'Give us Asylum and Help us Leave the Country!' Kurdish Asylum Seekers in Greece and the Politics of Reception

This essay examines the ways in which the social organization of migration interacts with domestic structures in the reception country. Taking the case of Greece, the current reception policy encourages temporary migrant settlement, while the socio-economic structures and cultural familiarity with the host society support individual integration in the society and the informal economy, but discourage migrant community representation. In addition, the political environment has supported Kurdish diaspora politics that, in turn, enhanced existing fragmentation within the ethnic group. The aim of this essay is to highlight the dimensions affecting temporary and permanent migrant settlement in Greece through empirical findings.     

Implementing and Rethinking the European Union's Asylum Legislation: The Asylum Procedures Directive

The Asylum Procedures Directive, which was put in place in the context of the Common European Asylum System, is expected to both harmonise the 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 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.     

Some New Perspectives on Early Australian Social Work

Abstract

The present article re-examines several aspects of the early history of Australian social work. Using primary sources that recently underpinned a PhD thesis, the paper suggests that the traditional historical interpretation of the roles of the Charity Organisation Society (COS) and the British model of lady almoning as the foundation pillars of social work, while applicable to the establishment of social work in Victoria, had less relevance in the case of New South Wales. Second, the present article highlights the valuable role played by a group of Catholic women trained in social work in the foundation decades of the profession in Australia. Led by Professor Norma Parker, this small cohort made a distinctive contribution in an array of social work arenas, including their church, subjects that hitherto have been largely overlooked in the literature.     

Asylum Legislation and Asylum Applications: A Geographical Analysis of Belgian Asylum Policy by Country of Origin (1992‐2003)

In many European countries a traditional policy and legal response to an undesirable increase of asylum applications has been the change of asylum law and procedures. By making it more difficult to obtain asylum and refugee status, the attractiveness as a possible country of asylum is believed to diminish. In the period from 1992 to 2003 three major revisions of the Belgian asylum procedure were enacted. When speaking in absolute figures these changes resulted in a certain decrease in the number of asylum applications filed. However, upon a closer examination of the number of asylum applications per country of origin, the effects appeared to be quite differential. Hence, factors other than geographical ones, such as the location of the country of origin or distance, must be decisive for the effect of a change in legislation on the number of asylum claimants coming from one particular country. Nevertheless, it has been possible to distinguish seven clusters of countries of origin where similar developments in patterns of asylum applications and shifts therein, depending on changes in asylum law, can be seen.     

Asylum Systems in the Western Balkan Countries: Current Issues

Asylum systems in the Western Balkans are one of the many results of the externalization of European Union border controls. Regardless of the hopes that the EU might have for these systems to function as a “buffer zone”, there is a need to be realistic about the actual effect that these systems can have. There are a number of gaps showing that the countries in the region are neither willing nor able to process the number of asylum applications that could potentially be lodged by all the persons transiting the region today. These gaps include the lack of capacity to identify and register asylum seekers and to process asylum applications, the failure to conduct refugee status determination procedures in line with basic legal standards, the lack of return procedures and the inability to develop all the necessary systems (such as detention and return) in parallel.     

Missing the Boat: Australia and Asylum Seeker Deterrence Messaging

Many of Australia's border protection policies have focused on attempts to deter the arrival of asylum seekers by boat. These include government ‘messaging’ in the hope this will influence the decision‐making of would‐be boat arrivals. This article outlines the findings of an exploratory study on the sources of information accessed by asylum seekers, prior to and during their boat journeys to Australia, about their destination country. The findings suggest that government media and Internet strategies focused on deterring asylum seekers are adopted without full regard to how information is sourced before and during these boat journeys.     

Asylum Provision: A Review of Economic Theories

In recent years, economic theories have been used to examine asylum provision by non‐persecutor countries. Unfortunately, the nature of the analyses makes the results inaccessible to many who are interested in understanding the topic from multidisciplinary perspectives but are unfamiliar with mathematical methods in economics. We communicate the findings of those analyses in a non‐mathematical fashion, thereby contributing to a facilitation of interdisciplinary research on asylum policy.     

Help available--phenomenological models for research on aging

In "Help Wanted: Physiologists for Research on Aging," George Martin challenged the scientific community to find better means of tackling aging of the whole organism. Although initiatives such as those proposed by Martin would be most welcome, we propose an additional means by which scientists can take into account the integrative response of the organism and its changes over time. This method consists of systematizing facts that cannot necessarily be explained by considering those facts in isolation.     

Turning to the Internet for Help on Sensitive Medical Problems

The purpose of the present study was to examine how members of an online bulletin board group concerned with sleep paralysis (SP) use the Internet to establish what it means to experience the symptoms associated with a mysterious sleep disorder. Data from 646 posts to the bulletin board, and from ten in- depth interviews with select bulletin board users, revealed that board participants constructed their disorder in three different ways: while some considered it a purely physiological problem, others believed it to be a demonic attack or a paranormal phenomenon. Results indicated that people suffering from SP are driven to the Internet by their desire to make sense of their terrifying nocturnal experiences. Rather than dispelling the myths surrounding this sleep disorder, the Internet in this study was, however, found to reinforce them by offering a forum for the discussion of alternative explanatory frameworks.     

Perspectives on Corporate Control: Implications for CEO Compensation

This study examines the influence on CEO paypractices of four corporate control perspectives:managerial control, class hegemony, external control,and efficient market. The results indicate the influence of both market and extra-market controls on thedetermination of CEO pay levels and criteria.Implications for the governance of firms and the studyof corporate control are drawn.