Definitions and Conventions: Asylum Dilemmas in Europe

Abstract

The crises and wars in former Yugoslavia have brought to the fore tensions concerning the definition of refugee status and the legal instruments used in Europe today. Since the doors to immigration were closed in the mid-seventies, people have been allowed entry only in exceptional cases: two major channels are still available, namely family reunion and asylum. Moreover, Western European states do not have a completely free hand in deciding whom to admit with regard to refugees as they are signatory to Conventions to which they are bound. The decision to grant refugee status will therefore be guided by the terms of the definition as to who constitutes a refugee. So far European countries have implemented the 1951 Geneva Convention and taken its definition of refugee as a guideline. As a consequence the population of incomers was divided into two broad categories: (a) refugees (as defined by the Geneva Convention), and (b) immigrants, i.e. economic migrants. But as labour migration was no longer permitted, it meant that only Convention refugees would be allowed to stay. There did not seem to be a place for any other category so that inevitably an asylum-seeker who did not fit the Convention definition would be deemed an economic migrant and thus ‘fraudulent’. The war in former Yugoslavia and the three million strong movement of people displaced as a result exploded the myth that asylum-seekers who did not meet the 1951 Convention criteria were necessarily economic migrants. The discrepancy between legality and reality has become evident.