European Union Immigration Policy Research Articles

4 Migration research and analysis: Growth, reach and recent contributions

4 Migration research and analysis: Growth, reach and recent contributions

Towards a Common European Union Immigration Policy: Navigating a Difficult Obstacle Course

Towards a Common European Union Immigration Policy: Navigating a Difficult Obstacle Course

Chapter 4 – Migration research and analysis: Growth, reach and recent contributions

Chapter 4 – Migration research and analysis: Growth, reach and recent contributions

EXCLUSIVE INCLUSION

This paper focuses on three different ‘Communications’ issued by the European Commission between 2007 and 2011 that inform, frame, and constitute contemporary European Union immigration policy. Drawing on a theoretical framework that calls attention to the embeddedness of cultural ideas and notions in economic dimensions of society, the analysis first emphasizes the naturalized link in the Communications between the need for integration and specific immigrants whose cultures are marked as fundamentally different. Second, it shows how lack of cultural integration is intrinsically connected in these documents to an economic understanding of ‘otherness’, since it is made salient as an obstacle in immigrants’ path toward upward mobility, and thus as a threat to social cohesion. This, I argue, creates an irresolvable paradox that positions undesirable immigrants as simultaneously in need of and ineligible for integration measures.

Uncovering European Union Immigration Legislation: Policy Dynamics and Outcomes

The member states of the European Union (EU) have recently experimented with constructing a common immigration policy. This gives rise to an important and fascinating question: what happens to immigration policy once it is no longer made in national capitals? Have national governments been able to retain ultimate control over the field of EU immigration policy? Or do we see slippage towards supranational power, with the Commission, Parliament, and Court of Justice expanding their influence? If EU institutions have gained power, do they use this power to defend the rights and freedoms of immigrants against restrictionist national governments? Using participant interviews (listed in Appendix I) and documentary analysis, I analyse negotiations over three EU immigration laws: the directives on family reunification, long-term residence, and economic migration. I assess whether national preferences are implemented in these directives, or whether supranational institutions have moved policy away from national preferences, potentially expanding immigrant rights and freedoms.

‘Illegal Migrants’, Gender and Vulnerability: The Case of the EU’s Returns Directive

Feminist legal efforts to make sense of the external migration policies of the European Union (EU) have focused almost exclusively on the EU’s initiatives against trafficking in women. This article examines one of the more neglected areas of EU immigration policy—the return of ‘illegal immigrants’. It analyses the so-called 2008 Returns Directive in the light of the multidimensional inequalities experienced by migrant women, which affect their migration status and expose some of them to the threat of removal. Owing to insecurities over external migration, the Directive constructs even the most vulnerable migrants as a threat to be controlled and is likely to result in detrimental consequences for many migrants, and in particular already vulnerable women who are likely to be further disadvantaged by it.

The French Presidency

The article examines the French presidency of the European Union (EU) that took place in the second half of 2008. The article examines a number of issues including the priorities set by French president Nicolas Sarkozy, action on EU immigration policy, a strengthening of European security and defense and measures to fight global warming and climate change. In addition the article examines Sarkozy's proposal for a union of countries that have coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea, a measure brokered by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor.

The political functions of expert knowledge: knowledge and legitimation in European Union immigration policy

ABSTRACT Most literature on knowledge utilization is premised on rationalist theories of organizations: bureaucracies draw on knowledge instrumentally, either to expand their power or to adjust policy output. This paper develops an alternative account of the functions of knowledge, arguing that organizations are just as likely to value knowledge as a source of legitimation, or as a way of substantiating their policy preferences. The prevalence of these different forms of knowledge utilization will depend on (a) features of the organization (its perceived stability and source of legitimation); and (b) features of the policy area (degree of contention and mode of settlement). The article applies this framework to explore the European Commission's use of knowledge in immigration policy, especially through the European Migration Network.

La política de inmigración en la Unión Europea. Desde tres claves

The European Union's immigration policy regarding the control and management of migratory flow, can be seen from many viewpoints. Of these, three are of particular interest. Firstly, the economic aspect, which is based on reducing the figure of the immigrant to a worker, taking into account the conditions and protection of the European Community's employment market. Secondly, the defensive aspect, which emphasises the need to secure frontiers vulnerable to immigrant migration, in order to ensure both security and law and order. Lastly the social aspect, which focuses on the aim for European homogeneity a reference point for the implementation of this policy and for the need to integrate immigrants. These three key aspects are essential for us to understand, analyse and question the complex reality of migration to Europe and the legal-political treatment it receives.

EU enlargement and immigration policy in Poland and Slovakia

With the enlargement of the European Union (EU), Poland and Slovakia have become crucial border areas at the eastern edge of EU. This has important implications for the EU's immigration policy. Both countries have been traditionally known as countries of emigration. In recent times, however, they have increasingly become transit and target countries for immigrants and asylum seekers. The EU has exerted pressure on both countries to tighten their borders in order to fight illegal immigration; they have also been urged to restrict their entry conditions and increasingly consolidate their asylum systems. This article shows that in adopting new immigration and asylum policies these countries have mainly responded to EU interests and less to interests linked to domestic issues.

