Reception Policies, Practices and Humanitarian Responses – Synthesis Report

In recent years, the so called “refugee crisis” has triggered considerable policy change in many countries along the Eastern Mediterranean route. We understand reception as a hybrid policy field with a strong attachment to social policy. In many countries, welfare production used to be (or has become) a highly collaborative endeavour which spans different levels of political decision making (e.g. national, regional and municipal) and involves a high degree of subcontracting and public-private collaboration. The previously published 11 country reports in Work Package 4 (Reception policies, practices and responses) mostly discussed how the period of reception of refugees has become gradually extended. Most of the country reports demonstrated that there is a growing politics of deterrence of the nation-states while “Welcome Culture” in Europe has deteriorated to a great extent. Neo-liberal forms of governance, the emerging mechanisms of the so-called resilience of refugees, the problems of multi-level governance of migration and reception are also other contested areas to be covered by the country reports.

The report content is based on empirical work from 11 country reports that primarily cover interview material conducted with stakeholders active in the field of reception and individual asylum seekers and refugees.