Complexity of Choice in Asylum Seeker Decision-making
El Taraboulsi-McCarthy, Sherine, Mile, Lilian, Ille, Sebastian and Kersting, Filicity (2023) Complexity of Choice in Asylum Seeker Decision-making. UNU-CPR Policy Brief.
Abstract
Asylum seekers may make choices about when and how they travel in search of protection, but these choices are constrained by various factors, including context, time, and rapidly shifting and evolving circumstances. An asylum seeker from Cameroon, for example, may have the United Kingdom as their destination of choice but end up settling in Germany, and vice versa. An economic migrant may become a refugee during the migratory journey and a refugee may become an economic migrant due to an inability to support themselves and their family in the country where they first seek protection. The interplay between the individual actions of asylum seekers, the collective actions of others, and institutions (such as government policies) influence the journey of an asylum seeker from country of origin to country of destination. This interplay means that asylum seekers are part of complex social systems in which their beliefs, expectations, and decision-making adapt and change dynamically. Complex systems cannot be understood by only analysing an individual’s decision-making process. Instead, they require a study of the wider components and the social dynamics of the system in which asylum seekers operate. In this policy brief, we draw on an extensive review of academic and policy literature, as well as the authors’ engagement with asylum seekers in the United Kingdom and in North Africa, to propose that policymakers adopt “complexity theory”- identifying and explaining patterns of change and feedback effects across dynamics systems - to understand the decision-making process of asylum seekers. A complexity approach could help improve policies towards asylum seekers, countering assumptions that policymaking can directly control the number of people arriving to claim asylum without taking into account the interconnected elements of the broader social system within which their decisions are made. It stresses the need for both a more nuanced as well as a more holistic engagement with asylum seekers that recognizes the expectations, cognitive processes, and biases that influence their decision-making, in addition to the role of other stakeholders. Such an approach would also help challenge simplistic portrayals of asylum seekers as opportunistic individuals driven by a desire to “jump the queue.” The current political discourse in several Western countries (including Australia and the United Kingdom, for example) continues to be stuck in the dichotomous view that refugees are either good by “waiting for resettlement,” or bad for taking their own action and “coming by boat,” even though international law does not make this distinction.
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