State Power and Asylum Seekers in Ireland

An Historically Grounded Examination of Contemporary Trends

Steven Loyal, Stephen Quilley

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783319919348
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319919355
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: Social Sciences

This book aims to account for the reception, treatment and sometimes, eventual deportation, of asylum seekers in Ireland, by analysing how they are framed and dealt with by the Irish state. Both historically and theoretically grounded, it will discuss contemporary immigration policies and issues in light of the overall social, historical, and economic development of Irish society and state immigration policy. State Power and Asylum Seekers in Ireland will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of historical sociology, sociological theory and social policy, with a focus on discourses of patterns of European migration, the changing role and function of the state and its policies, and the psycho-social experience of asylum seekers.

© The Author(s) 2018

Steven Loyal and Stephen QuilleyState Power and Asylum Seekers in Irelandhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91935-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Steven Loyal¹ and Stephen Quilley²

(1)

University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

(2)

University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

Steven Loyal (Corresponding author)

Stephen Quilley

End Abstract

In everyday discourse the terms ‘immigrant’, ‘asylum seeker’, and ‘refugee’ are often used interchangeably. Although the distinction is highly problematic (Loyal 2008), those who migrate for economic reasons and those who flee because of political persecution, are judged very differently in both law and the court of public opinion. By definition, an ‘asylum seeker’ denotes someone seeking refugee status. Emerging first in the context of protocols developed by the League of Nations after the First World War, the modern definition and procedures have been elaborated by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR). By becoming a signatory to the 1951 UN Convention in 1956, Ireland became obliged to grant special protection to citizens of states that could not guarantee their human rights or physical security. The refugee system was constructed during the very specific ideological and historical conditions of post-war upheaval—conditions that had a marked impact on both the technical definition of refugee status and the configuration of state procedures and obligations. Premised on a system of nation-states with fixed borders, the UNHCR’s principal aim was to guarantee and provide international protection and assistance to individuals who had become displaced by the Second World War. With the signing of the 1967 Bellagio Protocol, and as the problem of displaced people became more global, this remit for protection was later extended beyond Europe to encompass refugees from all over the world. The standardization of procedures dealing with mass displacement led to the concept of ‘refugee’ becoming institutionalized as a way of labelling and treating individuals as a distinct type of person with a determinate social status.

The early development of the international refugee system was also very much a product of the Cold War (Marfleet, 2006; Marrus, 1985). In a context where the United States retained international hegemony over capitalist states, the concept of refugee was coloured by the experience and perception of individuals defecting from repressive communist states to embrace the relative freedoms of the West. For example, all but 925 asylum seekers from a total of 233,436 who gained refugee status in the United States between 1956 and 1968 were from Communist states, and, even by 1986, 90% of those granted refugee status were from these states. By contrast, would-be refugees from states friendly to the United States were usually denied such status (Loyal 2011; Marfleet 2006).

By the end of the Cold War, asylum seekers were no longer viewed as sympathetically nor used as ideological ballast to highlight the totalitarian nature of communist regimes. Instead, during the 1990s, most European states reacted to the growing flow of asylum seekers by seeking to contain them in their continent or region of origin, and/or to restrict their access into the West.

Increasing hostility to these growing numbers was matched by the anxiety-ridden ideological construction of asylum seekers as opportunistic, an unnecessary burden on the finite national resources and a threat to the cultural and national homogeneity. This reaction echoed the earlier nationalist retrenchment of Western states with the rise of the Nazis during the 1930s. Herein, Jewish refugees were labelled ‘illegal immigrants’ and denied entry to Britain, France, and the United States—a decision sealed at the 1938 Evian Conference, when Western governments effectively abandoned Germany and Austria’s Jews, arguing that their countries were already ‘saturated’ with Jewish refugees (Marrus 1985).

