The challenge of immigration has divided EU member states, political parties, media and academia as well as the electorate of EU countries, leaving political decision makers under tremendous pressure on both national and EU level. To alleviate the situation for highly burdened member states, the Commission has suggested a permanent relocation mechanism for refugees, but so far, many member states have been reluctant to accept higher shares of refugees. Some observers have labelled the situation a crisis of solidarity, challenging the idea of European integration, but also questioning the Union’s capacity to demonstrate solidarity between member states, and consequently its capacity to show solidarity with arriving refugees.   By looking at European Parliament debates, this paper examines the main differences between the European Christian Democratic and Social Democratic understandings of solidarity and how these differences become visible in relation to relocation of refugees and asylum seekers between EU member states. The findings suggest that while there is some convergence, Christian Democrats are more inclined to consider refugees as a threat and to advocate the need of securing external borders than their Social Democratic counterparts. Social Democrats also to a larger extent favour the idea of making relocation mandatory, while many Christian Democrats emphasize the importance of subsidiarity.   The findings can be associated with the foundational values of both party groups and their political understandings of solidarity. Most interestingly, however, this paper finds that the national level variance within these two party groups is frequently bigger, than between them – indicating that MEP’s understandings of solidarity are perhaps more strongly mediated by nationality than political affiliation.

The topic of migration has become one that is gaining notice in society. With the number of migrants, asylum seekers, unaccompanied minors and child refugees rising rapidly in the past few years it has become a theme of great importance with global reach. These migratory fluxes blur the boundaries between voluntary and forced migration which were previously regarded as separate notions. The media plays a powerful role when it comes to define such concepts as well as creating representations of these populations and shaping the public perception of these individuals. Through this thesis, the representations of unaccompanied asylum seeking minors and refugees constructed by the Portuguese media will be analysed using discourse analysis. The aim is to create knowledge about the representations of unaccompanied asylum seeking minors and refugees in the Portuguese media as this means of communication is an important voice in the public and political debate concerning these populations. The results show that there are several dichotomies regarding the representations of unaccompanied asylum seeking minors and refugees in the Portuguese media. Young migrants are represented both as security seekers and causes of insecurity, victims and survivors, passive agents which lack agency and active agents who use their agency to leave their home countries, as well as people worth supporting and people who had enough support. Discourse analysis provides information regarding the discourses used in the Portuguese media to represent unaccompanied asylum seeking minors and refugees as well as the context in which the articles were written. Finally, there are several representations of unaccompanied asylum seeking minors and refugees in the Portuguese media, yet the ones whose discourse is stronger, in the five chosen articles, are the of young migrants as security seekers, victims that are worth being supported and that are mostly active agents in their journeys.

Magister Artium - MA / There is a widely held assumption that immigrants have difficulties in accessing public health care services in South Africa. This assumption derives from the experiences of some immigrants in accessing public health care services at some public health care facilities which are all required by law and policy to provide such services. The main aim of the study was to investigate the experiences of Zimbabwean immigrants in accessing public health care services at some public clinics and hospitals in Cape Town. Foucault’s theory on power was used to unpack the experiences of Zimbabwean immigrants at these public health care centers. Zimbabwean immigrant participants were all purposively sampled for the study and medical personnel were randomly sampled. The Zimbabwean immigrants sampled had used public health care facilities in Cape Town. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from the Zimbabwean immigrants which were qualitatively analysed using content analysis. Questionnaires were also used to collect data from both the Zimbabwean immigrants and medical personnel and subsequently open-ended questions from the questionnaires were also analysed using content analysis and closed questions were analysed using the Micro-soft excel package of data assessment and statistically presented using pie, bar and line graphs. Themes that were recurring from the semi-structured interviews and responses from questionnaires suggested that immigrants in their experiences at public health care facilities encountered barriers that included communication problems, negative attitudes and xenophobia from medical staff, policy and practice problems and preferential treatment offered to citizens over non-citizens. Recommendations of what needs to be done to reduce barriers to health care for immigrants were made to all involved in the provision of health care. The study contributed to our understanding of barriers that immigrants encounter in accessing public health care in South Africa as well as the role of citizens in this process.

