. Source: Dg Home Affairs, 2014. http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/index_en.html [Accessed 18/06/15]
Fig. 1.2. Total number of asylum applications in the EU28 (1998-2013) Source: Eurostat Fig. 2.1. Annual number of new asylum applications in Germany between 1980 and 2010. Source: Migration Policy Institute. Graphics made by Karin Kamphuis.
Fig. 2.2. Relative inflow of asylum seekers in the Netherlands per month. Source: Grutters, 11 november 2006, Amersfoort, Asylum policy in Perspective lecture at Workday for refugees.
Fig. 3.1. Strategies in exclusion and discrimination in discourse. Source: Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (2001). Methods of critical discourse analysis. London: SAGE, p.73.
Fig. 3.2. The woman on the picture fled from the North of Syria to Lebanon, where she stays in a provisional accommodation in a school in Wadi Khaled. Source: Der Spiegel.
Source: Der Spiegel. http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/syrien-traumatisierte-kriegsopfer-werden-im-libanon-behandelt-fotostrecke-89542.html [Accessed 16/06/15]
Figure 3.3. This girl and her family fled the heavily fought over city of Homs. In the East of Lebanon the refugees have found shelter. Source: Der Spiegel.
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/syrien-traumatisierte-kriegsopfer-werden-im-libanon-behandelt-fotostrecke-89542.html [Accessed 16/06/15]
Figure 3.4. Syrian refugees at the Turkish border. Source: Ouderen journaal:
http://www.ouderenjournaal.nl/home/2014/09/21/70-000-syriers-vluchten-grens-turkije/ [Accessed 18/06/15]
Figure 3.5 Syrian refugees are on their way to Turkey in a boat. Source: Tageszeitung http://www.taz.de/!103395/ [Accessed 16/06/15]
Figure 3.6. Syrian mother with children in a refugee camp. Source: Das Bild. http://www.bild.de/politik/ausland/isis/kinder-erzaehlen-ihre-geschichte-38122920.bild.html [Accessed 15/05/15]
Figure 3.7. Turkish soldiers ‘protecting’ the Turkish/Syrian border. Source. Die Zeit. http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2014-09/tuerkei-islamischer-staat-luftangriffe-beteiligung [Accessed 16/06/15]
Figure 3.8. Syrian refugees arrive in Germany. Source: Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge.
http://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Meldungen/DE/2013/20130912-ankunft-syrer-humanitaere-aufnahme.html [Accessed 24-03-2014]
Fig. 3.9. A Dutch crime reporter is having a conversation with a refugee. Source: Trouw. http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/4492/Nederland/article/detail/3954573/2015/04/14/Vluchte ling-in-huis-nemen-Beter-van-niet.dhtml [Accessed 16/06/15]
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter 1. European Asylum policy
1.1 The history of European asylum policy 4
1.2 European asylum policy after 2000 7
1.3 Migration management 9
1.4 Discourse in matters of immigration and asylum 14
1.5 Summary of findings 16
Chapter 2. Changing asylum policies and shifting attitudes towards asylum seekers in Germany and the Netherlands
2.1. Introduction 17
2.2 History of Germany asylum policy 17
2.3 Changing national discourse: rising xenophobia 19
2.4 Political debate and the Amendment of Article 16 20 2.5 The response to the Syrian refugee crisis in Germany 22
2.6 History of asylum policy in the Netherlands 24
2.7 Exclusion of foreigners and rising social tensions 28 2.8. Response to the Syrian refugee crisis in the Netherlands 29 Chapter 3. The Syrian refugee crisis and Syrian refugees/asylum seekers in Dutch and German media.
3.1 Introduction 32
3.1.1. Method 33
3.1.2. On discourse, representations and framing 34 3.2. The Syrian crisis and its visibility in the media 36
3.3. An exclusionary rhetoric 38
3.4 The refugee 40
3.5 News coverage of the initial conflict 42
3.5.1. The ‘human face’ of the refugee crisis 44
3.6 Representations, stereotyping and oppositions 45
3.8. Syrians and the Syrian issue in Dutch media 53
3.8.1 Frames of terrorism and criminality 55
3.9 Summary of findings. 59
Conclusion 60
Introduction.
‘The Syrian situation is the most dramatic humanitarian crisis the world has faced in a very long time. Syrians are now the largest refugee population under UNHCR’s mandate.’
- António Guterres
These words were spoken by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, at the Conference on the Syrian Refugee Situation in Berlin on 28 October 2014. At this conference, world leaders discussed the deteriorating situation in the Syrian Arab Republic, a country torn by an ongoing civil war since the spring of 2011, also known as the ‘Arab Spring’. As Guterres stresses in his speech, the conflict in Syria has led to one of the biggest humanitarian crises of our era. Roughly 7.5 million people are currently displaced, of which more than 3 million are officially registered as refugees (ECHO Factsheet Syria Crisis 07/04/15). The Syrian refugee crisis causes great disruptions throughout Eurasia. Not only the surrounding countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey are strongly affected, the Member States of European Union are also struggling to find a solution for the vast numbers of refugees that want to cross European borders in legal and illegal ways.
A few European Member States such as Germany and Sweden are taking the lead in providing humanitarian assistance, yet other countries are lagging behind. To ensure a better cooperation in this field, European member states have been working on a common asylum policy since the 1990s. Multiple and continuing humanitarian disasters in the Mediterranean are forcing European countries to open their eyes, and discuss a new sort of burden-sharing system, in which the numbers of refugees are distributed more equally among Member States. A few countries in the Mediterranean currently bear the biggest ‘burden’ of providing shelter for thousands of refugees. According to Guterres: ‘[…] there is a need for much stronger commitment to burden-sharing by other countries, allowing Syrian refugees to find protection beyond the immediate neighboring region.’1 At the time of writing, however, Member States have not yet come up with a satisfactory agreement on the topic of asylum quotas.
The formulation of a renewed and expanded common European asylum policy is facing numerous challenges, including the rise of xenophobic attitudes across EU states since the end of the twentieth century. In the past decades, various European countries have witnessed rising xenophobia together with a growing anti-foreigner discourse. This 1 http://www.unhcr.org/544fb4189.html [Accessed 16/06/15]
changing discourse is especially visible in the popular news media. The influence of the media representations of refugees on public opinion and political decision-making became particularly visible in the years after 9/11 (Sulaiman-Hill et al, 2011, p. 346). As various studies have noted, the public easily adopts the images and ideas that are created by the media, for example the frequently heard rumor that terrorists may gain entry to western nations disguised as refugees, an example that is often found in European media (Esses. Medianu & Lawson, 2013, p.519).
While the exact influence of the media on public opinion and policy (Kennamer 1992), and thus the influence on the Syrian refugee policy of Member States is hard to measure, it is nonetheless possible to compare national refugee policies with the
corresponding national media coverage of the subject. This thesis attempts to do just that, by making a comparison of the migration policies and the media representations of the refuge question in newspapers in the neighboring countries of Germany and Holland. This
comparison is particularly interesting since there is such a big difference in the response to the Syrian refugee crisis in these two countries. The Netherlands has admitted around 6.000 refugees since 2011, which is a small amount compared to the lion’s share that Germany has taken in the accommodation of Syrian refugees, namely 60.000 refugees. It cannot be denied that there are clear geopolitical differences between these two countries, such as their size or their role in international relations, which is why these facts will also be taken into account, to try to offer a contextually sensitive explanation for the different reactions in policy and media.
