Refugees in Bulgaria: Entrapped between Politics and Policies
Refugees in Bulgaria: Entrapped between Politics and Policies

Summary/Abstract: Although it was asylum that became the earliest institutionalised form of migration, Bulgaria was totally unprepared for the 2012 situation. Resulting from peaking numbers in asylum applications, new arrivals in the country were confronted with a situation of institutional collapse. Despite ostensible normalisation of the situation in the ensuing years, the reception system failed to undergo significant changes. Normalisation was due to factors outside the system, and the few implemented changes came in response to the dominant securitarian reading and anti-immigrant sentiment. The implications of the country’s location on the Balkan Refugee Route also abruptly introduced migration into the political debate. This coincide with the freezing of policymaking in the area of migration, integration in particular, or of their failure, while a debate is missing – because the political actors do not seek to propose alternative visions, but to ensure who among them would give migration a more negative representation. The two leading trends can be summarised as erecting of walls – a fence along the border as regards the governance of the flows and halting the integration policies as regards the policies of incorporating migrants into society. The article offers both a reading of the legislation and specific provisions in the field of international protection and the reception system, as well as a discourse analysis tracing politicisation of the topic.

• Details
• Contents