Germany’s Refugee Crisis
Please make sure that the topic and the mean concept are the same with the final paper proposal. This assignment is not like a term paper, and please not treat it like one. The professor emphasizes to use the concepts and theroies in class materials. I will upload all the ppts. The textbook that we are using is World Politics: Interests, Interactions, Institutions (5th edition, 9780393872231). If you need anything, you can check the textbook.
This project has a lot of requirements, please read through the overview, instractions, and proposal. Thank you for your efforts!
Overview
For your final project, you will submit a 1,750-3,000 word (that's about 7 to 12 pages--but feel free to be on the short side :) ) report regarding how international relations are taking place right now in the world. This is your chance to put what we've learned in the class into practice!
This assignment will help you integrate your understanding of theory and the real world. This will help you achieve the Advanced Learning Objectives for this course:
Plan research into key contemporary international issues
Integrate material from course readings and lectures with real-world research
Appraise the prospects for international conflict and cooperation on key issues
Present research findings in a cogent, professional, and attractive fashion
Remember, the goal of this assignment is to make sure that you can apply theories and concepts from the course to events happening in the real world. You will want to use the facts you gather to critique and apply theories and material from the course, not to develop your own idiosyncratic arguments.
This is not a term paper. Don't treat it like one. It is a structured assignment that will help you analyze how world politics really take place.
Assignment Substance
To carry out this assignment, you will focus on one of each:
a country or international organization
a substantive area
From these, you will explain how this country or international organization is approaching the substantive area you are addressing. You will narrow this down by identifying an important topic within this relationship that you will explore more in depth. Having identified your pair of country and topic, you will apply theories and concepts from the course to demonstrate how they can help you understand what is happening (or whether they have limits that you will also demonstrate).
The countries/organizations you can choose from are:
Brazil
Canada
China (PRC)
Egypt
European Union
Ethiopia
France
Germany
India
International Monetary Fund
Iran
Japan
Mexico
Nigeria
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
Pakistan
Russia
Saudi Arabia
South Korea
Taiwan
Ukraine
United Kingdom
United Nations
World Bank
Categories of the substantive areas include
economic issues (including trade, investment, intellectual property, and so on). Specific examples may include international trade, finance, and monetary relations; development assistance and other forms of foreign aid; negotiations regarding trade and other international economic agreements; intellectual property rights; the implications of international climate and environmental factors; and similar items
social issues (including human rights, hierarchies of race or gender, indigenous issues, migration, and so on). Specific examples may include the treatment of minorities; relations with outside groups and international organizations over social issues; issues regarding to human rights; migration and refugee status; and similar items.
security issues (including military, terrorism, and international law-enforcement issues). Specific examples may involve military-to-military cooperation; arms sales; the basing of military troops, naval vessels, or airplanes; intelligence cooperation; training for security forces, such as for counterterrorism; the development or restriction of nuclear weapons; and similar items
diplomatic issues (including negotiations over treaties and disputes between governments). Specific examples may include diplomatic relations; negotiations of treaties and other international agreements; policies toward international and nongovernmental organizations; international climate and environmental agreements; and similar items
Many issues involve a mixture of these categories, but you will be focusing on the issues most relevant to what you have chosen. You may be as broad or as specific within each category as you please, so long as you are able to create a coherent product that meets our specifications.
Choosing a topic will include finding a current debate, controversy, or development relevant to international relations. This will be something specific within the substantive area you are discussing.
You will do some initial research to figure out what specific topic you will address. That could mean just reading a news article or two about how your country/organization approaches the issue and finding what looks to be most important; you can also (and should also) consult the reference sources. Make this choice consciously, because you want a topic that you will actually be able to find enough about to sustain an entire paper on. (You can revise it, but you'd have to re-do the proposal.)
If you find you need more guidance regarding your paper topics, you should contact the professor or a teaching assistant.
Main Assignment Requirements
In the final assignment, you will
clearly identify the topic and the country or organization you are studying
provide relevant background information, including any recent history
identify and describe different theories or perspectives from the course that are relevant to this topic
apply a theory or concept from the course to the topic, showing how it can make sense of what different interests, institutions (including informal institutions), and interactions are involved in this topic
describe what the country/organization you are focusing on wants to happen (its goals), who its allies and adversaries are (and what their goals are), and what strategies it is using, as well as how successful it has been to date
extrapolate what you think is likely to happen in the short term (the next 6 to 12 months) and the medium term (the next 1 to 5 years) based on what theory tells you.