According to Stuart Hall, cultural ‘others’ are often represented in certain patterns, which he calls regimes of representation. I want to find out whether such (stereotypical) patterns of representation (Hall, 1997, p.234) are used in the media coverage of the Syrian crisis, and the specific image of the Syrian refugee that is portrayed in newspapers. In such a way I hope to analyze whether the media displays particular forms of bias when it comes to the subject of the Syrian refugee and the issues surrounding them. Subsequently, I hope to answer the question whether the Dutch and German media are encouraging and maintaining a ‘fortress Europe’ on a symbolical level, by depicting the Syrian refugee as ‘other’.
In order to understand the challenges that the Dutch and German governments are currently facing, some background information is necessary. The first chapter will thus cover the history of European Asylum Policy and the current changes and challenges that the European Union is facing with regard to matters of immigration and asylum. The chapter will then discuss the phenomenon of ‘Fortress Europe’, and the effects that European
integration has had on European asylum policy. The widespread phenomenon of ‘migration management’, that is of frequent occurrence in the international arena of migration policy, will also be discussed. Lastly, a brief overview will be provided of the changing European discourse with regard to ‘foreigners’: a discourse that has changed significantly in the past decades.
The second chapter will zoom in on the Dutch and German asylum policies since the end of the 1980s, and find out in what ways the respective national governments reacted to rising numbers of immigrants and asylum seekers during the 1990s and after 2000. It will discuss the effects that the changes on a political level had in the area of discourse, not only in the press but also in the political arena. Both countries saw intense political debate on the issue of immigration and asylum during these years, leading to amendments in asylum law and a changing attitude towards foreigners.
In chapter 3 an analysis of Dutch and German news media will be made. This analysis will explore different aspects of discourse, such as representations, framing, stereotyping and other ways in which news media contribute to a certain (negative) image of the Syrian refugee. The chapter will analyze the news items on a macro-level (by looking at overall tone and choice of topics of news items) and micro-level, for example by examining stylistic elements. It will also further explore the effect and meaning of visual images that accompany the texts.
Over 200 Dutch and German news articles in 16 (8 German/8 Dutch) newspapers from 2011 until 2015 will be analyzed in the third chapter. To make sure that the complete political spectrum is taken into account, the newspapers range from left to right of center. The search for news items was done in the Lexis Nexis Database, a database that contains all German and Dutch newspapers. The newspapers that were analyzed in this research were the German newspapers: Spiegel Online, Tagesspiegel, Taz, Die Welt, Die Zeit, Hamburger Abendblatt Online, Berliner Morgenpost Online and the Allgemeine Zeitung and the Dutch newspapers: De Telegraaf, Trouw, Het Parool, het Nederlands Dagblad, Algemeen Dagblad, de Volkskrant, NRC and the website of the national broadcasting network NOS. The search terms adopted in the study were: Syrian Refugee, Asylum Seekers, Syrian Issue, Asylum Policy. From the results of this general search (that resulted in more than 1500 news items), around 200 relevant articles (half Dutch, half German) were chosen by scanning for more specific issue-related headlines that were predominantly positive or negative. The sources were
retrieved from the Lexis Nexis database, which gives access to all national and local Dutch and German newspapers2.
Chapter 1. European Asylum Policy.
1.1 The History of European asylum policy.
In the first half of 2014, the 28 European Member States received 216.300 asylum claims. (UNHCR, Asylum Trends, first half of 2014. p.3-4). Compared to the corresponding period of 2013, this was an increase of 23 per cent. As a comparison, the United States received 52.800 asylum applications in the first half of 2014. While this is a significantly smaller number, the USA also witnessed an increase of 27 per cent. Increasing refugee and asylum numbers throughout the Western world are posing great challenges. Countries are not prepared or willing to take up thousands of refugees, leading to on-going discussions and negotiations about quota numbers, problems with border control, which, in most cases leads to an increasingly negative image of the asylum seeker or immigrant (Cohen 2002, p. 27 & Bhagwati 2003, p. 98). Whereas multiple countries are experiencing these problems, the European Union is relatively new in the field of immigration and asylum policy and thus struggling to create effective cooperation between the EU Member States in this policy area. Also, Europe’s geographical location makes the continent a very attractive option for
refugees from conflict areas in the Middle East and the African continent, where extreme violence and terrorism is the order of the day.
As a primarily political and economic project, issues of asylum and integration have not always been the EU’s main concerns. It is perhaps best to speak of European Asylum Policy as non-existent during the years of the formation of the European Community. The precursor of the EU, the ECSC (European Coal and Steel Community) was an economic as well as political cooperation that was founded to strengthen Franco-German political ties (Dinan, 2005, p.26) to prevent further conflicts between European countries and to boost their economies. In later years these economic and political ties were strengthened even further, yet cooperation was left to specific fields. Asylum policies were mostly left to the Member States.
During the 1980s and 1990s significant steps were taken in the path towards European integration, such as the Single European Act (1987) and the creation of the European Union and European citizenship in Maastricht (1992). Parallel to this was the 2 http://academic.lexisnexis.nl/ [Accessed 13/06/15]
increasing numbers of displaced persons seeking asylum in European Member States. Issues of immigration and refugees could thus no longer remain to be a responsibility of the
Member States alone (Giuradion, 2000, p.254). Immigration, asylum and citizenship started to move to the top of the EU agenda in the 1980s and 1990s (Favell, 1998, p.1).
From the end of the eighties on, a need for a common European integration policy came to the fore, caused by the Schengen Agreement, (which removed intra-European borders and created stronger borders between Europe and the rest of the world) but also because of the confrontation with displacement when vast numbers of refugees applied for asylum in Germany (Albrecht 2002, p.2). The increase of these numbers was caused first of all by the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, which made it easier for inhabitants of Central and Eastern Europe to come to Germany and claim asylum (Arango, 1998, p. 236). Next to that, the beginning of the 1990s saw two momentous events not only in European history, but also for the history of European asylum, namely the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the start of the War in former Yugoslavia, leading to vast numbers of displaced persons (Hatton & Williamson, 2004, p. 3).
Issues of refugees and immigrants are always transnational issues, and therefore strongly connected to border politics, politics of the integration of the EU and security issues. This is one of the reasons why the history of the creation of a Common European Asylum System (CEAS) has been a difficult and lingering one. Actions that are undertaken in one of these areas have repercussions in the other. One example is the stigma of refugees (from Islam countries) being linked to violence and terrorism (Cohen 2002, p.28). Asylum policy in this case, is directly linked to security issues. While the European Union has taken some important steps in the last couple of years in the area of immigration and asylum she is still a long way from the completion of a (supranational) working policy that is fully in line with the Geneva Convention of 1951.
The Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees was added to the Fourth Geneva Convention in the post-war period, and deals with the status and treatment of refugees from conflict areas (1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees). Currently some 150 countries are State Parties to the Convention, including all 28 Member States of the European Union. The introductory note of the UNHCR to the Refugee Convention clarifies the nature of the Convention: ‘The Convention is both a status and rights-based instrument and is underpinned by a number of fundamental principles, most notably non-discrimination, non-penalization and non-refoulement ’(1951 Convention Relating to the
Status of Refugees p.3. emphasis added)3. The principle of non-refoulement means that a refugee cannot be sent back to the country that he or she fled from and where he or she risks persecution.
