On March 4, 2022, the Temporary Protection Directive (TPD) was activated as a response to a mass influx of Ukrainian refugees. The Directive was ratified by the EU member states already in 2001, following the events of the refugee crisis caused by the Kosovo conflict. Still, it remained unemployed until 2022, when Europe faced yet-another intra-regional conflict. The implementation of TPD has generated a heated academic debate regarding the Directive’s essence and the motivations behind its implementation. Varying from geopolitics to racism, many reasons have been provided when reasoning the Directive’s current implementation and previous non-implementation. This thesis studied the implementation through a critical migration theory lens, with the aim of locating economic motivations impacting the decision to activate the Directive. Therefore, by utilizing the question ‘How can the motivations for implementing the Temporary Protection Directive be understood in light of the Directive’s economic aspects?’ for this particular purpose, the thesis found that the economic aspects of the Directive come to the fore both in commodification as well as selectivity of migration policy. First, the TPD beneficiaries’ unique migration category is generated through its differentiation of legal rights in – and access to – the host country when compared to the refugee status and subsidiary protection. And second, the TPD has the ability to select and therefore target specific groups through its limited scope of protection to cover either a specific country or geographical area. In this way, the thesis contributed to the discussion regarding the logic behind the implementation of TPD.

De senaste åren har världen upplevt den största flyktingkrisen sedan andra världskriget. Inom EU har fördelningen av asylansökningar varit ojämnt fördelad mellan medlemsländerna trots gemensamma asylpolicyer. Genom paneldataanalys undersöker vi i denna studie hur ekonomiska, nätverksrelaterade, attitydrelaterade och policyrelaterade pullfaktorer har påverkat det relativa asyltrycket hos medlemsländerna i EU-25 mellan 2005 och 2014. Resultaten visar att länders pullfaktorer har en påverkan på dess relativa asyltryck. Vi finner stöd för vad tidigare studier dokumenterat men även resultat som pekar i andra riktningar. Låg arbetslöshet, hög lön, migrantnätverk, attityder och att vara ett land som ligger längs de vanligaste flyktvägarna in till EU visar ett signifikant positivt samband med relativt asyltryck. I kontrast till tidigare forskning hittas ett signifikant negativt samband mellan beviljningsgrad och relativt asyltryck. Resultatet kan förklaras med att länder antingen reagerar på högt asyltryck genom att minska andelen asylbeviljningar, eller att asylsökande med låg sannolikhet att få beviljad asyl väljer länder med liberalare asylpolicyer. Inget samband hittas mellan ekonomisk jämlikhet och relativt asyltryck. Det ojämna asyltrycket i EU beror till viss del på faktorer som länder själva inte kan påverka och därför kan politiska regeländringar krävas för en jämnare fördelning. / During the last years the world has experienced the largest refugee crisis since the Second World War. Within the European Union, the asylum shares have been uneven distributed even though member countries share common asylum policies to a certain degree. Using panel analysis, this study examines how policy related, attitude related, economical, and network related pull factors have affected the asylum shares in the EU-25 countries between 2005 and 2014. The results show that pull factors do have an effect on countries asylum shares. Low unemployment, high salaries, network effects, attitudes and countries bordering the most common smuggle routes into EU have a significant positive relationship with asylum shares. We find a significant negative relationship between recognition rates and asylum shares, which is in contrast to previous research. This result can be explained either by countries reacting to a large number of asylum applications by lowering their recognition rates, or by asylum applicants with a low probability of approval choosing countries with more liberal asylum policies. No relationship was found between economic equality and asylum shares. The uneven distribution of asylum shares depend to a certain degree of factors that countries themselves cannot control for and thereby policies might be required to reach an even distribution.

The conflict over the right way to tackle the so-called refugee crisis in Europe has proved that relations between the EU and the Visegrád Group have changed. The political dispute surfaced most clearly regarding the different proposals for a quota-based refugee relocation system - a decision which was refused by the V4. The bloc consisting of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia first articulated its common position on migration in September 2015 and several times afterwards. On the basis of these statements, one can summarise their approach as follows: (1) Protecting the external borders of the EU and underlining the importance of fulfilling the obligations for the EU acquis; (2) Effective management of the root causes of migration flows, which could help reduce the number of migrants; (3) Refusing Germany's open-door migration policy. Although an increasing number of EU member states share a similar approach, the V4 as the whole started to be perceived as a coalition known for obstructing practices. The split on the issue gave life to a new wave of speculation about the increasing split between "old" and "new" Europe and the possible shift of the later eastwards. Furious politicians and public opinion in Western Europe continued to remind the Visegrád countries of their lack of...