Policy challenges of the new diasporas: migrant networks and their impact on asylum flows and regimes

This paper works on a hypothesis presented that by establishing and activating transnational social networks (aided to a considerable extent by new transport and communications technologies) a considerable number of asylum seekers were able to negotiate their way through the many obstacles to entry erected by the states of Western Europe. And the success of those migration strategies was such that governments introduced ever more draconian measures (some of them in contravention of states’ international legal obligations) to deter or prevent further arrivals.