All European Member States have currently ratified the Geneva Conventions. The protection of refugees, however, was not a main priority for the European Community during its initial years. Indeed, it was something that was not addressed at all in the Single European Act in 1986, that created the Single Market, and which would eventually lead to the abolition of borders between Member States, and the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital. According to Elspeth Guild, Jean Monnet professor in European
Migration law, the Single European Act was a critical moment in the history of European Asylum Policy. While this laid the foundation for the free movement of all EU members, it did not include any specifications on refugees or asylum seekers. She argues that the ‘failure to integrate refugees into the project has led directly to the current hostility of the EU towards refugee protection’ (Guild 2006, p. 634). Moreover, she argues that the increasing integration and enlargement of the EU have had a negative effect on refugee protection obligation of European countries. According to Guild, the EU constitutes a territorial integration project
that is hostile to refugees. The Schengen
Agreement of 1985 is seen as a decisive moment in European immigration history, since it removed the intra-Member-State borders, while strengthening its outer borders, therefore creating a ‘fortress Europe’(Albrecht 2002). The Agreement has been criticized by human rights organizations because it laid the first stones for a Europe that was almost impossible to enter for outsiders (Amnesty International, The human cost of Fortress Europe 2014). The Schengen Agreement also introduced three principles when it comes to refugees, which have been and still are obstructing the process of accommodation of refugees. These three
principles are 1.) The pooling of responsibility when one Member States rejects, which means that if one Member States rejects the application of Asylum, it is automatically rejected in all other Member States, 2.) The Member States can decide in which country the seeker of asylum is entitled to have the asylum determined, 3.) The responsibility for the refugee/asylum seeker lies with the country that permitted the individual to arrive in the Union (Guild 2006, p. 636-637).
During past decades, these three principles have created multiple unforeseen
problems with regard to asylum policy. This first became clear with regard to asylum seekers in Germany after the fall of the wall. The fall of the Berlin Wall turned Germany into one of
the biggest border areas of Europe, leaving the country with almost half a million asylum seekers. In 1992 alone more than 400.000 people were claiming asylum, causing an increase of 71% percent compared to the year before (Piotrowic, 1997, p.195). Since it was decided at the Schengen Agreement that the responsibility for the refugee or asylum seekers would lie with the country that permitted the individual to arrive in the Union, Germany had sole responsibility for these 400,000 refugees.
1.2 European asylum policy after 2000.
The rising numbers of refugees in the 1980s and 1990s created difficulties in various ways for European countries. According to Loescher ‘the unexpected arrival of in the West of large numbers of people with a variety of claims to asylum has severely jolted existing practices and has overtaxed the procedural systems for handling refugee determinations.’ (1992, p.2). The EU needed to come up with new ways to tackle these problems, through cooperation and harmonization. Issues also rose with regard to the sentiments about immigrants. According to the 1997 Eurobarometer survey, people throughout Europe felt as if ‘the boat was full’, or that the immigrants would abuse Europe’s generous welfare system (Brücker et
al, 2001. P. 43). The
European Union has made an effort to bring about significant changes in Asylum Policy since 2000. One of the biggest accomplishments is the European Refugee Fund (ERF hereafter). At the turn of the century the European Member States set up the ERF, ‘to share the costs of reception, integration and voluntary repatriation of people in need of international protection’4. The ERF has actively helped member states to enable effective asylum
procedures in the last 15 years, through all sorts of funding and actions. The funding goes to improvements for reception of refugees, trainings, legal and social assistance, empowerment and acquisition of skills, but also towards resettlement and relocation of the asylum seekers within the EU5.
4 http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49c3646c305.html [Accessed 15/03/15]
5 http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/financing/fundings/migration-asylum-borders/refugee-fund/index_en.html [Accessed 18/04/15)
Fig 1.1 Distribution of funds from the European Refugee Fund in million EUR (Source: Dg Home Affairs, 2014)
While the ERF was a big step in the right direction, the problematic nature of the European policy continued to lie in the cooperation between countries, and the lack of a functioning legal framework. As Guiradon writes, ‘the form of EU co-operation on migration and asylum still privileges intergovernmental bargains over supranational institutional actors, although EU institutions are gradually being incorporated in the process’(Guiradon, 2000, p.256). The EU did however make an effort to develop something that looked like a legal framework, the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) that was founded in 1999. The aim of the CEAS was (and still is) to harmonize policies on asylum, but also to ‘create a level playing field, where any person seeking protection will be treated in the same way, according to the same
standards, wherever they apply for asylum’6.
Significant changes have been made in the field of asylum in the past years. What’s new in general is that the EU is aiming at fairer, quicker and better asylum decisions, ensuring humane material reception conditions and enhancing the protection of asylum seekers during the process. For example, the process of applying for asylum has been harmonized across Europe, which means that the refugee/asylum seeker will enroll in the same process in every Member State (European Commission, A Common European Asylum System Brochure 2014, p.3). There have been several revisions of former regulations, for example the EURODAC regulation, which means that law enforcement access to the
fingerprints database will be allowed in strictly limited circumstances ‘to prevent, detect or investigate the most serious crimes, such as murder, and terrorism’ (p.3) While the safety of the refugees is the primary issue, the revised EURODAC Regulation also shows that more attention is paid to the safety of Europe, and the protection against criminals and terrorist.
In practice it turns out that these aims are not always reached, for example in the case of the Amsterdam refugees in the ‘Vluchtgarage’ (flightgarage), a squatted building where refugees are living in inhumane conditions (NRC online, 14/01/2015). Living conditions in the ‘Vluchtgarage’ are minimal, with no hot water, electricity only now and then, and electricity wires hanging from the ceiling. It is clear that this situation does not comply with the revised Reception Conditions Directive specified in the Common European Asylum system, which ‘ensures that there are humane material reception conditions (such as housing) for asylum seekers across the EU’. (A Common European Asylum System Brochure p.3) The European Committee of Social Rights ruled that the Netherlands should have minimal care for the asylum seekers (bed, bath and bread). Former State Secretary of Security and Justice, Fred Teeven was however not willing to grant the wishes of the ECSR on a short-term notice (NRC online, 15/01.2015).
1.3 Migration management.
The difficulties that occurred as a result of the principles laid out at Schengen and other treaties, together with the growing xenophobia in Europe, have led to the search for other mechanisms that will prevent asylum seekers from even entering the countries, or finding ways to send them back to safe countries that hey have passed on their journey. Rather than looking for ways to accommodate more refugees, regulations that were pushed through in 6 http://www.ecre.org/topics/areas-of-work/protection-in-europe.html [Accessed 16/06/15]
the 1990s were mainly focused on toughening policy towards asylum seekers. While all European Union Members have ratified the Geneva Conventions, reality shows that the refugee streams of the past decade are putting pressure on European countries, causing them to overstep boundaries, and sometimes act in ways that do not comply with the rules that were set out in the Refugee Convention.
