Between East and West? The Problem of ‘Transit’ with Reference to Chechen Asylum-seekers in Poland

This dissertation analyses the construction of transit migration as a policy issue in Poland through an exploration of dynamics within the multi-level migration governance system. This system minimises the probability of asylum-seekers treating Poland as a destination country by exerting pressure on them to move west. This study examines the legal and bureaucratic arenas that are organised through the process of the implementation of the European Union’s (EU) key asylum instruments: the qualification directive, the procedures directive, the reception directive, and the Dublin regulation at three policy-making levels: the EU, the Polish government, and the grassroots; and that enable certain types of social interaction that emphasise policy learning, and information and knowledge sharing. The evolution of this multi-level institutional and social milieu produces policy deficiencies that provide the setting for the discursive construction of ‘transitness’. The research is grounded in a meta-theoretical method that seeks to bridge rational and constructivist variants of institutional analysis.This dissertation reveals that the formation of ‘transitness’ occurs through discursive strategies enabled by an interaction of particular legal and bureaucratic venues.