Migration Policy Centre - MPC

As part of the Migration Working Group, the Migration Policy Centre will host the following presentations:

“In limbo: the mismatch between Luxembourg and Strasbourg’s conceptualisation of ‘torture or inhuman or degrading treatment’ as a source of non-removability’” , presentation by Diego Ginés, EUI

Abstract

The EU Qualification Directive (QD) complements and adds to the Refugee Convention by granting asylum not only to refugees, but to other persons in need of international protection. In particular, Article 15 (b) of the Directive provides subsidiary protection when there are reasonable grounds to believe that, upon expulsion, the applicant would face a real risk of suffering torture or inhuman or degrading treatment. This is a provision that mirrors the wording and risk-assessment criteria of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
This paper addresses the existence of situations in which protection from expulsion under Article 3 ECHR is not followed by the award of subsidiary protection under EU law, leading to limbo-like situations of non-removability. Analysing the recent cases of M’Bodj and MP, I show that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has built a narrower concept of what amounts to a real risk of suffering inhuman or degrading treatment –so far only in cases of illness– than that of the ECtHR. I further argue that this approach has consequences beyond cases of illness as the ECJ makes clear that Article 3 of the ECHR and Article 15 (b) QD do not necessarily go hand in hand.

‘Financing Development at Home: A Survey Experiment on Diaspora Members’, presentation by Alexandra O. Zeitz, EUI

Abstract

Developing countries often depend on the wealth of diaspora communities, but under which conditions are migrants willing to sacrifice personal gain for their origin country’s national welfare? On the one hand, diaspora communities may support home country governments to assist family at home or out of a sense of nationalism. On the other hand, diaspora communities may oppose home country governments, which they may have intentionally left by emigrating or come to question after leaving their country of origin. This paper investigates how social, political, and self-interested motivations explain the decisions of diaspora members to share financial capital with home country governments in the form of diaspora bonds. These bonds allow diaspora members to invest directly in the governments of origin countries, usually at below-market returns, a “patriotic discount” that encourages migrants to contribute charitably through a less-lucrative investment. Using a conjoint survey experiment fielded to members of the Indian diaspora in the United States, we randomly manipulate features of hypothetical bonds to measure heterogeneity in willingness to invest in Indian diaspora bonds. We find the greatest evidence that diasporans select bonds for social reasons and little evidence of political motivations for their investments.

‘Does Immigration Induce Foreign Aid by the Gulf Arab Donors? Examination of the Emirati and Kuwaiti Aid Allocation’, presented by Hirotaka Fujibayashi, EUI

Abstract

Does the migration policy preference affect the Gulf States’ decision of foreign aid allocation? Recently, the Gulf States have intended to reduce the number of foreign residents, and their aid-giving decisions are thought to be influenced by the presence of a large number of ‘unwanted’ immigrants most of whom come from the poorer, developing countries. The existing qualitative case studies find out the potential influence of the Gulf States’ migration policy preferences on their aid-giving strategies, but such an expected relationship is not empirically tested yet. Drawing on the dyadic data of foreign aid flows from two prominent Gulf Arab donors (Kuwait and the UAE), I examine the relationship between the pattern of foreign aid allocation (including both the likelihood and the amount of aid-giving) and the volume of immigration to the Gulf States. Using the Heckman estimation techniques, I find that a country sending more migrants to the Gulf has a higher chance of receiving foreign aid, and also tends to receive more assistance. This result provides empirical support for an argument that the Gulf States strategically use foreign aid as a means of reducing the number of ‘unwanted’ immigrants.

Chairs and Discussants

Mauro Lanati, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, MPC, EUI

Short biographies

Speakers

Diego Ginés is a PhD researcher at the Law Department of the EUI, generally interested in issues arising from the governance of irregular migration from a legal and normative perspective. His PhD project focuses on the issue of non-removable migrants in the European Union. He holds a degree in Law and Political Science from the Autonomous University of Madrid and an LLM in Public International Law from the University of Bristol.

Alexandra O. Zeitz is a Max Weber Fellow at the EUI. She is a political scientist specializing in international political economy, especially developing countries’ engagement with the international financial system, development finance, and financial regulation. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in International Studies Quarterly, the Review of International Organizations, and the Journal of Financial Regulation. She holds a DPhil (PhD) in International Relations from the University of Oxford.

Hirotaka Fujibayashi is a PhD student in International Relations and Political Science at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. He is also a research assistant at the Global Migration Centre of the Graduate Institute. He previously worked as a visiting researcher at the Institute of International and Civil Security at the Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, UAE. He earned his B.A. in Laws and M.A. in International Studies from the University of Tokyo, Japan.

Chairs and Discussants

Mauro Lanati is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the MEDAM Project at the Migration Policy Centre (RSCAS,EUI) and a former Max Weber Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre of Advanced Studies (EUI). He is an economist whose areas of interest cover theoretical and empirical aspects of Development Finance, International Trade and Migration. Mauro’s research explores the link between foreign aid and migration, especially the effect of foreign aid and other forms of development finance on legal and illegal migration flows