Sexual violence is a prominent issue worldwide, especially during times of war and conflict. For refugee women, experiences with sexual violence are often incorporated in women’s reasons for forced migration. During the immigration process to Canada, refugee women are asked to share their narratives, at which point they may or may not disclose their histories of sexual violence. In June 2012, the Canadian government made substantial cuts to the Interim Federal Health Program. For refugee women who are survivors of sexual violence, this means that they are further limited in accessing services they might require in order to deal with the sexual violence they have experienced. Drawing from interviews we conducted with key informants (n=15) and refugee women (n=12) in both Toronto and Ottawa, this thesis explores both the lived experiences of refugee women and the changes, if any, that should be made to current service delivery. Our results show that there is a pronounced need for both small- and large-scale improvements at the systems and service delivery levels.

Masters in Public Administration - MPA / The study assesses the application of policies on the right of refugees and asylum seekers with regard to the education of their children, and the many challenges impeding this right. Fundamental changes in the legal framework protecting the right to education of the children of refugees and asylum seekers have been in place since 1994, when South Africa became a democratic state. The principles of international treaties recognising the rights of children were incorporated into the Constitution of South Africa of 1996, demonstrating South Africa’s commitment to the protection of children’s rights. However, studies have suggested that, refugees’ and asylum seekers’ children have been discriminated against in terms of access to education, despite the legislative framework which provides for equal and inclusive education in South Africa. Access to education for migrant children in South Africa is invariably met with challenges which constitute a violation of the Constitution and international law. This study assessed policies and practices affecting refugees’ and asylum seekers’ children to access primary schools in a democratic South Africa. The researcher argues that access to education for refugees and asylum seeker’s children must be guided by the social justice principle of “every child deserves an education”, regardless of the legality of their parents in South Africa. Failure to afford them the opportunity to study is a violation of the Constitution and international law. The study used semi-structured interviews based on a questionnaire. Participants included parents who were refugees or asylum seekers, schools’ principals, and officials from Scalabrini Centre and the Western Cape Education Department (WCED). The data collected from respondents was presented, discussed and analyzed through a thematic analysis approach. From data collected, it was possible to identify the barriers preventing refugees’ and asylum seeker’s children from accessing education. Some of the barriers were generated from gaps in migration policy, ineffective policy implementation, poor documentation and various institutional challenges. Based on the study findings, it is recommended that South African lawmakers formulate policies that speak to the needs of the refugee child and amend the current migration policy to make it more reasonable and accommodative with regard to meeting the needs of migrants’ children in general, and refugee’ and asylum seekers’ children in particular. This would enable South Africa to uphold the constitutional values and its international obligations in relation to the promotion and protection of the right to education for all children.

"The rights of refugees and basic human rights are inextricably linked. Today's human rights abuse is tomorrow's refugee movements. Quite often, refugees' rights are curtailed by the same states that declare them in accordance with international and domestic instruments, only because they are non-nationals. While the foundation of refugee rights is the principle that all men and women have the right to belong to a society in which they are protected by the state, the respect to the principle of non-refoulement is at the core of being a refugee. Even though the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) proclaims rights to all, including refugees, states use international principles of sovereignty to shut their doors in front of asylum seekers. Furthermore, it is not easy to utilise international mechanisms of protection to instigate complaints against a potential host state, based on its arbitrary act to shut its doors. This is because one needs to seek remedies before authorities of the same country where she or he has been denied. In addition, international law has few precedents on the matter even assuming it was treated as an exception to the former rule. This situation puts refoulement victims in a dilemma. ... Since the first time when the wave of asylum seekers from Rwanda hit Tanzania in 1959, the flow of refugees continues. Tanzania has hosted refugees not only from its neighbouring countries, but also as far as from South Africa, Zimbabwe and Somalia. With an estimated number of 602,00 refugees population in 2004, Tanzania was among the top five refugee-hosting countries in the world. Tanzania ratified the international and regional refugee instrumetns, as well as other human rights instruments that may enhance the protection of refugees. Subsequently, Tanzania enacted appropriate legislation in order to make the refugee instruments enforceable within the national legal framework. The principle of non-refoulement is enshriend in all legal instruments of which Tanzania has an international, regional and national obligation to respect. However, in recent years a trend of sporadic incidents in which the principle of non-refoulement was not respected, has been observed. For instance, in October 2004, 68 Burundian asylum seekers were forced to return to Burundi following the orders of the local authorities. One of the most recent incidents occurred in January 2005 when the government returned two families of nine persons, despite assurances made to UNHCR that they would be granted refugee status. This research looks at the obligation of the Government of Tanzania to protect rights of asylum seekers and refugees. This is in line with the principle of non-refoulement as enshrined under international and regional instruments of which Tanzania ratified. It further explores the role of international communities in responsibility sharing (often referred to in the humanitarian community as 'burden sharing') as a way to ensure that all states respect the principle of non-refoulement. ... The first part of this research is the introduction, that is, the background to the problem, problem statement, scope of the research, hypotheses, objective of the research, literature review, research methodology, and outline of chapters. The second chapter looks at the right to non-refoulement under international, regional and national legal instruments. Chapter three deals with respect of the principle of non-refoulement in the refugee operation of Tanzania. Chapter four examines the relationship between the principle of non-refoulement and responsibility sharing with a view to reflect on the role of the international community in promoting refugee rights. The last chapter is the conclusion of the research and recommendations." -- Introduction. / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2005. / Prepared under the supervision of Dr. Atangcho Nji Akonumbo at the Department of Social Science and Management, Catholic University [of Central Africa] in Yaounde, Cameroon / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/dissertations.html / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

