System Dynamics Methodology and Dutch Asylum Policy

Security Dialogues /Безбедносни дијалози, 2019

According to the recent UNHCR data, at the end of 2016, an unprecedented 65.6 million people around the world have been forced away from home. Among them are nearly 22.5 million refugees, over half of whom are minors. Figures in the report showed that, worldwide, most refugees-84 per cent-were accommodated in developing or middle-income countries at the end of 2016, with 4.9 million people being hosted by the world's least developed countries. This huge imbalance reflects the lack of international consensus when it comes to hosting refugees. It also illustrates the need for countries and communities supporting refugees and other displaced people to be properly protected and supported, the absence of which can cause instability, have consequences for life-saving humanitarian work or lead to secondary displacement. Humanitarian protection, whether for refugees, asylum seekers, or internally displaced persons (IDPs), represents a key policy area for many major immigrant-receiving countries as well as nations bordering locations where war, political upheaval, or natural disaster have disrupted daily life. Refugee policy is a formal statement of, and proposed course of action in response to, a problem relating to protection, solutions or assistance for refugees or other populations of concern to the global refugee regime. With that objective, national refugee policy can be used to describe any course of action which intends to change a certain situation. National government uses policy to tackle a wide range of issues. In fact, it can make policies that could change laws and regulations in domain of security, economic, education, immigration, refugee protection etc. Think of policies as a starting point for national government to take a course of action that makes a refugee real life change. The paper presents a conceptual idea of definition of system archetype in the field of National protection refugee policies based on the system thinking. The basic idea is to point at the analytical potential of the System Dynamics (SD) concept in determination of National refugee protection policies by using the simulation approach. We will use the SD simulation approach, Security dialogues 128 which can provide an insight into dynamic processes of changes in the system and interaction of elements that define the activities pertaining to determination of refugee policies. The SD model is represented as a Causal Loop Diagram (CLD) showing the cause-consequence relations between system elements. Through computer simulation, the model developed using the CLD enables analysis of various scenarios as a basis for evaluation and decision making support in the field of National refugee protection policies.

Research in the field of Law and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is aimed at the development of legal knowledge-based systems (LKBSs) that solve legal problems. The direction of this research has been greatly influenced by two presuppositions. The first is that the legal problems to be solved relate to individual cases. The second one is the focus on output. However, if we start from a different point of view, changing the interpretation of legal problems, and focus on legal systems instead of individual cases and throughput instead of output, AI-and-Law research reveals new promising applications. This paper presents such a different view and describes its opportunities illustrated by a prototype of a simulation model of the Dutch asylum procedure.

Fontes Artis Musicae, 2009

Th e goal of this research was to identify factors that account for procedural and substantive inequality in implementing asylum law. Th e decisions of ninety-eight caseworkers of the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service on an asylum application were related to their answers on a questionnaire. Caseworkers diff er in the extent of available information on an asylum application they take for granted and in their fi nal decisions on it. Th ese diff erences result from work pressure, the caseworkers' reputation, their role defi nition, political opinion, and professional background, and policy. Intensifying feedback and decreasing work pressure can achieve more consistent and careful decisions. Résumé Le but de cette étude était d'identifi er les facteurs responsables pour les inégalités de fond ainsi que des inégalités relatives à la procédure dans l' application de la loi sur le droit d' asile. Les décisions de quatre-vingt dix-huit agents chargés du cas du Service néerlandais pour l'immigration et la naturalisation concernant une demande d' asile furent reliées à leurs réponses à un questionnaire. Les agents chargés du cas diff èrent sur la somme d'information dont ils disposent concernant une demande d' asile qu'ils tiennent pour acquis et aussi dans leurs décisions fi nales concernant la même demande. Ces diff érences sont causées par la tension au travail, la réputation de l' agent chargé du cas, leur défi nition de leur rôle, leurs opinions politiques, leurs antécédents professionnels et les politiques en place. Accroître la rétroaction et faire baisser la tension au travail aideront à atteindre des décisions plus cohérentes et consciencieuses. * p<0.10 ** p<0.05 Volume 25 Refuge Number 2

International Migration 57(1), 229-244, 2019

The Asylum Procedures Directive, which was put in place in the context of the Common European Asylum System, is expected both to harmonise asylum procedures in the European Union and to safeguard applicants’ rights. This article explores various steps in the implementation of the directive, starting with transnational negotiations which aim to influence domestic asylum policies. Focusing on the asylum systems in Germany and Sweden, the article shows that the way decision makers implement the directive is shaped by diverging domestic asylum policies. The risk of failing common standards, however, is not only a matter of implementation, but inherent in the directive’s design. Furthermore, harmonisation does not necessarily improve compliance with the principles of international refugee law. Safeguarding protection seekers’ rights requires rethinking both asylum legislation and the role of the actors who intervene in its implementation.