Different authors have noticed the ways in which European countries have been violating the rules of the Geneva Convention. According to Timothy J. Hatton, Member States created 4 types of policies that would sharpen the already existing cooperation between Member States in this area. Firstly, they came up with new ways to restrict access to the country’s borders by potential asylum seekers. Next to that there were reforms to the procedures under which asylum claims are assessed. Member States came up with new measures relating to the outcome of asylum claims, as well as changes tot the treatment of asylum seekers during the processing of their claims (Hatton 2005, p. 108).
These new measures that have taken place since the 1990s can be viewed in light of a bigger international trend that is called ‘migration management’ by scholars and
policymakers. (Geiger, 2010; Crisp, 2003) According to a Policy Report by Jeff Crisp (UNHCR), the international refugee regime was already under serious pressure in 2003, causing a ‘new asylum paradigm’ in which streams of refugees could be ‘managed’ (Crisp 2003, p. 3). This view is shared by the editors of The politics of International Migration Management (2010), Martin Geiger and Antoine Pécoud, who write that governments all over the world are looking for new ways to deal with cross-border movements of people.
Not only governments, but also other actors such as international organizations and agencies, are extensively trying to intervene in the process of migration, through all sorts of ‘managerial’ measures (Geiger 2010, p.3-4). The European Committee on Migration stated in 2002, that ‘the increasingly apparent need for a new European policy on migration stems from a combination of the inadequacies of the policies evolving since the 1970s and the changing nature of migration and attitudes to it ’(European Committee on Migration,
Towards a Migration Management Strategy, November 2002, p.12). Within this new strategy, migration is viewed from an economic point of view, covered in a semantic of economic terms, such as ‘Irregularity is both a migrant stock and a flow problem’ (p. 22).
Migration management comes with managerial measures, that One of these measures for example, is the intervention in politics in countries outside the EU, such as Spain’s
interference in Mauritania, where a strategy was created to prevent African illegal
these measures. Italy for example, has been using different methods that can be called preventive refoulement. Chiara Marchetti writes about the example of Gorizia, an Italian town at the border with Slovenia, where irregular migrants are returned to Slovenia, even when they were already in the city or in the surrounding countryside (Marchetti 2010, 166). Politicians and EU officials also make use of the ‘management discourse’, for example the Commissioner Malström used it in his statement after the meeting with Italian interior minister Alfano:
‘I want to make clear that we have discussed today the future of Mare Nostrum and on how to manage migration in the Mediterranean. The European Commission will do its utmost to make sure that the whole European Union, that all the Member States, will play an increased role in helping Italy to manage the migration issue in the Mediterranean.’ (EC Statement Malström, 27 august 2014) (Emphasis added).
The management that Malström is talking about in this statement is a new operation by the border control agency, Frontex, called ‘Frontex plus’. This new operation should count on more human and technical resources and more Member States participating.
A less visible, but still very powerful way of ‘managing migration’ is found in discourse. William Walters argues that in the international field of refugees and asylum, a new discourse is created in which border control is seen as one of the most vital expressions of sovereign statehood. This creates a political imagination of Europe as a ‘bounded, self-contained region distinct from and confronted by an external world of similarly bounded but far less well-governed political entities’. (Walters, 2010, p. 75). The exclusionary discourse on immigration and asylum issues will be discusses further below.
As mentioned before, when it comes to the management of migration, the focus lies mainly on techniques and ways to keep immigrants outside the EU. Even when the refugees have already reached European territories, EU countries are looking for ‘legal’ ways to get rid of them again. For example, through the concepts of ‘safe third countries’ or ‘safe
countries of origin’. The first concept means that Member State could refuse a claim because the refugee passed through a country that was considered to be safe. The second implies that ‘there is a presumption of no risk of persecution, and where an expedited procedure could be applied to applicants from those countries’ (Hatton, 2005, p.108).
But what do you do when refugees already reached the territory, and by the laws of the Geneva Refugee Convention you are obliged to not send them back to the conflict area? The
harsh reality shows us that a Common European Asylum Policy most probably will not work without a system of burden sharing (Hatton 2015, p. ). The inequality in asylum applications will not change in the near future, since the (irregular) refugees will continue to cross the same borders. Hatton’s research shows that Germany, the UK and France received more than half of the asylum applications in Europe in 2013, but that the actual distribution of asylum per 1,000 inhabitants is very different. When we look at it this way, Malta, Sweden,
Luxembourg and Cyprus had the highest numbers of applicants in 2013. According to Hatton ‘more attention needs to be given to creating a more even distribution of asylum claims across countries in order to reach the socially optimum number’ (Hatton, 2015, p.9). In the last decade, Europe has actively discussed burden-sharing, or ‘responsibility-sharing’ between Member States (Fargues, 2014). The term ‘burden-sharing’ implies that Member States with fewer asylum applications or entrances of irregular immigrants will take on the burden of Member States that are affected more deeply by the refugees entries because of their geographical location. The Syrian Refugee Crisis has once again stressed the need for such a system, that would not only allow for European countries to share their burdens, but also relief surrounding countries in the conflict area. In the official foreword to the Solidarity and Burden-Sharing Background papers for the High Level Segment, Antonio Guterres writes that ‘The burden of sheltering millions of Syrian Refugees is far too heavy to be borne by only the neighboring countries’. (Countries hosting Syrian refugees. solidarity and
burden-sharing background papers for the high level segment. September 2013 p.2). The different refugee crises that have resulted among others from the 2011 Arab Spring are mostly felt (apart from the neighboring countries) in Southern and Eastern European countries such as Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, and Greece. Countries such as these call upon the unity of the European Union. Antonis Samaras, the former Greek Prime Minister, made his complaints about the on-going stream of refugees, and asked for help, since ‘we are a pivotal part of the European Union. Any destabilization of Greece would totally rock the boat.’ (Fargues 2012 quoting Samaras, p. 10). Other countries such as Bulgaria are also counting on the ‘European solidarity’, and are calling for the help of the Member States. Bulgaria expresses the desire to relocate many of the Syrians that are currently on its territory7.
While burden sharing was already on the agenda since the 1990s, the process of creating a system in which the burden of refugees can be equally divided has not really taken off yet.
Not surprisingly, the former biggest border country Germany was the first to propose a system of burden sharing, in which people would be dispersed among Member States, based on the criteria of inhabitants, GDP and size of territory (Boswell, 2003, p.)8. However, this proposal was refused by other European countries (With the UK being one of its main opponents).
How then, will the EU make this happen? Scholars and policymakers see multiple solutions, from beefing up the existing funds, to reallocating some proportion of asylum claims (which would be the most effective), or even putting a refugee quota trading system in place. (Hatton 2015, p. ; Thielemann 2006, p.17-22). While these solutions seem facile on paper, political impediments prove to be stubborn. European countries are unable to come to an agreement on this subject, in the first place because the concept is vague, and does not indicate which kind of burden it is that should be shared. (Thielemann 2003, 254). Secondly, there is a clear North-South divide in European Asylum Policy, as Southern countries are demanding a more proportional distribution, while Northern countries are keeping the current system in place.9 Eiko R. Thielemann, professor at the European Institute at the London School of Economics, argues that the system of burden sharing is indeed desirable for Europe, and that it would be in the interest of the refugees as well as the countries of destination. He argues that there should be a stronger focus on the clear benefits for all parties (Thielemann 2003, p.26).
