By Emaan Khurram (Pakistan)
For much of the post-war period, Europe presented asylum as a moral and legal commitment: a promise that those fleeing persecution would be heard, assessed, and protected. In recent years, however, that promise appears to have been subtly recalibrated. Rather than asking how protection can be strengthened, policy debates increasingly focus on how responsibility can be displaced. Offshore asylum processing, once framed as an exceptional response to crisis, has begun to look less like a temporary measure and more like a governing norm.
That shift is not merely theoretical; it is lived, often harshly, by those subjected to offshore systems. Australia’s long-running use of offshore processing on Nauru provides a clear illustration. Asylum seekers transferred to the island have repeatedly described lives marked by enforced dependency: prohibited from working, reliant on fixed allowances, and facing living costs that make even basic nutrition difficult to sustain. The result is not simply poverty but attrition: physical, psychological, and temporal. The attrition is deliberate. Reports document, for instance, families surviving on minimal provisions for years while their claims languish, a policy environment where the very act of waiting becomes the penalty. These conditions are not accidental; they are part of a deterrence model that seeks to make asylum so burdensome that others will not attempt it.
Europe’s growing interest in offshore processing increasingly reflects this same logic. Recent arrangements, such as Italy’s agreement with Albania to process certain asylum claims outside European Union territory, are framed in the language of order, cooperation, and legality. Governments emphasise efficiency and control, insisting that international obligations remain intact. Yet the practical effect is the geographical and legal distance between asylum seekers and the protections EU law is meant to guarantee. Responsibility is not eliminated, but relocated beyond immediate public scrutiny.
This geographical and legal distance creates a hollow form of legality. When claims are handled in third countries with limited oversight or weaker procedural guarantees, the right to seek asylum persists largely as an abstraction. The system may remain formally compliant, but its protective substance is steadily eroded. What emerges is legality that is technically intact, yet practically diminished.
Deterrence sits at the centre of this transformation. Offshore arrangements do not merely redistribute administrative capacity; they recalibrate incentives. Distance, uncertainty, and delay become tools of governance. The aim is not to assess claims more effectively, but to reduce the number of people willing or able to make them. In this sense, offshore processing marks a shift from asylum as a response to vulnerability to asylum as an instrument of migration control.
Domestic political pressure helps explain why this shift has gained traction. Across Europe, asylum has become entangled with securitised border narratives and electoral competition. Offshore processing provides governments with a means to demonstrate control without openly breaching their legal commitments. The right to asylum is preserved rhetorically, even as its exercise becomes increasingly remote. Responsibility is externalised, while compliance is measured procedurally rather than substantively.
The human rights consequences of this model are by now difficult to dispute. Offshore systems are associated with prolonged delays, limited access to legal assistance, fragmented oversight, and chronic uncertainty. Individuals are often left suspended in legal limbo for years. The harm lies not only in material deprivation, but in the slow erosion of dignity that accompanies indefinite waiting. Where access to protection is persistently deferred, rights lose their practical meaning.
A Strategic Imperative to Reclaim Access
The core principle is non-negotiable: refugee protection is measured by access, not paperwork. True compliance requires that individuals can realistically use asylum procedures. To counter deterrence, this demands a strategic shift in three arenas: legal, political, and public.
For courts, this means adopting a functional test of jurisdiction. Legal challenges must move beyond procedural checklists to ask whether offshore systems create such prohibitive barriers through delay, isolation, or hardship that they effectively nullify the right to seek asylum. Jurisdiction must be defined by substantive access, not geographical sleight of hand.
For policymakers, the task is to reframe access as a governance tool. The deterrence model manufactures chronic crises, from legal limbo to human suffering. Accessible and efficient systems, in contrast, are a governance asset. They enable timely protection and lawful returns, restoring integrity and public trust. Order through fairness is more sustainable than control through crisis.
For public discourse, the goal must be to expose the hollow bargain. The political promise of offshore processing is a false bargain. It trades the illusion of control today for deeper crises tomorrow. Advocates must clearly define its real costs in financial, legal, and human terms, and show that true stability depends on fair and accessible asylum systems. This collective shift in perspective is necessary to confront the core tension that now defines asylum systems.
As someone studying law, I see how procedure can obscure purpose. Offshore processing codifies this gap, making rights abstract and remote. The tension between rights on paper and inaccessible practice is a political choice, and the task ahead is to make principled access the benchmark for legitimate governance, transforming a hollow legality into a lived promise.
Author is from Pakistan and Final Year Law Student at Liverpool John Moores University.
