The European Union and "Asylum shopping": A comparative analysis

Throughout history, people have moved from one place to another either individually or in groups due to various reasons, making migration movements common and widespread. Among migrants, refugees—who are defined as forced migrants uprooted by fear of persecution, conflicts and violence—have a particular place since refugee protection is a multi-faceted issue affecting countries and regions. Europe, and the European Union (EU) in particular, had previously encountered mass migration movements. Nevertheless, the ongoing refugee protection crisis—which started in 2011 following the turmoil in the Middle East and North African countries and peaked in 2015—has turned into an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Although the EU tried to respond to the protection needs of asylum seekers reaching its territory under the framework of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), it has failed to properly manage the crisis. As a result of this, the inherent deficiencies of the CEAS have also become apparent. In this vein, the main objective of this thesis is to analyse the issue of asylum shopping—a significant problem of the EU in the field of asylum and migration—and to determine its extent and underlying reasons with a focus on the recent refugee protection crisis. To this end, four EU Member States—namely Greece, Germany, Hungary and Sweden—are selected as representative cases, and their asylum policies and practices are compared and contrasted. Based on such analysis, this thesis concludes that there are vast differences among the asylum policies and practices of the EU Member States, and due to the failure of the EU in ensuring complete harmonisation, asylum shopping problem has continued during the recent crisis.