More recently, the flows of asylum seekers, refugees, and displaced persons have grown so rapidly as to constitute what has been deemed a ‘migration crisis’. In its Global Trends Report (2016), the UNHCR recorded a total of 65.6 million ‘forcibly displaced people’, including over 40 million ‘internally displaced’, 22.5 million refugees, and 2.3 million asylum seekers. These figures are the highest number on record. And of these, half the refugees come from just three countries: the Syrian Arab Republic (5.5 million), Afghanistan (2.5 million), and South Sudan (1.4 million). Syria also accounts for 12 million of the internally displaced. Over 80% of these refugees were hosted by developing countries with the three largest hosts being Turkey, Pakistan, and Lebanon. On a per capita basis, Lebanon was the largest recipient with one in six people in the country now a refugee. The vast majority remained outside of Europe, the richest continent in the world. Nevertheless, the increasing numbers—1.3 million applications in 2015 and 2016 (Eurostat 2017)—have had a profound effect, shaking to the core, the Schengen vision of a united Europe with no internal borders. The previous peak in applications had been 672,000 in 1992, following the collapse of Yugoslavia. But significantly, these Balkan refugees were Europeans fleeing from an intra-regional crisis. Not surprisingly, the reception of relatively huge numbers coming from outside Europe has varied considerably. Some countries have accepted very large numbers: Germany took 722,400 in 2016 (60% of all applicants) which went up from 441,900 in 2015, the vast majority from Syria; Italy followed with 123,000 applications (10.1% of all applications) largely from Nigeria, Pakistan, and Gambia. Within the EU-28, 1.1 million first-instance decisions were processed in 2016, of which 57% led to a positive outcome. The leading states for positive outcomes were Slovakia 84% and Malta (83%), while the lowest were in Greece, Ireland, Poland, and Hungary with over 75% rejection rates. In 2015 Ireland received 1552 applications for asylum of which only 9.8% were granted a positive decision at first instance (ORAC 2016).

With overburdened welfare systems and the continuing legacy of the 2008 economic crisis, the flow of asylum seekers came at a time of ebbing confidence in the institutional and political project of the EU. The migration crisis gave momentum to the growth of populist and far-right parties such as Jobbik in Hungary, United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in the United Kingdom, the Front National in France, the Dutch Freedom Party, Danish People’s Party, the Swedish Democrats, the Alternative für Deutschland , and Pegida in Germany. Reflecting perhaps more acute historical anxieties about territorial integrity, Hungary and Bulgaria reintroduced internal borders, built walls, and reinforced border security (Jones, 2016. Hungary is currently allowing just one asylum seeker per day from Serbia to cross into each of its two transit zones.

However, the situation is more complex partly reflecting what Gramsci calls people’s ‘contradictory consciousnesses’ which emerge in the struggle over hegemony (1971:333). The tragic and visible death of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old boy, acted as a lightning rod for public revulsion at the large numbers dying trying to enter Europe. Over 3500 died mostly from drowning in 2015 and another 5000 in 2016, making the route to Europe the deadliest migrant path (Jones 2016). At the same time, there was increasing pressure from Germany for EU states to share the burden and distribute applications more evenly, especially in respect of those arriving via Greece and Italy. Although the EU eventually collectively agreed to accept a fixed quota of 160,000 refugees arriving in Italy and Greece in September 2015, by the end of 2017 only about 28,000 had been redistributed across Europe, and Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic steadfastly refused to comply and accept any refugees. In this context, Ireland agreed to take 4000 under the Irish Refugee Protection Programme of which only 1200 had been accepted by the end of 2017.

Focusing on Ireland, we seek to understand the relation between the state and asylum seekers in a long-term historical framework which is attentive to broader processes of unequal power, domination, and exclusion. Viewed over several centuries, inequality within Western states has declined and power balances between social groups have equalized (Elias, 2000). But whether the increasing inequality between and within states that has accompanied globalization and a policy environment dominated by neo-liberalism and market retrenchment represents a significant reversal of this long-term trajectory is a contested issue (Therborn 2006; Piketty 2014). Therborn has argued that global inequality increased during the nineteenth century and first two-thirds of the twentieth, until the economic growth of China with its huge population and a decline in the levels of poverty. Certainly, regardless of the empirical situation, opinion polls show a consistent perception, among Europeans, that societies are becoming less and not more equal (Khondker 2011: 3). Although capitalism has always been ‘instituted’ by nation-states (Polanyi 1957), some writers have argued that Western democracies are ‘hollowing out’ and becoming more directly dominated by corporate licence and less able to sustain distinctive internal regulatory environments and societal regimes (Jessop 2004). In Ruling the Void, Mair (2013: 1), for example, argues that ‘the age of party democracy has passed’. He continues, ‘although the parties themselves remain, they have...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Theoretical Framework and Core Concepts
• 3. Explanatory Logics
• 4. Historical Precedents
• 5. Processing Asylum Seekers
• 6. The Direct Provision Regime
• 7. Deportation and Expulsion: Closing Borders, Defending Sovereignty
• 8. Defending Citizenship, Reasserting Sovereignty
• 9. Conclusion
• Back Matter