EU Response to the Syrian Refugee Crisis: Reflection

Over the past semester, my fellow group members and myself have researched and reviewed the recent topic of the Syrian refugee crisis, with an emphasis on the EU’s response. For our first blog posting we focused on two main topics, one being an overview of the EU’s involvement and the second being the international significance that this issue presents. Within this posting we briefly covered the beginnings to the crisis and explained how the demanding political reforms of the Syrian citizens followed by the resignation of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, lead to a mass civil war resulting in record breaking numbers immigrating to Europe to escape the violence. (BBC, 2016; Sly, 2015). It was these happenings that forced the EU to consider how the mass increase in population will affect the EU nations’ economies, safety concerns, and their abilities to resettle and integrate the refugees (Sandvik, 2016). We noted that this recent event has been cause for the attention and awareness on an international level as the international community attempts to receive the situation. In the second blog post we focused on the economic impacts in both the short and long run and the cause for potential benefits. We also examined the position of the EU and the role they play in the reduction to the potential economic shock. Overall we found that there may be short-run impacts to the labor force, associated with pressures to wages and inflation and positive growth in the long-run, stemming from the increase in spending assisting the refugees integration (Aiyar, 2016). We highlighted the current economic policies set in place by the EU and how there is a need for those to expand by additional policies on asylum regulation in order to better regulate and maintain application balances between member states (Chateau & Rafaelli, 2016). Our third and final group blog covered the social impact aspect to our topic. In this blog we examined the different perspectives from both sides, of those involved in the movement, as well as the impacts of the refugees’ integration on their well-being. We first focused on how those citizens of the EU are viewing the situation alongside their coupling opinions. In this research we discovered survey results that showed EU citizens believing that the EU should intervene more on the issue of migration (Orav, D’Alfonso & Doreva, 2016).  While on the opposite spectrum, in regards to the refugees’ positions, we learned that many are often faced with racism and discrimination as they are adjusting to their new living conditions. With the potential for issues to stem out of this confrontation we recognized that it is the EU’s leading position that must work to inform each member state’s population of importance of a meaningful assimilation process to ensure a better outcome and well-being for all those involved.

In researching our topic I utilized the university’s library resources for finding relevant journals and academic sources. I also found it helpful to use news articles as sources of reference because they included recent reports covering the happenings of the Syrian refugee crisis. As this topic is a current event that is continuous and constantly changing, using news sources as references allowed me to review the most updated information on our topic. As a group we organized each of our blog postings as separate units, that covered a series of approaches all relating to our topic. As our first blog took a more general, overview approach, we used those findings to spark new ideas that we would cover in our subsequent blogs. As time progressed and we became more familiar with the topic and our group, I found that the different subjects we covered were more heavily researched by those individuals in the group who found a greater interest in those subjects. By researching in a group setting it allowed the opportunity for us to focus research areas on group members’ different curiosities.

I found this project to be very interesting and a great way to express our thoughts on current events. I enjoyed learning and researching my topic and using the blog as a way to share both mine and my group members perspective opinions on these pressing topics. Prior to this project I was semi-familiar with the refugee crisis, as I had previously heard about the topic in a past course of mine. The reason that I had chose to be a part of this group for this semester, was because I was inspired to learn more about the topic, than I had previously known. Being that this is a current event that is happening, I knew that there would be a lot more updates to this issue since my last encounter with the topic in my previous course. By being a part of this group project, I found it easy to share my ideas and listen to my other group members thoughts and opinions, not only about our organizational details but also about potential topic proposals. Conducting group research can come with challenges at times, as far as linking each member’s contributions into one collective piece, although I felt we communicated well and were able to bypass these issues as a whole. Overall I am happy with the work that my group presented this semester and was glad to be a part of it.

By: Andriana Bravo

Works Cited

Aiyar, S., Barkbu, B., Batini, N., Berger, H., Detragiache, E., Dizioli, A., . . . Topalova, P.

(2016). The Refugee Surge in Europe: Economic Challenges- IMF. Retrieved from

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2016/sdn1602.pdf

BBC (2016). Syria: The story of the conflict. BBC Middle East. Retrieved from

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-26116868

Chateau, C., & Raffaelli, R. (2016). Immigration policy: EU fact sheets European Parliament.

Retrieved from

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/atyourservice/en/displayFtu.html?ftuId=FTU_5.12.3.html

Orav, A., D’Alfonso, A., & Dobreva, A. (2016). The Issue of Migration. Retrieved from

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2016/586580/EPRS_BRI(2016)586580_EN.pdf

Sandvik, K. (2016). The refugee crisis as a global humanitarian challenge. Retrieved from

European Council On Foreign Relations, http://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_the_refugee_crisis_as_a_global_humanitarian_challenge

Sly, L. (2015). 8 reasons Europe’s refugee crisis is happening now. Washington Post. Retrieved

from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/18/8-reasons-why-europes-refugee-crisis-is-happening-now/