Complexity reduction and policy consensus: Asylum seekers, the right to work, and the ‘pull factor’ thesis in the UK context
| Author | Lucy Mayblin |
| Published date | 01 November 2016 |
| Date | 01 November 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148116656986 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2016, Vol. 18(4) 812 –828
© The Author(s) 2016
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1369148116656986
bpi.sagepub.com
Complexity reduction and
policy consensus: Asylum
seekers, the right to work,
and the ‘pull factor’ thesis in
the UK context
Lucy Mayblin
Abstract
Since the early 2000s, asylum policy in Western states has become increasingly dominated by the
concept of the ‘pull factor’—the idea that the economic rights afforded to asylum seekers can
act as a migratory pull, and will have a bearing on the numbers of asylum applications received.
The pull factor thesis has been widely discredited by researchers but remains powerful among
policymakers. Through an analysis of the pull factor in the UK context, and drawing on insights
from Cultural Political Economy, this article argues that the hegemony of the pull factor thesis is
best understood as a ‘policy imaginary’ which has become sedimented through both discursive
and extra-discursive practices and processes. The article offers a means of understanding how
a common sense assumption—which is challenged by a large body of evidence—has come to
dominate policymaking in a key area of concern for politicians and policymakers.
Keywords
asylum seekers, Cultural Political Economy, policy imaginaries, pull factor
Introduction
Since the early 2000s, asylum policy in Western states has become increasingly domi-
nated by the concept of the ‘pull factor’. That is, the idea that the policy context on asy-
lum in a particular country can act as a migratory pull, and will therefore have a bearing
on the numbers of applications for asylum received. The economic rights of asylum seek-
ers have been a particular focus of attention, as the assumption that many asylum seekers
are not ‘genuine’ refugees (who migrated primarily as a consequence of persecution) but
are instead economic migrants (who migrated primarily in search of employment) has
become increasingly popular. Such ‘bogus’ applicants are thought to be using the asylum
The University of Sheffield, UK
Corresponding author:
Lucy Mayblin, Department of Politics, The University of Sheffield, Northumberland Rd, Sheffield S10 2TU, UK.
Email: l.mayblin@sheffield.ac.uk
656986BPI0010.1177/1369148116656986The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsMayblin
research-article2016
Article
Mayblin 813
system as a means of gaining entry to destination countries, or to access welfare or
employment upon arrival. Under this rationale, policies which significantly restrict the
economic rights of asylum seekers should take away the pull and decrease the numbers of
applications made. In this sense, asylum has been re-narrated as an economic phenome-
non, rather than a primarily political and humanitarian phenomenon. This article focuses
specifically on the right to work, or labour market access, as a pull factor.
There have been numerous studies over the past 20 years which have sought to inves-
tigate the pull factor, and ultimately to find evidence for or against its existence. These
studies, discussed further in the next section, have not found there to be a strong link
between the economic rights of asylum seekers in host countries and destination choice
(see, for example, Day and White, 2002; Hatton, 2004, 2009; Keogh, 2013; Neumayer,
2005; Robinson and Sergott, 2002; Toshkov, 2014; Valenta et al., 2015). Rather, it is other
factors such as histories of colonial relations between countries of origin and reception
that are found to have the strongest influence on destination choice. In light of this strong
body of countervailing evidence, how can we then make sense of the continued resonance
of the idea of labour market access as a pull factor? Addressing this question is the pri-
mary concern of this article. Rather than attempting simply to refute the policy rationale,
the article offers a means of understanding how a common sense assumption—which is
challenged by a large body of evidence—has come to dominate policymaking in a key
area of concern for politicians and policymakers.
Because simplified interpretations of complex phenomena are communicated by poli-
ticians as stories, researchers have tended to approach them in terms of the conceptual
frameworks of narratives (Boswell et al., 2011; Roe, 1994) and frames (Bleich, 2002; Van
Hulst and Yanow, 2016). This has particularly been the case in studies of the politics of
immigration. Both of these types of approach observe that policy problems do not neces-
sarily emerge from rigorous analyses of real-world phenomena, but are the product of
ideational resources, ideologies, knowledge systems and political agendas. Boswell et al.
(2011) develop this by focussing on policy narratives as entailing particular knowledge
claims which are grounded in cognitive processes: the need to know causal criteria, the
need for coherence, and consistency with available information. This is plausible but
the concentration on discourses draws attention to just one potential analytical focus. The
institutional and material contexts from which discourses emerge are thus left unexplored
and consequently such approaches do not facilitate an understanding of how hegemonic
narratives come to have causal powers when actors use them as a basis for action.
The concept of policy ‘imaginaries’, part of the approach to Cultural Political Economy
(CPE) developed by Ngai-Ling Sum and Bob Jessop (Jessop, 2009; Sum and Jessop,
2013), offers a deeper analysis of such phenomena and is a more adequate alternative to
narrative based approaches. CPE incorporates the cultural turn (a concern with semiosis
or meaning making) into the analysis of the interaction between economic and political
phenomena, and their embedding in broader sets of social relations. It involves a synthe-
sis of critical semiotic analysis and critical political economy and in doing so situates
discourses in relation to extra-discursive (material, institutional, technological) factors.
While policy narratives are important, then, in order to understand their significance we
need to dig deeper into the contexts from which they emerge. Starting from the sense-
making stories that policymakers tell themselves and others in interpreting phenomena,
narratives are then nested within a broader framework. The semiotic aspects of meaning
making (narratives) are therefore important, but so too are the broader material aspects
such as institutional arrangements, technologies, and international political contexts.
To continue reading
Request your trial