Migration Policy as a determinant of asylum flows in EU countries

Abstract: We investigate the effect of migration policy reforms on the number of asylum applications into 22 EU countries. This is done by using the Determinants of International Migration Policy, DEMIG policy index as a proxy for policy reforms in EU countries and the number of asylum applications from UNHCR. We perform OLS regressions with destination country fixed effects with HAC clustered standard errors. We contribute to the existing literature by using the DEMIG policy index which, to our knowledge, has not been used in earlier literature. We also thoroughly investigate the effect of migration policy, including both more restrictive and less restrictive policy. Through the investigation of the destination fixed effects, we find robust empirical evidence that migration policy does have an effect on asylum flows, which suggests, in addition to earlier literature, that migration policy is an important factor to have in consideration. Furthermore, we explore whether the push and pull factors examined in previous literature are consistent with our results. We find that the results vary, but are consistently in line with most of the earlier literature. In addition, we find that when other determinants of migration are included, the effect of migration policy diminishes.