This thesis explores how LGBTQ*-Salvadoran applicants for international protection experience the influence of their own sexual orientation and gender identities in relation to the underlying motives behind their migration. In addition, it intends to draw some conclusions from the respondents' statements, gained insights from observations and what was found in literature. For this, two Salvadoran LGBTQ*- applicants for international protection, who applied for asylum in Belgium in the year 2019, were interviewed. Their discourses were analysed by using a thematic analysis.The study exposes the narratives and motivations which led them to flee their homeland and find a new life in Belgium.

Since 2015, Greece has been in an unprecedented position. The Syrian civil war triggered the movement of more than 850,000 arrivals into Greece during 2015 (UNHCR, 2015). Being geographically situated as the closest European country to the east of Syria, Greece had to deal with a large increase in the number of migrating peoples to the country and by proxy, the European Union. This research seeks to understand how power relations between the island’s local population and its asylum seeker population are represented through an analysis of the discourse produced by the local daily press. In particular, the research reviews the discourse surrounding the island’s main square occupation by asylum seekers in April 2018. The theory of the established and outsiders is the framework used for the analysis, while Critical Discourse Analysis and General Inductive Approach constitutes the methodological ground of the thesis. The analysis showcases that Lesvos’ local daily press reproduces a discourse in line with the established and outsiders theory, attributing the local population as being established and the asylum seekers as being outsiders.

This essay examines the discursive construction of the image of refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, and migrants in a 1,472-million word corpus of UK press online articles published between January 2015 and December 2021. A corpus-based approach revealed the most frequent collocates of the four query terms, i.e.refugee(s), asylum seeker(s), immigrant(s), and migrant(s). The collocates were grouped into analytical categories which were based on the results of the previous research in the field. The corpus analysis informed the following critical discourse analysis. For this purpose, two articles where the most frequent collocate for each query term was used were randomly selected and analyzed. The critical discourse analysis indicated linguistic patterns of the use of the four most frequent collocations. Both analyses contributed to the establishment of the strategies applied in the construction of the image of refugee(s), asylum seeker(s), immigrant(s), and migrant(s), e.g. aggregation, securitization, and victimization.

The pandemic is not only a crisis itself but has created multiple crises for the vulnerable population as well. Worldwide, they encountered multiple challenges to assistance and protection, but due to the pandemic, their needs might have increased. As the number of refugees, migrants, and asylum-seeker is rising, all the health risks and the challenges that this group is exposed to, demonstrates the need for increased support, protection, and assistance. This scoping review aims to investigate if the arisen challenges faced by vulnerable children and their families have exacerbated in the context of COVID-19, in the published research literature. In this scoping review, information was collected on multiple databases between January and February 2021. Seven empirical studies were analysed in order to examine which are the new challenges that have arisen due to COVID-19 and explore if they worsened in this context. Seven areas emerged due to the pandemic: hygiene measures, food insecurity, child labour, child marriage, freedom of movement, access to education, access to services and sources of information, while five areas have worsened: economic, psychological, violence, discrimination and overcrowding. The findings are showing that COVID-19’s disease burden is higher in vulnerable contexts, due to the living conditions, high risks jobs, and poor access to services. The outcomes of these challenges are likely to be long-standing, as they breached into the processes and structures of the family system Although efforts to control the virus’s spread remain critical, the negative effects on vulnerables, must be addressed and identified to avoid the risk of more challenges getting exacerbated, and reduce the parental stress that will lead to the well-being of the future generations. Limitations, practical implications and future research are discussed.