According to the Global Trends Report 2021 provided by UNHCR (2022), there were 89.3 million forcibly displaced people in the world at the end of 2021, of which more than a quarter were refugees. This implies that there are more forcibly displaced people who cannot be called as refugees. The contemporary refugee and forced migration issue has developed from the social transformation in line with globalization and neoliberalism. This thesis aims to reveal how transnational migration and social transformation affect the refugee policies of the two countries where there is nothing geographically, historically, and culturally in common. To do so, the methodological approach of comparative case studies (CCS) is used to examine the refugee policies of Sweden and South Korea. As empirical data, semi-structured interviews with government agents and NGOs from each country are analyzed and assessed with the use of theoretical framework of neoliberalism and its impact on social transformation. The results suggest that the refugee policies of the two countries converged on the minimum level of protection. Furthermore, not only refugees or asylum seekers but also many other people, including migrants and even native born cannot get appropriate protection from the current system. An additional finding is that countries should develop reasonable migration policy to meet both the demand of the national economy and humanitarian protection. This would be possible by preparing the entry rights for economic migrants in accordance with their labor market demands and guaranteeing appropriate entitlements for them. This thesis demonstrates that comparing the refugee policy between Western and non-Western countries has significance for understanding the power relations that bind the seemingly dissimilar countries together. Therefore, the refugee policies in non-Western countries and their relationship with Western counterparts should be researched further.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:liu-190399 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Oh, Yu Mi |
| Publisher | Linköpings universitet, Avdelningen för migration, etnicitet och samhälle (REMESO) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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