The state of asylum: democratization, judicialization and evolution of refugee policy in Europe

This paper examines the relationship between increasing government restrictiveness towards asylum seekers and the growing entanglement of states in human rights law that restrains their activities. The argument the author will make about the relationship between the two applies best to European states, encumbered by European and EU human rights legislation. However, much of this paper is of broader relevance to other liberal democratic states, and the examples are drawn freely from non-European countries.