Fig. 1.2. Total number of asylum applications in the EU28 (1998-2013) Source: Eurostat.
8 http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/burden-sharing-new-age-immigration [Accessed 18/03/15) 9 http://www.euractiv.com/global-europe/eu-ultimately-responsible-immigr-analysis-530931 [Accessed 16/03/15]
1.4 Discourse in matters of immigration and asylum.
One of the reasons for this inability to work together to divide the number of refugees more equally is that there is a mental obstacle within the EU rhetoric and the public sphere, that is causing anti-sympathetic feelings towards immigrants and asylum seekers. The media is said to play a big role in the creation of this negative public mood (Wright 2014, p. 3). It is of course well known that the discourse on immigrants from Arab and Southern
Mediterranean countries is often framed with negativity. The creation of a ‘Fortress Europe’ as a result of the Schengen Agreement and the War on Terror, together with the difficulties of the integration of immigrants in Europe, have contributed to a discourse in which
immigration is seen as something highly undesirable. According to Hans Jörg Albrecht, ‘the media and a wide range of political parties throughout Europe also participate in and profit from the discourse on safety, crime and immigration.’ (Albrecht 2002, p.1.) He also notices that only that the image of a ‘fortress’ is already a discursive one, insinuating a territory that has to be protected from outsiders.
families with open arms. Since the ‘War on Terror’ started in 2001, the overall attitude towards Arab and other Muslim countries has been distrustful. In the past decades, Europe has changed into a xenophobic and Islamophobic continent, especially after the multiple terrorist attacks in London (2005), Madrid (2004), and very recently the attacks on the staff of Charlie Hebdo10.
It would be incorrect to state that the ‘War on Terror’ in 2001 was the beginning of a new historical block in which Europeans suddenly felt resentment towards non-Europeans. Already in the 1970s and 1980s, Europeans have felt threatened by new immigrants that arrived as guest workers. The fear of these newcomers was not so much racist, as a feeling of deep cultural difference, and thus a threat to the cultural integrity of the nation. Verena Stolcke calls this new form of exclusion cultural fundamentalism. This cultural
fundamentalism is ideologically underpinned by the idea of xenophobia and even ‘accounts for people’s alleged tendency to value their own cultures to the exclusion of any other and therefore be incapable of living side by side’ (Stolcke 1995, p.6). Stolcke writes about this cultural fundamentalism as a rhetoric that was developed during the 1980s and 1990s by the political right.
Meanwhile, ten years later, this rhetoric has become mainstream, not only reserved for the political right but a view that is party shared by left and right throughout Europe. The ‘War on Terror’ has provided Europeans with even more reasons and legitimation to see these ‘others’ as fundamentally different from ‘us’. The discourse on asylum seekers is filled with fear, threat and resentment, neglecting the fact that these people are also victims of those we fear, namely radical and terrorist Muslims. Arab people are often viewed as culturally equivalent to the terrorist, causing Westerners to identify them as a threat. We thus have a cultural fundamentalist view on the world. In practice this meant that as a result of the perceived threat of these others, Europe has reacted with immigration measures (Spencer, 2008, p.14).
1.5 Summary of findings.
The conclusion of the history and current situation of the European Asylum Policy is paradoxical. The EU has created a system of closed borders and rules that leave us with a situation in which a minority of the European Member-States have to deal with the vast majority of refugees and asylum seekers. The EU cannot hold the ‘Fortress Europe’ that she created. The increasing number of refugees demand a better cooperation, yet Member States are not willing, or capable to come up with a solution that relieves these countries of their burdens, even though a lot of hard work is put into the Common European Asylum System. As a result, Member States are looking for new ways (immigration management) to prevent asylum seekers from even reaching the shores of Europe, or to send them back after arriving.
The discourse on immigration and asylum policy is also not contributing to positive solutions to the problem. The rhetoric on the subject is framed with negativity, and will most likely become even more distrustful, especially after the attacks in Paris and the increased terrorist threat that is supposedly present in most European countries. This discourse and media representations are further elaborated in chapter 3. In the next chapter we will take a look at the specific cases of German and Dutch Asylum Policy.
Chapter 2. Changing asylum policies and shifting attitudes towards asylum seekers in Germany and The Netherlands.
2.1 Introduction.
While the history of refugee and asylum policies in the neighboring countries of Germany and the Netherlands are divergent at certain moments in time, they have also dealt with the same challenges of immigration, problems that most Western European countries faced in the last decades of the 20th century. In the 1980s and 1990s, Western European countries received ever-increasing numbers of asylum applications, due to the fall of the Berlin Wall, which lead to increasing mobility in Central and Eastern European Countries (Arango, 1998, p. 236). The disintegration of the former Soviet Union and the Wars in former Yugoslavia caused great numbers of immigrants and asylum seekers to come to Western Europe (Hatton & Williamson, 2004, p. 3). In Germany, as well as in Holland, governments used amendments and revisions of the existing asylum laws as a way to react to these new immigrants. In both countries, the growing number of asylum seekers was accompanied with xenophobia, physical violence and a changing discourse in the political arena.
2.2 History of German asylum policy.
The particular pasts of these countries have to be kept in mind when we write about asylum policy and the treatment of refugees. Germany’s unique history of unification, as well as the dark period of Nazism have played a significant role in the formation of asylum policy, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, as will become clear in this chapter.
The Germans have long been viewed by the rest of the world as one of the (if not the sole) instigators of World War II, a devastating war, not only because of the horrendous amounts of deaths, but also because of the unseen numbers of displaced people that this war brought about. As one of the ways to compensate for these war crimes, the German
government decided to insert an article in the German constitution that stated that
politically persecuted persons would enjoy asylum in Germany (Fijalkowski 1993, p.852). It is generally agreed upon by scholars that this right to (political) asylum was set in the German Basic Law in order to limit the power of the executive, whose powers were heavily abused during the Nazi period (Bosswick 2000, p.44). Article 16 was a unique piece of asylum legislation, since it held a very broad understanding of refugees and asylum seekers, namely anyone who is politically persecuted (‘Politisch Verfolgte genießen Asylrecht11).
11 http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_16a.html. Note: this is the current article 16a, the original article 16a (1).
During the decades before the 1980s, the number of asylum applicants in Germany was relatively low. There were however many immigrants coming to Germany, existing mainly out of guest workers and so-called ‘(Spät-)Aussiedler’, ethnic Germans (repatriates) that came from Eastern and Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union (Focus Migration, Country Profile Germany 2007). Germany’s contemporary Turkish population goes back to the 1960s, when the first Turkish guest workers arrived to help fuel the economic miracle
that was created by the expansion during WWII12. It
was not until the second half of the 1980s that Germany had to deal with (bigger numbers of) refugees. In the second half of the 1980s the country’s asylum applications started to rise, until the first years of the 1990s, when a peak of 440,000 applications was reached (Focus Migration, Country Profile Germany 2007, p.4). As mentioned before, the
disappearance of the Iron Curtain created mobility between Eastern and Central Europe, making it easier for political refugees to move to Germany. The war in Yugoslavia that started in 1991 displaced a great number of people, finding refuge in Germany as political asylum seekers.
