Understanding Asylum-Seeker Approval and Reception Centre Dynamics

Across Europe, reception systems share key structural features, such as collective accommodation, capacity-based allocation, and highly variable waiting times. Yet quantitative evidence on what happens to asylum-seekers during the application period remains scarce and is largely confined to the largest receiving countries. Most research on refugee integration begins only after a residence permit is granted, leaving the asylum-seeking phase itself poorly understood, despite research pointing to how waiting times, reception-centre conditions, and residential (in)stability can shape subsequent integration trajectories. This paper addresses two interlinked gaps in the literature: the demographic selection mechanisms determining whose claims are approved and therefore shapes the refugee population, and the dynamics of reception-centre stays, including the competing pathways through which asylum-seekers exit their first centre. Drawing on linked administrative registers covering the full population of asylum-seekers arriving in Norway between 2005 and 2016 (N ≈ 104,000), this study estimate continuous-time event-history and competing-risks models for time to decision, likelihood of approval, and four exits from the first ordinary reception centre: resettlement, relocation, registered departure, and disappearance. Outcomes vary systematically by year of arrival, country of origin, sex, age, and family status. Women and unaccompanied minors have higher approval rates, while young men arriving alone seem to face a “labour-migrant penalty”. The results suggest vast differences in experiences during the asylum-seeking period and by including the asylum-seeking period in further research and policy discussions, we can better understand heterogeneities in integration trajectories.