Asylum Sceptics: An Assessment of Symbolic Asylum Restrictionist Arguments in Contemporary Europe and Australia

Abstract

Multiple conservative parties in Europe and Australia have achieved electoral success in recent times on the back of their restrictionist asylum agendas. These agendas are typically underpinned by the symbolic threat argument, which asserts that forced migrants hold values that threaten inalienable freedoms in host societies. Yet despite the gravity of this argument, its empirical validity has not been seriously investigated in previous literature. This study attempts to quantitatively test the validity of the symbolic asylum restrictionist argument by comparing the values of Australians and Europeans (5 countries) with those of forced migrants across ten items. These items were selected on the basis of their potential to divide a modern, progressive society and covered a range of themes, including gender, violence, consent, civil rights and democracy. Data for the items were obtained through questionnaires that I administered through Qualtrics. The study's secondary objectives were to work out whether any demographic traits could explain potential value incongruities and to observe the accuracy of host country perceptions of forced migrant values and see whether they were associated with asylum policy preferences. The findings revealed that four forced migrant values represent a major threat to host society freedoms: false interpretations of sexual consent, prejudice towards transgender people, and tolerance of honour killings and religious attacks. Because a high percentage of forced migrants were found to support such behaviours whereas the study’s host country populations clearly oppose them, symbolic arguments for restricting asylum have a considerable degree of validity. Despite this, I argue that all legitimate forced migrants should be granted protection and that a values assessment mechanism should be used to identify and moderate those who espouse “dangerous” values.