ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the more recent reforms undertaken in the field of asylum seekers' reception in Italy, Spain, Germany, Finland and Greece in the 2010s, when asylum claims in Europe started to increase substantially as a consequence of the Arab Spring. The goal is to identify the main driving factors of the observed policy changes around reception and to understand the extent to which the process has been underpinned by multilevel governance (MLG) policy arrangements. According to our findings, the perceived problem pressure related to a sharp increase in arrivals and the radical right's penetration of the political system appear to be sufficient conditions for policy change whereas the pressure from the European Union (EU) seems to produce much more nuanced effects. At the same time, the political-institutional capacity seems to impact the governance arrangements set up to manage EU resources and requests, with specific regard to the involvement of international organisations. Overall, MLG arrangements have been more prominent in those countries with federalist or regional institutional settings, although reforms led to a centralisation of the decision-making processes over reception in all of the investigated countries during the European refugee crisis.
