The Politics of Vulnerability in Refugee Admissions Under the EU-Turkey Statement

Abstract

Resettlement and humanitarian admission programs claim to target ‘particularly vulnerable’, or ‘the most vulnerable’ refugees. If the limited spots of such programs are indeed foreseen for particularly vulnerable groups and individuals, as resettlement actors claim, how is vulnerability defined in policies and put into practice at the frontline? Taking European states’ recent admission programs under the EU-Turkey statement as an example, and focusing on Germany as an admission country, this research note sheds light on this question. Drawing on document analysis, and original fieldwork insights, we show that on paper and in practice vulnerability as a policy category designates some social groups as per se more vulnerable than others, rather than accounting for contingent reasons of vulnerability. In policy documents, the operational definition of vulnerability and its relation to other criteria remain largely undefined. In selection practices, additional criteria curtail a purely vulnerability-based selection, exacerbate existing or create new vulnerabilities in their own right. We conclude that, in the absence of clear definitions, resettlement and humanitarian admission programs’ declared focus on the most vulnerable remains a discretionary promise, with limited possibilities of political and legal scrutiny.

Epistemic Violence and Colonial Legacies in the Representation of Refugee Women: Contesting Narratives of Vulnerability and Victimhood

“…Overall, the conflation of gender with vulnerability has been criticised by feminist scholarship for reproducing disempowering narratives (Clark, 2007;Edwards, 2010a;Turner, 2016). All humans can become vulnerable because of certain conditions or situations they may experience (Fineman, 2008), rather than because of their gender per se (Welfens and Bekyol, 2021). There are a plethora of valid approaches and conceptualisations in this regard specifically applicable in the migration context (on legally-induced and legally-mediated vulnerability, see Moreno-Law and Vavoula; on the 'route causes' of forced displacement, see Grundler; on 'migratory vulnerability', see Baumgärtel and Ganty; on 'asylum vulnerability', see Hudson; on 'ecological vulnerability' impacting 'climate refugees', see Ippolito, all in this Special Issue).…”

Protecting skilled Afghan women: Brain save and the politics of vulnerability

“…We introduce the concept of brain save and argue that the new focus on the capacity of Afghan women and their empowerment and education indicates a shift in the politics of vulnerability. In academic and policy conversations on gender, vulnerability and international protection (Welfens & Bonjour, 2021, Welfens & Bekyol, 2021; Turner, 2017, 2019; Mourad & Norman, 2020), this topic has not yet been given any attention. We contribute to (and thereby also cross‐fertilise) two strands of scholarships: (1) scholarship on gender, vulnerability and refugee protection, more specifically resettlement and (2) the emerging scholarship on Afghan evacuations (Bogaert, 2022; Cremer & Hübner, 2022; de Jong, 2022; Ineli‐Ciger, 2022; Jamal & Maley, 2022; Prantl, 2022; Tan, 2021).…”

Unsafe from Any Angle: Vulnerability-Generation on the US–Canada Border

“…Vulnerability is an elusive and contested theoretical concept with increasing yet ambiguous operational relevance in migration governance (Welfens and Bekyol 2021). The International Organization for Migration (IOM) defines vulnerability as 'the diminished Whereby asylum seekers are deflected from one country to another, either informally or pursuant to successive 'readmission agreements', until they are eventually returned to their country of origin without ever accessing a refugee determination process.…”

“…Generally, in immigration and refugee law, vulnerability is applied narrowly to various special sub-categories of migrants (i.e., women, minors, persons with disabilities, victims of torture and other forms of violence, etc.). Humanitarian assistance and asylum has become increasingly linked to such 'inherent' vulnerability criteria (Welfens and Bekyol 2021). In such cases, the concept of vulnerability is operationalized to provide substantive and/procedural accommodations for persons with distinct needs.…”