still offers a number of insights for research on the direction of asylum
flows. In a similar vein, and of specific interest to this paper, the idea of
pull factors is used in the area of forced migration, to explain the patterns
of asylum applications across different possible destination countries. The
analysis of such pull factors will help us explain the direction of forced
migration flows, an issue that has so far been a widely neglected aspect of
migration research. A review of the theoretical literature on migration,18
produces five categories of pull-factors—economic, historic, political,
geographic and policy related—which will be introduced in turn below.
Economic Factors
Economic theories of migration have only limited applicability in the area
of forced migration, in which displaced persons often will have little or no
time for deliberations of 'utility maximisation'. However, despite the
important substantive differences between economic and forced migration,
economic considerations can still be expected to play a role in the area of
forced migration. Like other migrants, asylum seekers will often face
financial and other constraints which will influence their choice (limited
as it might be). In many cases even forced migrants will have some choice
as to their country of destination and can therefore be expected to take
economic consideration into account. Moreover, we do of course know
(Kunz 1981; Zolberg et al. 1995) that in a world of high cross-country
income differentials and highly restrictive admission policies, persecution
is not the only push factor behind the large number of asylum applications
of recent years. Given the above, economic factors must be included when
analysing the incidence of asylum applications across the OECD.
while for the latter there is an element of choice in their migration decision. In practice,
such classifications are less clear than often assumed, as political and economic causes
frequently join forces in producing movement, and freedom of choice is rarely absolute
and might be limited in both types of migration.
18 One objective of this review of the general theoretical literature on migration is to
analyse to what extent hypotheses derived from this literature (that deals primarily with
economic migration) can be usefully extended to the area of forced migration.
11