Fig. 2.1 Annual number of new asylum applications in Germany between 1980 and 2010. Source: Migration Policy Institute. - 50,000 100,000 150,000 200,000 250,000 300,000 350,000 400,000 450,000 500,000
Annual Number of New Asylum Applications Germany 1980-2010
2.3 Changing national discourses: rising xenophobia.
As the graph above shows, the numbers of asylum applications started to rise drastically towards the end of the 1980s. Various political such as identity issues, economic problems 12 http://www.dw.de/turkish-guest-workers-transformed-german-society/a-15489210 [Accessed 15/04/15]
and a changing political discourse seemed to have created a xenophobic attitude towards foreigners in Germany since then. The dispersal of asylum seekers to ‘remote’ area’s without community or support networks, made them more visible as foreigners, thus being an easy target for abuse and violence (Schuster, 2004, p.13) As Sabine von Dirke writes, there were numerous cases of violence against Ausländer in the 1980s and 1990s, for which
underpinnings can be found in less obvious aspects than economic issues alone, such as the discourse on multiculturalism in Germany. According to the author, multiculturalism in Germany represents ‘one instance of a discursive battle which reflects the current German quest for a collective identity and returns to the questions of the ethnicity of culture and the legitimacy of assimilation […]’ (Von Dirke, 2004, p. 514).
Jurgen Fijalkowski argues that the aggressive attitude towards asylum seekers was not so much caused by immigration pressure, but by identity issues and social issues that many Germans were dealing with at this time. He explains that ‘aggression against
heterogeneous minorities is a reflection of the situation of anomie that accompanies rapid social change’, a problem that is further increased when those that ‘are successful in climbing the social ladder are made to feel insecure by uncertainties and discontinuities in their collective social identity (Fijalkowski 1993, p. 852).
The view that the aggression towards asylum seekers was not a direct result of immigration pressure is shared by other scholars, such as Gerard Neuman, who also argues that as a result of social problems such as the high unemployment in East Germany in the beginning of the 1990s, ‘friction between youth gangs and resident foreigners would exist even if there were no flow of asylum seekers into Germany […]’ (Neuman 1992, p.512). The authors demonstrate that the xenophobic attitude that Germany was dealing with during these years was caused by the ambiguous collective identity of German nationals. Germany’s history of disunity had left Germans in the 1980s and 1990s with a vague national identity. The country had always been a patchwork of different Länder, to be united only in 1871. Unification however did not reduce the great differences between these different states, in cultural as well as religious and linguistic regard. The divide between East and West after WWII and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 created a society in which two totally different worlds were forced to come together at once.
It was not only the problem of identity or social issues that caused aggression towards these ‘newcomers’. According to Bosswick, the change in political discourse on asylum seekers also played a big part in the shaping of opinion on these specific groups of people. During the mid 1980s, as asylum application numbers rose again, the issue of asylum seekers was framed
within a new (negative) discourse. Asylum seekers were connected to criminal activities, fake applications and terrorism in newsmedia (Bosswick, 2000, p.46). According to
Bosswick, the rhetoric shifted from the Protection of the Asylum Seeker to the ‘Protection of
the Right to Asylum’ (p.47). This
rhetoric was not a German phenomenon alone, as it was seen throughout West Europe since the late 1970s. Thomas Faist argued that the political discourse in Western welfare states ‘has been full of references to immigrants as economic competitors and as unwilling to assimilate culturally’ (Faist, 1994, p.53). According to Ruth Wodak, many European countries witnessed a phenomenon that she called the ‘haiderisation of Europe’, after Jörg Haider, the leader of the right wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ). At the end of the
twentieth century, European countries saw the rise of right wing populist parties, together with a ‘new racism’ that was covered in a new coded rhetoric that ‘led to an increase in racist and anti-Semitic discourse’ (Wodak 2010, p.355).
What was unique for Germany however, was the fact that foreigners, immigrants and asylum seekers were always perceived as outsiders, in the discursive, but also in legal regard. As Baldwin-Edwards & Schain write,’one does not speak of immigrants but of foreigners, of Ausländer, Ausländische Arbeidskräfte, or Fremdarbeiter, or simply Fremde. The German Federal Republic has never officially recognized itself as a country of
immigration (Baldwin-Edwards & Schain, 2013, p. 136). What’s more is that it was, and still is, exceptionally difficult for immigrants to receive German citizenship. The German state expects immigrants to integrate on the basis of their economic and social life alone, without granting them citizenship.
2.4 Political debate and the Amendment of Article 16.
As mentioned before, the German government argued that the immigration pressure was causing the high number of violence against asylum seekers. Yet scholars such as Fijalkowski (1993) and Bosswick (2000) argue that while this is the easy explanation, this was not the case. However, rising numbers of asylum applications and unrest in the public sphere (increasing xenophobia and right-wing extremism) caused a debate between politicians, making immigration and asylum one of the key points on the agenda (Rotte, 2000, p.277) The German ‘Asylrecht’ debate in the 1980s and 1990s was no unique phenomenon; throughout Europe immigration became a political issue, often with very divisive
not an immigration country (Baldwin-Edwards & Schain, 2013, p. 136), the facts started to show otherwise. The political debate that took place during these years was focused in particular on article 16a, which granted asylum to anyone who was politically prosecuted in
his or her home country. The events
that took place during these years ran parallel with what Sandra Lavenex calls the international ‘fourth phase’ in asylum policy during the 1990s, characterized by the ‘introduction of restrictive reforms at the national level and the search for coordinated solutions at the European level’ (Lavenex, 1999, p. 15). In 1993, the conservative coalition of the government and its social democratic opposition came to an agreement on the revision of the (according to many) too generous German Asylrecht. The Asylum Law in the
constitution was amended, in order to prevent uncontrolled immigration, while still retaining the traditional individual right to asylum (Hailbronner 1994).
One of the most important revisions of this law was a new clause, that stated that any person who had passed a safe third country (Member states of the EC or a country that signed Geneva Convention) on his or her way to Germany, would not be considered for asylum in Germany (Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Art 16 a (2)). Besides that, the Bundesrat could introduce legislation that would specify certain countries as ‘safe’, meaning that a nation was specified as a country where political persecution or inhumane treatment did not take place. Another significant change was the insertion of a clause for the arrival of asylum seekers by plane. From 1993 an asylum seeker had to go through special procedures to be admitted into the country and to receive asylum.
The effect of the new asylum policy in Germany was clear, numbers of applicants decreased sharply from 323,000 in 1993 to 127,000, remaining somewhat the same until 1997 (106,000) (Rotte, 2000, p. 378). According to Bosswick, ‘the sharp decrease in application numbers and a considerable increase in expulsions gave the public the impression that the amendment had been the key element in ending the emergency’ (Bosswick, 2000, p.50). The violence against foreigners nevertheless remained at a high level.
In the past decade Germany’s new asylum policy caused an even bigger decrease in numbers of applicants. However, as a result of unrest in North-Africa and The Middle East, more and more refugees have applied for asylum in Germany in the last couple of years, leading to a number of 203,000 non-European asylum applicants in Germany in 201413. The inflow of new (Muslim) immigrants, together with the multiple terrorist attacks in the last
decade has increased xenophobia and islamophobia throughout Europe, also in Germany. The following statement in the German Metronaut (13/12/2014) is makes a clear statement in that regard, stating that ‘Die Neunziger sind zurück’, referring to the cultural racism of the 1990s. The German protest movement PEGIDA (Patriotische Europäer gegen die
Islamisierung des Abendlandes), in English: Patriot Europeans against the Islamization of the Evening Land (Europe) is one example of the discontent with Muslim immigrants and Islamic influence on the German culture (Huffington Post Online (DE), 05/02/2015). Rather than racism, this phenomenon meets the exact criteria of the cultural fundamentalism that Verena Stolcke already described in 1995. As mentioned in chapter 1, Stolcke argues that within this cultural fundamentalism, Western Europeans see Muslim immigrants as a threat to the cultural integrity of the nation (Stolcke 1995, p.3).
