THE SOCIAL and ECONOMIC ORIGINS of STATE RESPONSES to ASYLUM CRISES

Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University Political Science Dissertations Department of Political Science Fall 12-14-2017 SELECTIVE HUMANITY: THE SOCIAL and ECONOMIC ORIGINS of STATE RESPONSES TO ASYLUM CRISES Gulcan Saglam Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/political_science_diss Recommended Citation Saglam, Gulcan, "SELECTIVE HUMANITY: THE SOCIAL and ECONOMIC ORIGINS of STATE RESPONSES TO ASYLUM CRISES." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2017. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/political_science_diss/47 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Political Science at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Political Science Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SELECTIVE HUMANITY: THE SOCIAL and ECONOMIC ORIGINS of STATE RESPONSES TO ASYLUM CRISES by GULCAN SAGLAM Under the Direction of Charles Hankla, PhD ABSTRACT Even though electoral democracies that are party to the refugee protection regime have adopted broadly similar refugee norms, there is still significant variation within and across countries in their responses to asylum crises. To address what explains this variation in national asylum regimes, I develop an interdisciplinary model for asylum policy-making undergirded by classical theories of forced migration, political economy and identity politics. I focus on the dyadic relationship between a destination country and a particular asylum-seeking group, and contend that the labor absorption capacity and social willingness in destination countries will shape their asylum policy responses. The labor absorption capacity is a function of institutional factors in the destination country, such as the industrial relations and skill training systems, and determines whether the labor market has the capacity to absorb the incoming refugee labor. The social i willingness is socially constructed and reflects the level of acceptance the host community has towards a particular asylum-seeking group. The dissertation takes an important step towards unpacking destination country asylum policies systematically while controlling for the merit of the asylum claim at hand. My predictions are borne out in a mixed method approach. The quantitative analysis of asylum policies of 30 OECD countries between 2000 and 2014 indicate that the labor absorption capacity and social willingness have statistically and substantively significant positive effects on destination country asylum policies. Destination countries with higher levels of labor absorption capacity have higher Refugee and Total Recognition Rates. Furthermore, higher social willingness to protect a particular asylum-seeking group leads to higher Refugee Recognition Rates in destination countries. The qualitative analysis lays out the causal mechanisms behind the correlation between my dependent and independent variables with in-depth case studies of Turkish and German national asylum regimes during various waves of asylum crises. INDEX WORDS: Asylum, Refugee crisis, Varieties of Capitalism, Labor absorption capacity, Social distance, Political economy, Germany, Syrian refugees, Turkey ii SELECTIVE HUMANITY: THE SOCIAL and ECONOMIC ORIGINS of STATE RESPONSES TO ASYLUM CRISES by GULCAN SAGLAM A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2017 iii Copyright by Gulcan Saglam 2017 iv SELECTIVE HUMANITY: THE SOCIAL and ECONOMIC ORIGINS of STATE RESPONSES TO ASYLUM CRISES by GULCAN SAGLAM Committee Chair: Charles Hankla Committee: Michael Herb Susanne Schorpp Jelena Subotic Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University December 2017 v iv DEDICATION To all the moms with a passion for knowledge, who spend many sleepless nights studying and many busy days taking care of their kids iv v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Upon the completion of this study, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to those people whose encouragement and support made the completion of this dissertation possible. I would like first to express my sincerest gratitude to Dr. Charles Hankla, chairman of my committee, who frequently and generously shared his knowledge and his time with me through every step of this study. I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Susanne Schorpp for her critical input, which contributed greatly to the development of this dissertation. My appreciation is extended to Dr. Michael Herb and Dr. Jelena Subotic for their support and guidance during my years in the program. I am grateful to my parents without whom none of this would have been even possible. I will always remember the sacrifices they made for my education. Their example and belief in me have always given me the strength and the courage to succeed. A special thanks is to my daughters, Nurdan and Vildan, from whom I draw strength and happiness. Last but not the least, I am grateful to Serkan whose constant encouragement, love, and patience helped me make it through the difficult times during this study. His endless support during the course of this dissertation made me appreciate more than ever how lucky I am to have him in my life. