Rejection: How Media-Influenced Bureaucratic Drift Replicated Formal Barriers to Entry for Syrian Refugees in Northern and Western Europe

Abstract:

Why is the distribution of Syrian refugees in northern and western Europe so uneven? In a study of France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, I analyze formal and informal barriers within the asylum process that account for this disparity. Using a five-indicator system, I evaluate both the external and internal features of asylum law. However, given these data, variance in accepted Syrian refugees is explained only between the UK compared to Germany and Sweden. This finding pushes against the convention that an analysis of formal legal structures is sufficient to predict variation in refugee acceptance. To build upon formal legal studies of asylum procedures, I expand the framework to include bureaucratic drift. Namely, I argue that bureaucrats consider public opinion when executing laws. Using sentiment analysis methods such as text mining, collocative analysis, and linguistic inquiry and word count, I compare refugee-related sentiment trends across the five case studies. Because negative sentiment correlates with low proportional acceptance, I argue that bureaucrats who observed negative sentiment informally raised barriers to entry for asylum seekers. This additional condition explains the variation between France and Spain compared to Germany and Sweden. Correspondingly, I posit that media-influenced bureaucratic drift replicated the effect of formal barriers for Syrian refugees.