Abstract
This chapter scrutinises Ukrainian state practices of asylum. It identifies top-down obstacles to the implementation of asylum laws. These included repeated reorganisation of administrative bodies, political power struggles, lack of resources and information, and shallow legislative adoption of international norms. Street-level bureaucrats shaped policies in practice, some of them improvising work methods despite obstacles. All street-level migration officers used and interpreted certain formal rules according to social norms, emotions, and moral judgements. Central authorities’ attempts to control policy implementation increased under the influence of EU conditionality but remained limited and fragmentary. The leeway enjoyed by street-level bureaucrats implied that asylum policies were strongly heterogeneous across actors, space, and time.
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Notes
- 1.
The recognition rate is the number of asylum seekers granted refugee status or complementary protection status divided by the total number of applicants.
- 2.
I could not find out how frequently the Central State Migration Service overturned the regional Migration Services' recommendations. The internal statistics, obtained from an employee of the SMS, did not include this information. Moreover, while local state officials claimed in interviews in 2014 that the central organ supported most of their decisions, the central state officials underlined the importance of their role of supervision and correction vis-à-vis the local authorities, stating that they very often overturned the local recommendations.
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Mützelburg, I. (2022). Policy Implementation in Practice: Political Power Struggles, Lack of Money, and Street-Level Bureaucrats. In: Transferring Asylum Norms to EU Neighbours. The European Union in International Affairs. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04528-8_5
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