2.5 The response to the Syrian refugee crisis in Germany.
When it comes to policy on Syrian asylum seekers, Germany is one of the only countries (together with Sweden) in Europe that has a relatively ‘open’ policy towards refugees from Syria. It was one of the first countries to invite Syrian refugees14. In May 2013, Germany agreed to invite 5,000 Syrian refugees, raising the number to 10.000 in December, and 20.000 in June 2014 (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, Merkblatt zum
Aufnahmeverfahren syrischer Flüchtlinge (3. Bundesaufnahmeprogramm), 22/07/2014). According to the European Statistics agency, the total number of Syrian asylum applications in Germany rose to 41.00015.
It is important to note that while the right to asylum enjoys constitutional status in Germany, ‘general emergencies’ such as poverty, civil wars, natural disasters or a lack of prospects are ruled out as reasons for granting asylum(Website of the Federal Office for Migration of Refugees, 02/05/2011). Syrian refugees, are therefore not given the automatic right to asylum in Germany, since they are refugees of a civil war. As a result, the process of applying for application is difficult and time-consuming. As mentioned above, Germany does however invite a large amount of ‘contingent refugees’ per year. Currently 20.000 Syrian 14 Next to the asylum applications that European countries receive from refugees outside of the European Union, European governments maintain a quota for a certain number of invited refugees per year. In 2014, the German government decided to grant humanitarian admission to 20,000 Syrian refugees per year. These refugees are called ‘contingent refugees’. Contingent refugees receive numeral benefits: they do not have to go through the standard procedure of asylum application, and they can immediately start working. Also see: http://www.bamf.de/EN/Migration/AufnahmeSyrien/aufnahmeverfahren-syrien.html
[Accessed 15/06/15]
15 http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statisticsexplained/index.php/File:Five_main_citizenships_of_(non-EU)_asylum_applicants,_2014_(number,_rounded_figures)_YB15_III.png [accessed 15/06/15]
refugees are invited to come to Germany every year. These refugees do not receive the status of asylum seekers but instead receive a residency permit for two years (Deutsche Welle Online, 10/06/2014). The status of a ‘contingent refugee’ comes with multiple benefits such as the possibility to work, to receive benefits and to live in their own homes instead of collective centers.
Germany tops the list of Syrian asylum applications, and is also the second European country on the list of humanitarian aid in the area itself. UNHCR proposed that in 2014 30,000 Syrian refugees should be admitted into states throughout the world (UNHCR website, 21/01/2014). This number was reached at the end of 2014, with Germany
providing for the vast majority of the admissions, namely 85 %. The UNHCR is encouraging other European countries to follow in Germany’s footsteps, and key up their admissions quotas.
The Germans are celebrated, for ‘doing a fantastic job accepting refugees from Syria’ (Deutsche Welle Online, 07/10/2014). Germany is also urging other European Countries to follow their example. As one of the most important players within the EU, Germany is taking on its leadership while criticizing other countries as they are doing too little. According to a news item on the European news and policy website Euractive, the German Development minister Gerd Mülller said the following: ‘I am missing the EU’s humanitarian flag,’ Euractive writes that the German Minister felt that Germany has ‘already done its homework and serves as a role model’. He strongly criticizes other EU countries, stating that: ‘If the
remaining 27 member states would involve themselves according to their size and capability, like Germany, then we could secure the survival of families and children and offer them long-term prospects’ (Euractive 09/10/14).
2.6 Asylum policy in the Netherlands.
The Netherlands has been a receiver of various immigrant groups in the past fifty years, ranging from guest workers, to immigrants from (former) colonies and asylum seekers.
Currently some 20 % of the Dutch population is an immigrant or a child of immigrant parents (Focus Migration Netherlands, 2007, p.1) Historically, the Netherlands was seen as a ‘nation that offered a safe haven for religious and political refugees’ (Versteegt & Maussen, 2012, p. 6) The early history of the Netherlands is characterized by migration. Ever since the fall of Antwerp in 1585, the Netherlands has been welcoming immigrants with different
religious and political backgrounds. The
historical tolerance of the Dutch people plays a significant part in the present-day debate about cultural diversity and national identity. According to Anouk Smeekes, politicians often point refer to the past to give meaning to national identity, something that we also see in the Dutch discussion about multiculturalism. She quotes former Prime Minister Balkenende in 2007, stating that: ‘The Netherlands has always been a country of tolerance and respect. That’s why people deserve all respect for their convictions, beliefs and identity.’ (Smeekes citing Balkenende, 2011, p.170). Until the 2000s, the Dutch have praised themselves for their open and welcoming worldview. In the years after that, this image has shifted, as a result of stricter asylum policies and a changing debate about multiculturalism (Sleegers, 2007, p.17).
For the bigger part of the twentieth century, the Netherlands was still known as a welcoming country for new immigrants, especially after the Second World War. Immigration to the Netherlands can generally be divided into four phases or groups. Already in the 1960s, guest workers from the Mediterranean countries (later Turkey and Morocco) came to the Netherlands, a country where access to citizenship was relatively easy compared to other countries such as Germany, where it was extremely difficult to receive the status of citizen (Focus Migration Netherlands, 2007, p.1 and Baldwin-Edwards & Schain, 2013, p. 136). In later years, family reunification of these guest workers took place, leading to a ‘new’ group of immigrants in the Netherlands. While many immigrants from Southern European countries returned home, a great number of Moroccans and Turks decided to stay in the country. In the mid-1970s, Suriname the former Dutch Colony of the Netherlands, gained independence, leading to a third migration wave, which was followed by the immigration of inhabitants of the Dutch Antilles, who were free to move to the Netherlands since it was officially still a part of the Netherlands16.
When it comes to refuge and asylum, the applications received by the Netherlands have been relatively low in the years before the 1990s. Only then, the numbers started to rise, with 21.000 asylum applications in the years between 1991 and 1992. This number was doubled by the end of the century, when 43.000 refugees applied for asylum in the
Netherlands (in the years 1999-2000). Just like in Germany, these applications mainly came from refugees of the war in former Yugoslavia (van Meeteren et. al, 2013, p.116).
As mentioned earlier in this chapter, the 1990s were characterized as a period in which restrictions in the area of asylum policy were introduced in many European countries, while countries were also trying to come up with coordinated solutions on the international level (Lavenex 1993, p.15). The Netherlands was relatively late in responding to the rising numbers of refugees. It was not until the end of the 1990s and the change of the century that the Netherlands started to feel the implications of rising numbers of asylum applications and reacted. Why did this happen during these specific years (2000s) in the Netherlands, while changes in Asylum Policy were already made in Germany during almost a decade earlier?