published in: Julia Dahlvik, Christoph Reinprecht and Wiebke Sievers: Migration und Integration – wissenschaftliche Perspektiven aus Österreich. Jahrbuch 2/2013. Vienna: Vienna University Press, 319-334

Each year the Dutch authorities categorize scores of people as being “out of procedure” (uitgeprocedeerd). These are mostly “failed asylum seekers” who have exhausted all legal appeals in search of regularizing their status in the Netherlands. Out-of-procedure subjects, or OOPSs, have no formal rights and receive no state provision. They must leave the country voluntarily within one month or risk deportation. Many OOPSs who spent weeks or even months in Dutch detention centers are eventually released onto the streets, as the authorities cannot manage to deport them. This article interrogates the production and treatment of OOPSs as nonexistent human beings who are no longer considered by the state as “aliens” but merely as illegalized bodies. This intriguing case of the state deserting certain people within its sovereign territory is realized through a process of derecording OOPSs and formally pretending that they are not part of the governed population.

2003

International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2021

We draw on the concept of deportability to show how unauthorized migrants who (used to) live in the Netherlands perceive and experience Dutch internal-control mechanisms. We first conclude that these migrants' deportability has serious legal, social, and existential effects on them, which they feel long after their return or deportation to their home country. Second, we state that unauthorized migrants evaluate the Dutch internal-control mechanisms as "one system" in which they distinguish three important, interlinked layers, consisting of (1) divergent actors, (2) laws and policies inside and outside the migration control domains located within (3) different geographies. This implies that individual nation-states, through their internal control mechanisms, also contribute to the externalization of migration control at a supranational level. We conclude that the state's internal migration controls bring about immobility not only in the countries of settlement but also in the transit and home countries.

Erdkunde

Research on the governance of refugees has until recently remained conceptualized with the national perspective as a starting point. This article compares asylum governance at the local level between Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, focusing on the often sensitive and highly debated issue of reception and accommodation. The central idea is to determine convergences and divergences of local reception structures and efforts, and how they are linked to the governance levels situated above them. Despite municipalities having been greatly affected by, and having shaped in practice, reception and integration processes of asylum seekers and refugees, so far there has been little in terms of comparative research across countries in Europe. Our findings emerging from the comparison suggest that top-down implementations of asylum reception have created numerous problems and protest on the ground, especially when the local population and local stakeholders were not involved in the decision-making process. On the one hand, the case studies show that within each national setting, the local regimes and agencies can shape divergent reception outcomes in terms of integrative or disintegrative policies. On the other hand, converging developments in the local cases across national contexts, such as the impact of the local political climate, suggest the crucial impact of local reception regimes and agencies, notwithstanding varying regulatory frameworks and procedures. We thus underline the importance of local-to-local comparison, and not only national-to-national, when it comes to analysing refugee reception. Zusammenfassung: Forschungen zur Implementierung von Asylpolitik verbleiben meist auf der nationalen Betrachtungsebene. Dieser Artikel nimmt einen lokalen Fokus ein, um Aufnahmepolitiken von Asylsuchenden in Deutschland, Luxemburg und den Niederlanden zu vergleichen. Der Beitrag hat zum Ziel, konvergierende und divergierende Strategien, Praktiken und Effekte zu identifizieren und die Verbindungen zu den übergeordneten Politikebenen zu analysieren. Obgleich die kommunale Ebene ganz wesentlich die Aufnahme von Asylsuchenden verantwortet und individuelle Aufnahme-und Integrationspraktiken entwickelt, gibt es dazu bislang kaum länderübergreifende vergleichende Forschung. Die Befunde unserer vergleichenden Lokalforschung zeigen, dass die zentrale Steuerung der Aufnahme Asylsuchender auf kommunaler Ebene verschiedene Probleme und Protesthaltungen erzeugt hat, insbesondere wenn die Bevölkerung und die Entscheidungsträger vor Ort nicht in den Entscheidungsprozess einbezogen wurden. Es zeigt sich, dass innerhalb des identischen nationalen Rahmens Aufnahmepolitiken höchst unterschiedliche Resultate zeitigen können, z.B. durch die Implementierung integrativer oder partikularer Politikansätze. Andererseits weisen konvergierende Entwicklungen in unseren Fallbeispielen auf die Bedeutung lokaler Aushandlungsprozesse und Diskurse hin, die sich trotz unterschiedlicher nationaler Regulierungen und Rahmenbedingungen in vergleichbarer Weise entwickeln können. Dadurch unterstreicht dieser Beitrag die Bedeutung von länderübergreifenden Lokalstudien und die generelle Bedeutung der lokalen Ebene in der vergleichenden Implementierungsforschung.