THEN, and ONLY THEN, write the executive summary:
recap the issue
state why it's important
talk about the most essential points of what's going on
explain your analysis and predictions
state your confidence (high confidence, medium confidence, low confidence) in your analysis, and describe the limitations of your analysis. By "confidence", I mean your analytic confidence: how good do you think the evidence available to you is? how well do you think the concepts you've identified fit the situation you're examining? In other words, this isn't about you so don't say "I have low confidence because I'm a sophomore".
The Executive Summary will be the FIRST part of your essay. BUT! You will write it LAST! You want it to be a true and accurate summary of what you've written, and that means that you should have already written what you're summarizing.
I've broken the assignment down into clear, bullet-pointed requirements. Follow those. Use subheads or other clear signals to demonstrate how you are meeting the requirements.
Sources and Articles
You will refer to at least 9 different news articles or reference sources taken only from the approved source list. You will cite these resources using Chicago footnote style. You will lose points if you do not follow these formatting instructions. For this assignment, you must include a bibliography at the end of the paper as well as the footnotes. You may also refer to two or three news releases, speeches, or other Web sites from the institution's Web site; cite these in the same way. This is not required and these will not count toward the nine required sources, but you may find it useful.
Please note that "footnotes" and "footers" are different. If you don't know how to add footnotes or use citation software, there's literally thousands of guides for Word and Google Drive out there--go to Google, Bing, or Duck Duck Go and learn about them.
These articles must be current. You may cite articles from the approved sources only. These articles should date from no earlier than July 1, 2022, but at least four of these articles must date from February 1, 2023, and afterward. We can and will mark you down if your review of sources does not identify relevant, late-breaking information (for example, if you try to write about Russia without discussing the impact of the war on Ukraine). Reference sources, such as Europa World, are exempt from these date requirements--but, again, you need to make sure you're actually dealing with timely matters.
You will also refer to course materials and readings. (This will be especially useful when you are writing about course materials and theories!) Cite these with footnotes (e.g., "Professor Musgrave, course lecture, Unit 1, Module 1"; "Scott and Rosati, p. 125".) Do not include these in the bibliography. These do not count toward your nine articles.
GERMANY’S REFUGEE CRISIS
Name
Course
Date
Germany’s Refugee Crisis
Executive summary
This report explores an emerging social issue regarding migration and the refugee crisis in Germany. It analyzes the refugee status and crisis in Germany caused by political instability in the Arab Uprising in the Middle East region and the current war in Ukraine. The report also discusses German migration and Chancellor Merkel’s policy attributed to the refugee crisis. It explores remittance as one of the course theories and concepts applicable to the German refugee crisis case study. European Union needs collective action to address the continent's refugee crisis. It discusses how human rights have been abused and violated in the German refugee crisis. It also examines Germany's goals of improving security, stability, and regular migration while combating irregular migration. In the short term, some citizens may not embrace the integration process of refugees leading to political unrest and financial implications. In the medium term, accepted refugees could be helpful in Germany’s economy, especially in supplementing the country’s decreasing labor force supply. With the strength of the theory in this regard, and enough evidence analyzed, there is high confidence in the assessment.
Topic Identification and Justification
Migration is an emerging social issue in Germany that has led to a refugee crisis. Streams of refugees seeking safety, primarily from Arab Uprisings in the Middle East regions such as Syria, have targeted Germany. The political and social discussion has been fully focused on the refugee crisis. Over the past few years, Germany has seen a steady rise in asylum applicants. The overwhelming number of asylum seekers were from The Western Balkans or war-torn nations in the Arab Uprising. On average, every other asylum seeker was identified as seeking protection last year. Nearly three-quarters of asylum applicants in Germany received refuge in 2022, a record-high number. The statistics show the dire humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and the recent Ukraine war. In 2022, protection was granted to about 75% of those who requested it. According to UNHCR (2023), data showed that Germany's so-called adjusted protection rate in 2022 was 73%; this number is calculated without considering any procedures that do not influence the real percentage of protection.[Martin, Nik. “Migration to Germany to Hit 1.2 Million in 2022 - Report – DW – 12/10/2022.” dw.com, December 5, 2022. /en/migration-to-germany-to-hit-12-million-in-2022-report/a-63978746.]
Most of those seeking asylum from the Arab Uprising in the Middle East regions, such as Syria and the current Ukraine war, who were virtually all granted refugee status, are mostly to blame for the refugee problem in Germany. On the other hand, the protection rate was almost 0% for applicants from the Western Balkans. Many individuals were granted the right to even permanent residency in Germany due to the high protection rates for the initial batch of refugees and the substantial number of applications. It also grants them the right to bring their families to the country, further complicating the immigration crisis.
