Abstract
The very obvious dissimilarities between Britain and Germany serve to mask the growing parallels in policy and law that are explained by common features of these two states. The differences between them are immense, varied and not to be underestimated, and include their political structures and their geopolitical positions. Elsewhere I have gone into these differences in greater detail.1 However, in spite of these differences, especially in terms of the number of asylum seekers arriving in each country, both countries simultaneously introduced legislation designed to deal with a phenomenon constructed by both states as a problem – the number of asylum seekers. The argument presented here is that it is those characteristics that the two states have in common that are most important for asylum policy – that they are states, that they are liberal representative democracies, that they are welfare states and that they are nation states.
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© 2001 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Schuster, L. (2001). Political Asylum in Germany and Britain. In: Ghatak, S., Showstack Sassoon, A. (eds) Migration and Mobility. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523128_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523128_7
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