Improving the distribution of asylum-seekers through a multi-criteria index
| Author | Silvia Angeloni |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1465116519831949 |
| Subject Matter | Letter |
Letter
European Union Politics
Improving the
2019, Vol. 20(2) 328–337
! The Author(s) 2019
distribution of
Article reuse guidelines:
asylum-seekers through
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1465116519831949
journals.sagepub.com/home/eup
a multi-criteria index
Silvia Angeloni
Department of Economics, University of Molise,
Campobasso, Italy
Abstract
Despite the large number of studies on asylum burden-sharing, there is still no
consensus on the most effective method for reducing cross-country inequalities.
A benchmark model for equitable distribution could combine the Gini coefficient
method with the ‘asylum multi-criteria index’, based on the country’s gross domestic
product, population and territory. The method is implemented to measure the inequal-
ities in the distribution of asylum-seekers among 30 European countries over a five-year
period and solve an optimisation problem in 2017. The findings show that the unequal
distribution worsened with the increase in the number of asylum-seekers while the
optimisation model led to an approximate 60% reduction in the cross-country inequality
in burden-sharing relative to the actual distribution. The results are compared with the
burden-sharing formula proposed by the European Commission in 2015.
Keywords
Asylum burden-sharing, European Union, multi-criteria index, optimisation
The distribution of asylum-seekers among countries continues to be one of the
critical problems in the European Union (EU) (Hatton, 2017; Thielemann and
Dewan, 2006). The lack of an effective and binding burden-sharing mechanism
results in distributional inequalities, reinforced by the Dublin Regulation
(Thielemann and Armstrong, 2012). Prior research has studied inequalities in
Corresponding author:
Silvia Angeloni, Department of Economics, University of Molise, Via De Sanctis, Campobasso 86100, Italy.
Email: silvia.angeloni@unimol.it
Angeloni
329
asylum burden-sharing by using both unidimensional (B€
ocker and Havinga, 1998;
Bovens et al., 2011) and multi-dimensional capacity indices (Angenendt et al.,
2013; Parusel and Schneider, 2017; Thielemann et al., 2010; Wagner and
Kraler, 2014).
To understand and solve inequalities in the distribution of asylum-seekers, this
study implements a multi-dimensional capacity index proposed by Germany in 1994,
during its presidency of the Council of the EU, and recalled by a study of the
European Commission (EC) (2010) and by numerous authors (e.g. Boswell,
2003a; Hatton, 2005; Neumayer, 2004; Thielemann, 2018). According to the
German proposal, the burden-sharing scheme should include a distribution key
based on gross domestic product (GDP), population size and territory size, with
all criteria equally weighted. The asylum multi-criteria index (AMI) can be expressed
by the following formula:
GDPit
Population
Territory
AMI
it
it
it ¼ 1
þ 1
þ 1
3 GDPEU=EFTAt
3 PopulationEU=EFTAt
3 TerritoryEU=EFTAt
where AMIit denotes the asylum absorption capacity of the ith country in the year t,
with i ranging from 1 to 32, if all states belonging to the EU or the European Free
Trade Association (EFTA) participate in the distribution of asylum-seekers. Based
on the AMI, a country with larger GDP, population, and territory should propor-
tionately host more asylum-seekers because all three parameters have positive
effects on its asylum capacity. The rationale for the selected parameters is elucidated
below. Since the management of the asylum system is expensive and time-consuming
(Czaika, 2009; Wagner et al., 2016), a country’s ability to absorb asylum-seekers is
assumed to increase with its economic power, as measured in terms of GDP.
Moreover, to avoid social tensions and territorial overload, the asylum share for
each state should be proportional to the size of its population and territory
(Angenendt et al., 2013; Boswell, 2003a). The geographic size serves to normalise
other indicators especially in asylum policy, since a large territory may offer better
chances for asylum-seekers to find accommodation (Thielemann et al., 2010).
Contrary to the criteria used for refugee distribution (Bansak et al., 2018; Berger
and Heinemann, 2016), the AMI does not include the country’s unemployment
rate. Asylum-seekers have usually not yet been granted neither refugee status nor
free access to the labour market. There are countries that impose labour market
restrictions for asylum-seekers while their asylum cases are pending (Angeloni and
Spano, 2018; Constant and Zimmermann, 2016). However, unemployment rates
do not account for labour market peculiarities in different states (Grech, 2017).
Moreover, the unemployment rate is excluded from the AMI due to its correlation
with GDP (Okun, 1963).
The AMI has the advantage of encapsulating all parameters traditionally used
by institutions such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (2013)
to monitor universal data on human displacement. Moreover, the formula
330
European Union Politics 20(2)
suggested here has the advantage of being a justice-based system (Boswell, 2003b),
computationally less demanding and based on objectively established criteria
(Wagner and Kraler, 2014). Despite the merits recognised in the distribution key
expressed by the AMI, researchers have not used the Gini coefficient to test
inequalities in the distribution of asylum-seekers and solve optimisation problems.
There is a study that employed the AMI formula to estimate such inequalities in
the distribution of asylum-seekers in the EU 28 (Wagner and Kraler, 2014).
However, this study did not use the Gini coefficient while it computed the devia-
tion...
To continue reading
Request your trial