Background Information
The number of refugees entering Germany in 2022 was roughly the same as in 2015 and 2016 when the government came alarmingly close to disintegrating due to immigration problems. The civil war in Syria has caused an enormous stream of immigrants into Europe. Thousands of immigrants arrived in Germany during this refugee peak, the same as last year. Even though other EU members would have also been accountable for migrants under the EU's structure, then-Chancellor Angela Merkel's administration let migrants enter Germany. The significant influx caused conflict between the capitals of Europe and Germany. In the period, over 1.2 million asylum requests were submitted to Germany. Many Germans first celebrated and assisted the Syrians as they arrived at train terminals. However, when urban areas were swamped, housing for the influx of migrants was erected as exercise facilities and shipping containers, and politics quickly deteriorated.[Mailliet, Anne, Willy Mahler, and Nick Spicer. “Focus - Germany Struggles with Influx of Migrants as Country Braces for Winter.” France 24, December 2, 2022. /en/tv-shows/focus/20221202-germany-struggles-with-influx-of-migrants-as-country-braces-for-winter.]
The immigration problem in Germany has continued to grow due to immigration policies. The German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees has tallied over 85,500 asylum requests in 2023. There were 244,132 thousand applications in 2022, up more than fifty thousand from the previous year. Just over a million displaced Ukrainian were provided with temporary housing in 2022. Additionally, according to the German interior ministry, there have been some 214,000 requests for asylum from people unrelated to the Ukraine war. As a result, more individuals requested refuge in Germany in 2022 than during the peak years for immigration in 2015 and 2016.[Connolly, Kate. “Germany’s Regional Leaders Demand More Financial Support for Refugees.” The Guardian, May 9, 2023. /world/2023/may/09/germanys-regional-leaders-demand-more-financial-support-for-refugees.] [Alsarras, N. “Refuge in Germany: One Million Ukrainians Have Settled since War Began.” euronews, February 21, 2023. /2023/02/16/refuge-in-germany-one-million-ukrainians-have-settled-since-war-broke-out#:~:text=of%20many%20issues-,Over%20one%20million%20Ukrainians%20have%20come%20as%20refugees%20to%20Germany,in%20major%20cities%20like%20Berlin.]
As for the best ways to handle refugees, there has grown to be an increasing amount of dispute over time. A pan-European approach put out by the German federal government to achieve a more equitable distribution of people seeking asylum among all of the EU's member states has proven challenging to implement. The large number of refugees poses a major social problem in Germany. Many of the recently arriving refugees will remain in Germany for an extended length of time or permanently. Conversely, this may be considered an opportunity given the demographic aging of the German population and an increasing lack of trained labor. Nevertheless, the influx of refugees is a tremendous problem because it requires integrating many individuals from foreign cultures with different perspectives on social involvement and the job market. The integration process will take place over a lengthy period and include societal strife, despite the labor market and integration laws being more favorable than in the past.[Ward-Glenton, Hannah. “Refugees Could Help Germany’s Labor Market, but Ukraine’s Skilled Workers Are Needed at Home.” CNBC, February 24, 2023. /2023/02/24/ukrainian-refugees-could-help-germanys-labor-market-but-not-for-long-theyre-ready-to-go-home.html.]
The increase in immigration to Germany is linked to Merkel's alleged "Open-Door Policy." It is debatable how to interpret the causes of the immigration influx. Numerous media outlets and political movements in Germany and other European countries have argued that an open-door approach of the federal government, which is frequently attributed to former Chancellor, was the primary or main reason for the influx. At the start of September 2015, the German government's cooperation with Austria to allow displaced people from Hungary to enter Germany is alleged to have had a cascading impact. Further, it is thought that the administration's "we can do it" language and selfies with refugees were interpreted as an offer to apply for asylum.[Luyken, Jorg. “Germany to Ditch Angela Merkel’s Open-Door Migrant Policy.” The Telegraph, May 13, 2023. /world-news/2023/05/13/germany-ditch-angela-merkels-open-door-migrant-policy/.]
However, Germany plans to abandon Angela Merkel's policy of welcoming all migrants. After regional governments protested that they were overburdened, Olaf Scholz would impose stricter border restrictions to crack down on asylum applicants. The opposition is preparing to abandon the liberal refugee policies that characterized the former chancellor period. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz unveiled an approach that will see stronger border restrictions implemented at all nine of Germany's borders while promoting establishment of asylum centers outside the EU. Local authorities have been griping for months that the federal government has abandoned them while they strive to house migrants and provide for their children's education. Since the beginning of the year, there has been a significant increase in arrivals, with over a hundred thousand asylum requests submitted thus far—a figure not seen since the immigration peak period, when the former Chancellor officially welcomed Syrian refugees fleeing the nation's catastrophic civil war into Germany.[Made, Jan van der. &ldq...