The goal of my research project is to understand integration policies for refugees and asylum seekers and how effective current policies are in facilitating integration. To research the role of integration through a small-n perspective, I could adjust my research to explain the success and failure of using border countries as a policy for the current refugee crisis in the Syria. A common approach for refugee policy is to allow border countries to do most of the heavy-lifting; for example, during the Kosovan refugee crisis, the UK believed the “lives [of Kosovan refugees] can only be properly saved if they can return to their specific way of life which is only possible within the territorial borders of Kosovo.” (1) Therefore, the UK only received 330 refugees and passed the Immigration and Asylum Act which included discriminatory labor laws and restricted marriage with British citizens (2). Indications from the Los Angeles Times show that border countries, today, are doing most of heavy lifting for the Syrian refugee crisis; for example, Turkey, a direct bordering country of Syria is housing 1.9 million refugees, while Sweden is only taking 80,000 refugees (3). Therefore, my small-n research could focus on the different integration programs in border countries versus non-bordering countries to compare the success. I would use Turkey and Sweden as my case examples because they are both prominent countries (bordering and non-bordering) that are shouldering the most refugees (4). I would use integration as my dependent variable. To operationalize integration, I would use the three factors I outlined in my literature review as to how countries’ perceptions dictate policy towards refugees and thus integration.

On the other hand, I could do a single case study of Turkey and create a hypothesis about the norm of using border countries and test it, for if Turkey, as the primary border country of Syria based on its intake or refugees, cannot hold for my hypothesis, then I can enter the conversation as to the role of this refugee policy. In a previous study, researchers used several factors to operationalize Turkey’s response: comparing Turkey’s response to the Iraqi Kurds and Syrian refugees, analyzing the role of international actors in the response to these two crises, and contextualizing with history of Turkey’s refugee and asylum policies (5). Therefore, my dependent variable would still be integration but measured for a specific country.

 

(1) Bulley, Dan, “Home is Where the Human Is? Ethics, Intervention and Hospitality in Kosovo,” Millennium 39, no. 1 (July 2010), 55.

(2) Ibid., 56.

(3) Batsheva Sobelman, “Which Countries Are Taking In Syrian Refugees?” Los Angeles Times, (September 2015), http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-migrants-scorecard-20150908-story.html.

(4) Ibid.

(5) Suna Gülfer Ihlamur-Öner, “Turkey’s Refugee Regime Stretched to the Limit? The Case of Iraqi and Syrian Refugee Flows,” Perceptions 18, no. 3 (Autumn 2013), 192-193.