The IES Migration & Diversity Speaker Series: Sara Wallace Goodman

October 23, 2017
12:15-1:45pm
C.K. Choi, Room 120

Sara Wallace Goodman, University of California, Irvine
The Architecture of Failure: The Institutional Origins of the Refugee Crisis

For almost two decades, the European Union has built up a series of community laws and procedures for handling asylum claims. Yet, in the first 18 months of the Refugee crisis we observe member states acting independent of the EU in their responses, erecting passport checks, internal borders, or – in the famous case of Germany – suspending with the EU’s Dublin Convention altogether. Why was the response to the refugee crisis decidedly national? Why were belated responses by the European Commission systematically rejected, ignored, or unsuccessful? This talk critically examines state responses and EU policy failure to the refugee crisis by drawing insight from the European Sovereign Debt Crisis, where – despite EU policy harmonization in monetary policy – member state divergences that existed before the crisis re-appeared to ultimately characterize the response. After developing an explanation how latent state preference becomes activated, the talk lays out a critical narrative of failed asylum policy in managing the refugee crisis.