Tucker Comparative Migration Studies (2018) 6:29 Khalid explains why he undertook the dangerous and costly journey to Sweden from Lebanon. Given the lack of legal status for PRS and the protection gap, he was forced to live ‘underground’ and to enter Europe irregularly: “Of course. In the worst-case scenario, I could have stayed in any country and applied for asylum according to the UN’s quota system [resettlement programme] and waited. As a Palestinian I never had that opportunity because UNRWA is in charge of us. And in their current situation, it’s not their mission to deal with asylum or protection cases. A lot of the Palestinians in Lebanon — and PalestinianSyrians in Lebanon — or in Turkey face these problems. They cannot register to seek asylum [through resettlement] to Canada or Australia or Europe or wherever, it’s just for Syrians.” (Khalid, Sweden). Due to the lack of legal pathways to seek asylum, Deema who travelled to and resided in Germany on a student visa, when asked ‘Why Germany?’, recalled: “… actually, the [university] course was just a way to get out of the country [Syria], it’s not like I wanted to come and study here.” With regard to the role of traffickers, smugglers and agents in choosing the destination country of asylum seekers to Europe, as highlighted by Böcker and Havinga (1997), this was only raised by two participants. “We didn’t choose it [Germany]. When we crossed the sea from Turkey to Greece, there they gave us a paper because our passports are not international — they didn’t even understand it. We had a translator, and he translated our passport and papers and stamped it; and he wrote on it that our final destination was Germany. And we weren’t able to travel more after that.” (Noor, Germany). “The decision wasn’t certain in the beginning. The idea was just to make the journey and cross the sea, and then once we arrived to Italy we considered what country we would go to. I did some research before, like to see what the best country was to go to as a Palestinian-Syrian. The best ones were Sweden, Norway, The Netherlands and Germany. I didn’t think that Germany was a good choice. And we all knew that Sweden is good for Palestinians from Syria. In the end, the smuggler sort of made the choice for us because he told us that there was a bus direct from Italy to Malmö. So, we came to Sweden.” (Farid, Sweden). It should be noted that nearly all of the participants left Syria and entered Europe with the use of traffickers, smugglers and agents. This included using them to secure fraudulent documents, arrange flights/sea-crossing as well as transportation up through Europe. Therefore, there was significant scope for these actors to influence the final destination of the participants. Yet, with the exception of Noor, when participants arrived in a country other than their desired asylum destination, they sought to complete their journey. Page 13 of 17