Mapping Europe’s refugee crisis
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Europe faces a growing humanitarian crisis as increasing numbers of refugees enter the continent after fleeing the troubles in Syria. In Hungary an estimated 3,000 people are camping outside Budapest’s main station desperate to travel on to Germany and Austria.
El Diario has mapped the number of asylum applications received by each European country in 2015 and the percentage of applications accepted by each country. The size of the red dots on the Refugee Distribution map represents the number of asylum applications received by each country and a choropleth layer shows the percentage of asylum applications accepted.
One of the arguments being used by some of Europe’s political leaders for not accepting more asylum applications is that this will only encourage more refugees to head to their countries. This map seems to suggest that there is no strong correlation between a high acceptance rate of refugees by a country and the number of refugees seeking asylum in that country.
If the willingness to accept asylum seekers affected the number of refugees to then apply for asylum then the dark green colored countries on the map should have the largest red dots. This clearly isn’t the case. For example, Germany only agreed 42% of asylum applications in 2014 and yet it is by far the most popular destination for asylum seekers.
