The right to asylum and the EU refugee crisis: disclosing reverse norm dynamics?

The European Union is generally considered the prime example when it comes to the protection of human rights. With the enforcement of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (CFR) in 2009 this role has largely been consolidated. Article 18 of the CFR guarantees the right to asylum – a norm that has internationally acquired taken-for-granted status since the ratification of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. The current refugee crisis however appears to disclose certain challenges to this widely recognized norm and instead, reveals an EU-wide reluctance to accept the ever growing flow of refugees. In 2015, we witnessed increasing border controls within the Schengen area as for instance between Denmark and Sweden, Austria and Germany, or Slovenia and Croatia in order to control the number of migrants; Austria even established a limit on the number it receive; several Central European states are unwilling to participate in relocation mechanisms; and Denmark introduced a limit to family reunification. These are only some examples suggesting that the unconditionality to grant asylum to people fleeing persecution seems to enter a regressing process. While there is a vast amount of literature analysing the construction of norms, what has been largely neglected are reverse norm dynamics. For a long time, scholars even used to assume a unidirectional evolution of norms. Only recently, studies began to explore the erosion of norms that used to be well-established at an international level. In order to better understand this under-researched phenomenon, this article aims at an exploratory study on the allegedly changing right to asylum within the context of the EU refugee crisis. More precisely, applying qualitative content analysis, it intends to explore the related discourse and policies in more detail, examine if we indeed witness the incremental erosion of the right to asylum, and investigate in which way national and supranational actors are involved in this process.