As Grutters argues, asylum policy is a very internationally oriented policy, in which actions or
restrictions in one country are directly felt by the other. He calls these mutual coherent oscillations the ‘Waterbed effect’, meaning that every rise of asylum applicants goes along with a decline in another country, since the total number always makes up 100% (Grutters, 2006, p.6). Naturally this means that the Asylrecht Amendment in Germany in 1993, had implications for its surrounding countries, in this case the Netherlands. You can see this in the graphics below. The relative inflow of asylum seekers in the Netherlands per month (compared to the rest of Europe) was quite low in the years between 1991 and 1993, not even reaching the number of 6 %. Nevertheless it rose from a little more than 3 % during the 1993’s to almost 19(!) percent in 1994. According to Grutters, this can partly be traced back to the revision of the Alien Act in the Netherlands between 1993 and 1994, but for a big part it is caused by the restrictive measures in Germany.
The political and economic climate started to shift after the turn of the century. The years 2000 and 2001 were prosperous years for the Dutch economy. The Netherlands was a wealthy and booming country, with the lowest number of unemployment in decades,
attracting many immigrants, among whom a lot of asylum seekers. According to the website of the National Compass Public Health, many immigrants (consisting for a big part of asylum seekers) came to the Netherlands as a result of this economic prosperity17. However, as the graphics above show, the relative inflow of asylum seekers in the Netherlands in the years between 2000 and 2003 only fell. The absolute number of asylum seekers also decreased significantly between 2000 (ca. 43.000) and 2001 (ca. 32.000) (see graphics below).
Fig. 2.3 Asylum applications in the Netherlands from 1990 until 2001. Source: Vluchtelingenwerk Nederland. 17 http://www.nationaalkompas.nl/bevolking/migratie/verleden/ [Accessed 15/06/15]
These numbers are often ascribed to the fact that the new Aliens Act was put into operation in 2000. One of the main goals of the new Aliens Act was the speeding up of asylum
procedures. Civil servants were asked to decide within 48 hours whether a specific case would be denied our further looked into (Aliens Act 2000). This revision lead to more rejections of asylum applications. According to scholars, this new procedure raises questions about the moral acceptability and the care with which these cases are treated. (Minderhoud 2004, p.16 and Van Meeteren et. al 2013).
Grutters argued that these changes appeared to be effective only at first sight. However, faster decision-making means less care, leading to more protests such as
objections and court proceedings. Eventually this would turn out to be a contra productive measure, since the numbers of applications only increase. He therefore concluded that there was no such connection between the new Aliens Act and the demise of new applications, but that the speed of the decline in numbers from 2000 was only delayed because of the
introduction of a new Asylum law (Grutters p.4). Indeed, several studies that were carried out between 2002 and 2005 by the Research and Documentation Center (WODS) and the Ministry of Justice, showed that ‘the new procedure did not quit succeed in reducing the time it takes to complete the asylum process’ (van Meeteren et. al, 2013, p.120).
Just like in Germany, the issue of asylum seekers has been met with a negative (racist and exclusionary) rhetoric, even with violence at times. The results of recent reports about exclusion, cultural racism and violence are shocking. In a very recent report, authors Siebers and Dennissen that for a big part, the negative attitude towards these ‘foreigners’ is
triggered by a negative discourse that has been prevalent in the Netherlands in last decade. According to Siebers & Dennissen (2014, p. 5):
‘Relevant discussions in parliament and media are often quite aggressive and sometimes insulting; contrasting with the composed tone of governmental Acts. In substance, however, almost all agree that the country should be closed as much as possible to migrants and that residing migrants should be forced to assimilate into Dutch culture and society.’ (Emphasis added)
In the Netherlands multiple violent incidents against asylum seekers took place since the 1980s, one of the first cases being the violence against the Tamil refugees in Sri Lanka that arrived as war refugees in the Netherlands at the end of the 1980s. In January 1987, 18 people were arrested for the wrecking of a pension where these Tamils stayed, as well as the physical abuse of one of these Tamils18. The rhetoric that surrounded this issue was a very negative one, especially in the media. According to Van Dijk (1988), the Dutch newspapers created a sense of threat and fear among Dutch citizens, portraying these asylum seekers as dangerous, violent and criminal. During the 1990s multiple events such as these occurred.
The Anne Frank Foundation has been reporting on racism and extreme-right violence in the
Netherlands since the beginning of the 1990s. The ‘Vierde monitorrapportage’, on the year 1999-2000 concluded that racist and extreme-right violent incidents occurred more often, not only between 1999 (345) and 2000(406), but also with regards to the years before that (Vierde Monitorrapportage Racistisch en extreem-rechts geweld, 2001, p. 19). What’s more is that many of these violent incidents are in one way or another related to asylum issues. Not only centers for asylum seekers are the targets of this violence, but also individuals asylum seekers. Just like in Germany, the violence mainly comes from extreme right-wing groups, whom are often affiliated with Neo-Nazi groups (Deutsche Welle Online, 26-07-2014).
The negative discourse on immigrants 18
and asylum seekers has increased even further after the 2000s. As mentioned before, the political climate in the Netherlands saw some significant changes. As Virginie Mamadouh argues, the incompatibility of the Islam with European culture lies mainly in the
(constructed) idea of Islam as a domestic and international threat, leading to an image of an Islam ‘invasion’ of the Netherlands and the European continent (Mamadouh, 2013, p.391). During the 2000s, the Dutch were continually confronted with the Islam as a threat, on an international level, the multiple attacks in New York, London, Madrid, but also nationally, for example in Geert Wilders’ film Fitna, the murders on Theo van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn.
Growing xenophobia and islamophobia have led to a political climate in which new parties such as Trots op Nederland (Proud of the
Netherlands), Leefbaar Nederland (Liveable Holland) and the PVV (Party for Freedom) gained more support. Fortuyn, the right-wing politician with strong Islam and anti-immigrant sentiments, left a legacy after he was assassinated on the 6th of May in 2002. It is said that there has been a change of rhetoric in the years that followed the death of Fortuyn (Focus Migration Netherlands 2014, p.6). His legacy is still felt in current Dutch society. As mentioned before, ‘a large percentage of Dutch voters believe that immigration should be curbed to a minimum’ (Versteegt & Maussen, 2012, p.6) Dutch immigration and asylum policy now have a reputation as among the strictest in Europe. On the other side however, it seems that there is also protest against certain matters, for example the unfair treatment of asylum seekers, or other sorts of exclusion (Versteegt & Maussen p.3).
2.8 Response to the Syrian refugee crisis in the Netherlands.
The Dutch policy on Syrian refugees casts shadow over the once so tolerant and open Dutch society. In 2012, 454 Syrians were seeking protection in the Netherlands. This number increased drastically in 2014: 9,460 Syrian refugees applied for asylum in the Netherlands19. The Dutch government has stated from the beginning that she would not invite more than the standard quota of 500 (invited) refugees a year, meaning that the Netherlands is only inviting 0,07 % of the total number of asylum applications submitted by refugees in Europe (UNHCR regional operations profile – Europe). The Dutch Lower House of Parliament decided the annual quota of 500 resettled refugees after a request of the UNHCR in 1986 (UNHCR Resettlement Handbook, Country Chapter Netherlands, 2014, p.2).
While Germany is taking the lead in taking up Syrian refugees, the Netherlands is
