Strategies, Stories and Smuggling: Inter-regional Asylum Flows and Their Implications for Regional Responses

The majority of asylum seekers in the industrialised countries originate in other, normally less developed, regions. In 2004, for example, the top ten origin countries for asylum seekers across all the industrialized countries were, starting with the most significant: the Russian Federation, Serbia and Montenegro, China, Turkey, Iraq, India, Nigeria, Somalia, Pakistan and the Islamic Republic of Iran (UNHCR 2005). The purpose of this chapter is to review the nature and mechanisms of such inter-regional movements, and consider their implications for regional responses to asylum seekers and refugees. Specifically, the chapter examines whether, and if so how, asylum seekers and