Germany between 1992 and 1994 has often been attributed to these
restrictive changes.14
Some more recent single-country research results (Holzer, Schneider and
Widmer 2000; Robinson and Segrott 2002), however, have cautioned
against being overly confident about the effectiveness of asylum policy in
steering migration flows. The quantitative analysis of the Swiss case
showed that Switzerland only within limits has been able to influence the
inflow of asylum seekers between 1986 and 1995. The study showed that
the Swiss government was partly successful in manipulating the relative
number of refugees it recognized to achieve its deterrence objectives.
However, the study concluded that deterrence measures can be expected
to be unsuccessful 'if the push factors in a region nearby to the receiving
states reach a critical level' (Holzer, Schneider and Widmer 2000: 1205).
Research conducted in the UK draws even more sceptical conclusions. The
research that was based on 65 interviews with asylum seekers found that
most of the respondents knew very little about UK asylum policy before
their arrival. The study found that they certainly did not have sufficient
knowledge to make an informed choice based on rational evaluation of
reception conditions and welfare benefits on offer by several possible
destination countries (Robinson and Segrott 2002: 46; 63).
These studies, as other research on patterns of asylum seeking in Europe,
suffer from their focus on individual countries which makes generalisation
difficult. Moreover, qualitative research based on survey data, whereby
asylum seekers are asked about their travel route, their preferences as to
particular countries of destinations and why they applied in a particular
country can be problematic. Although, qualitative analyses based on large-
scales sample have a strong appeal (who else than the asylum seeker
country of their choice but will be returned to the other country (Hailbronner 1993;
Kjaergaard 1994).
14 Later in this paper it will be shown, however, that attributing the drop mainly to
changes in German asylum policy is highly questionable.