Asylum Policies, Trafficking and Vulnerability

This article is located at the intersection of three recent debates on asylum in Europe: the efficacy of asylum policies; the trafficking of asylum seekers, and their growing vulnerability. Most commentators agree that there are relationships between these three debates, but the nature of those relationships remain unclear. Yet the need properly to understand the nature of these links has become especially pressing in the context of a raft of new policy initiatives on both asylum and trafficking, and concerns for their consequences for asylum seekers. At least part of the reason for this lack of clear understanding is significant gaps in empirical research. This article begins to fill some of these gaps, and in so doing to unpick some of the relationships between asylum policies, trafficking and vulnerability. It focuses on the experiences of asylum seekers in Europe, thus presenting a “bottom up" perspective on trafficking and asylum policies. The findings are derived from research among Iranian asylum seekers in the Netherlands, conducted between 1994 and 1996. The article discusses some of the reservations that surround this approach, including methodological issues such as trust, and the difficulties of applying more widely a narrow case study. Within the context of these reservations, it draws three main conclusions. First, empirical evidence to support the view that increasing proportions of asylum seekers are being forced to turn to traffickers in order to negotiate restrictive asylum policies. Second, the ways in which trafficking is exposing asylum seekers – including at least some “genuine" refugees – to new forms of vulnerability. Third, that direct links exist between asylum policies, trafficking and vulnerability, and that the blame for growing vulnerability lies more with asylum policies than with traffickers or with asylum seekers themselves. Finally, these empirical conclusions are targeted on a series of policy implications.