Who deserves international protection in Europe? A critical analysis of the unequal treatment given to Convention refugees and beneficiaries of subsidiary protection in the European Union

Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the establishment of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) and its successive reformulations, focusing on the EU policy on standards for the qualification of third-country nationals or stateless persons as refugees or beneficiaries of subsidiary protection. It analyses how hierarchies are constructed for the different policy target groups and how each categorised group is entitled to human rights to a different extent. Subsidiary protection has been seen as a minor status, with reduced human rights, compared to refugee status. It uses qualitative research and refers to a critical view on the categorization of policy targets, through the lenses of Zetter’s theory on the fractioning of the label ‘refugee’. The present study has poststructuralist approach and applies the Howarth and Griggs method to Critical Policy Analysis. Having analysed a selection of nine key policy documents covering three phases of development of the CEAS, no argument was found capable of objectively justifying the limitation on the human rights of beneficiaries of subsidiary protection. This examined the rules around the qualification of a protected person as a refugee or a beneficiary of subsidiary protection, what are the features used to distinguish the two statuses, and the rights associated to each of these statuses, and how those policy instruments conceptualise ‘persecution’ and ‘serious harm’. I also looked for the arguments used to justify the differential treatment given to refugees and beneficiaries of subsidiary protection. Indeed, the analysis confirmed the fact that the ‘fractioning of the refugee label’ in two different statuses is part of the securitization project to restrict access to the refugee status and its correlated rights.