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS V LIST OF TABLES 9 LIST OF FIGURES 10 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 11 1 INTRODUCTION 14 2 ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS 18 2.1 International Factors: 19 2.1.1 Globalization 19 2.1.2 International Refugee Regime 20 2.1.3 Structural Inequalities 23 2.1.4 Balance of Power Considerations 24 2.2 Domestic Factors 27 2.2.1 Political Factors 28 2.2.2 Economic Factors 29 2.2.3 Political Economy Accounts 31 2.2.4 Local Capacity 32 2.3 A Combined Perspective 34 3 THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ROOTS OF STATE RESPONSES TO ASYLUM CRISIS 39 3.1 Labor Absorption Capacity 41 6 7 3.2 Social Willingness 48 4 QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH DESIGN 52 4.1 Data And Case Selection 53 4.2 Empirical Results And Discussion 58 4.3 Conclusion 69 5 QUALITATIVE RESEARCH DESIGN 70 5.1 Case Selection 70 5.2 Independent Variable: Labor Absorption Capacity 73 5.3 Independent Variable: Social Willingness 76 5.4 Dependent Variable: National Asylum Regimes 78 6 TURKISH NATIONAL ASYLUM REGIME 79 6.1 Labor Absorption Capacity 80 6.2 Turkish Identity/Nation-building and Social Willingness 93 6.3 National Asylum Regime 103 6.3.1 The Legal Framework and Turkish Response to Turkish-Muslim Asylum Seekers Fleeing Bulgaria in 1989 103 6.3.2 The Legal Framework and Turkish Response to Kurdish Asylum Seekers Fleeing Iraq in 1988 114 6.3.3 The Legal Framework and Turkish Response to Syrian Asylum Seekers Fleeing Syrian Civil War since 2011 121 6.4 Conclusion 133 7 GERMAN NATIONAL ASYLUM REGIME 135 7 8 7.1 Labor Absorption Capacity 136 7.2 German Identity/Nation-building and Social Willingness 170 7.3 National Asylum Regime and the Legal Framework 190 7.3.1 Policy Responses to European Refugee Crisis: Syrian Asylum Seekers vs. Afghan Asylum Seekers 196 7.4 Conclusion 215 8 CONCLUSION 219 APPENDICES 232 Appendix A Summary Statistics 232 Appendix B Robustness Checks 233 Appendix B.1 Linear Regression Analyses Results for the Interaction Between Social Willingness and Labor Absorption Capacity 235 Appendix B.2 Linear Regression Analyses Results for Separate Economic and Social Indicators 236 Appendix B.3 Multinomial Logistic Regression Results 237 Appendix B.4 Ordered Logistic Regression Results 239 REFERENCES 240 8 9 LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Predicted Probabilities – The Effect of Minimum and Maximum Values of ......................... 63 Table 2 Predicted Probabilities – The Effect of Minimum and Maximum Values of ......................... 66 Table 3 Level of GDP per capita and productivity (OECD 2017) ..................................................... 90 Table 4 How Survey Respondents Perceive Syrian Refugees ........................................................... 125 Table 5 How Survey Respondent Describe Describing Syrians ....................................................... 126 Table 6 Main Trade Union Federations and Confederations in Germany ...................................... 142 Table 7 Trade Union Density ........................................................................................................... 144 Table 8 Employment Protection: Regulation on individual dismissal of workers with regular contracts and additional costs for collective dismissals .................................................................. 146 Table 9 Employment by job tenure intervals – percentage .............................................................. 147 Table 10 Population with Tertiary Education (2015) ...................................................................... 150 Table 11 Why do companies participate in dual education? ........................................................... 160 Table 12 Unemployment Rate in Germany Between 2000 and 2016 ............................................... 165 Table 13 Asylum Recognition Rates of Syrian and Afghan Asylum Seekers .................................... 200 9 10 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 Linear Regression Analysis of National Asylum Policy Regimes ........................................ 60 Figure 2 The Effect of Increasing Labor Absorption Capacity from Its Minimum to Maximum on Refugee Recognition Rates ................................................................................................................

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