Unexpected Openness: Responses to Syrian Refugees in Canada and Germany in 2015

• In Event: Power Politics and Migration

Abstract

Democratic publics in industrialized democracies are generally opposed to expanding access to asylum seekers and refugees. This has led governments to narrow admission to these migrants, through an array of punitive policies and practices including interdiction, detention, and Faustian bargains with authoritarian regimes. There are, however, exceptions to this trend. In 2015, Canada committed to resettling an additional 25,000 Syrian refugees. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel authorized the admission of more than 800,000 asylum seekers. I seek to explain these examples of unexpected openness, arguing that in both cases political context was key. Media coverage of human suffering born by asylum seekers crossing the Aegean and the Balkan route, electoral dynamics in Canada, and Germany’s efforts to encourage greater solidarity with respect to refugee burden sharing in the European Union shaped the political context of summer 2015. These and other factors enabled candidate and later Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Chancellor Angela Merkel to temporarily override consistently negative public opinion and, in Merkel’s case, dissent within her party ranks, to enable to admission and settlement of unplanned flows of asylum seekers and refugees. The speed at which these openings were closed and complemented by a new array of restrictive measures suggests that moments of unexpected openness are fleeting and, with regard to policy, ephemeral. As I point out, there is no desire in either Canada or Germany for repeating the experiences of 2015.

Author

• Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos, University of Toronto