The aim of this article is to investigate the European Union’s asylum framework and its national implementation in the case of Bulgaria; to demonstrate that national implementation is actually consistent with the deficiencies of the supranational framework; and to interrogate the normative struggle that, as the article argues, is in the root of the European failure to respond adequately to the ongoing refugee crisis. Using critical policy analysis (content and discourse) complemented by historical analysis of a recent political development, the article engages with the ‘policy malintegration’ within the Common European Asylum System produced in the context of refugee crisis in the case of Bulgaria. The article argues that the discrepancy between purpose and implementation in the national application of the EU framework is to be understood not so much as ‘malintegration’, but as a particular vision of European integration that is struggling against the idea of liberalizing asylum. Sustained by an overall uncertainty about the fate of the EU project, by economic crisis and by nationalist (‘xeno-racist’) narratives on migration, such a vision of the Europeanization of asylum is bound to produce paradoxes. As the case study will demonstrate, it has effectively worked against the adequate provision of refugee protection, and against the credible Europeanization of asylum. © 2015 Taylor & Francis.

policy malintegration Bulgaria Migration Asylum Refugees Syrian refugees Europeanization Syria Borders

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