The Politics of European Union Immigration Policy: Institutions, Salience, and Harmonization

This article examines recent attempts to create a common European Union (EU) immigration policy. This “harmonized” policy has faced political blockages, despite being seen by most observers as necessary if the EU is to meet its goal of free movement of labor. Because of this resistance, immigration harmonization has lagged behind other EU policy areas. To explain national resistance to harmonizing immigration policy, our article develops a theoretical and conceptual model of how immigration policy is potentially harmonized at the EU level, but how this harmonization can be blocked or restricted. We explain these political blockages with a model of intergovernmental bargaining that focuses on political salience, political partisanship, and institutions that protect immigrant rights. We argue that these national‐level factors have determined the success and the nature of various harmonization proposals, by determining the positions of member states when negotiating in the European Council. Our primary hypothesis is that when the political salience of a given immigration issue is high, any harmonization that results is more likely to be restrictive toward immigrant rights. We also hypothesize that the impact of institutions that protect immigrant rights, and of political partisanship, is variable depending on the issue area and the national context. We use literature on European integration, immigration politics, agenda‐setting, venue‐shopping, and two‐level games to theorize, operationalize, and test these hypotheses. The article helps to advance scholarly work on immigration politics, but our model could also conceivably be applied to other high‐salience policy areas in the EU.

The Politics of European Union Immigration Policy: Institutions, Salience, and Harmonization

This article examines recent attempts to create a common European Union (EU) immigration policy. This “harmonized” policy has faced political blockages, despite being seen by most observers as necessary if the EU is to meet its goal of free movement of labor. Because of this resistance, immigration harmonization has lagged behind other EU policy areas. To explain national resistance to harmonizing immigration policy, our article develops a theoretical and conceptual model of how immigration policy is potentially harmonized at the EU level, but how this harmonization can be blocked or restricted. We explain these political blockages with a model of intergovernmental bargaining that focuses on political salience, political partisanship, and institutions that protect immigrant rights. We argue that these national-level factors have determined the success and the nature of various harmonization proposals, by determining the positions of member states when negotiating in the European Council. Our primary hypothesis is that when the political salience of a given immigration issue is high, any harmonization that results is more likely to be restrictive toward immigrant rights. We also hypothesize that the impact of institutions that protect immigrant rights, and of political partisanship, is variable depending on the issue area and the national context. We use literature on European integration, immigration politics, agenda-setting, venue-shopping, and two-level games to theorize, operationalize, and test these hypotheses. The article helps to advance scholarly work on immigration politics, but our model could also conceivably be applied to other high-salience policy areas in the EU.

Republicanism and Universalism: Factors of Inclusion or Exclusion in the French Concept of Citizenship

European Integration has renewed interests in the concepts of both citizenship and citizenship rights: civil, political and social. Citizenship is an instituted process and a status. The development of citizenship rights depends on a nation's legal infrastructure and varying community capacities for participatory association. In the French case the communities were and are: religious, labor (the private sector being apart from the civil service sector, which includes about five million people), immigrants and political parties. The article's study of citizenship and democratization in France expands beyond a focus on the French state capitalist dirigisme, to include relationships among public spheres, community associational life and patterns of political culture. Somers [(1993) 'Culture and place of the public sphere: law, community, and political culture in: transition to democracy', American Sociological Review , 58, pp. 587-620] has examined these assumptions for the English case. The French revolutionaries of 1789 and later French thinkers believed that voting rights represented the entire spectrum of political rights. While they projected to integrate large numbers into an abstract body of citizenship through universal male suffrage, the law in fact took effect only in 1850-1852 under the directory of Napoleon III and was ratified during the empire in 1852. Women acquired voting rights only in 1944. The French concept of citizenship has always intentionally neglected social and socioeconomic and cultural pluralist dimensions, because of a fear of social fragmentation leading to the destruction of the Republican ideology; this has brought about a renewal of the attack on particularism. The French notion that democracy is based on the 'will of the people' to live together allowed the concept to be universalized to include everyone who wanted to belong to the French nation. This was reinforced from 1889 until 1993 by a generous application of jus soli. A study of the long struggle of the French government to balance jus soli and jus sanguinis principles can be an example for the European concept of citizenship. The legal puzzle of the French colonial legacy may also help establish the European Union's immigration policy, since every conceivable situation has been dealt with in some legal way during its evolution.

Beyond the Anwerbestopp? The German–Polish Bilateral Labour Treaty

This article analyses the genesis, implementation and effects of the bilateral labour treaties between Germany and Central and Eastern Europe, focussing on the Polish–German Treaty and the construction sector. These treaties represent a significant departure from the restrictive German and European Union immigration policy. First, the political motives of the Polish and German governments are examined. The overall German ambition was to temporarily recruit labour migrants, reminiscent of the 1960s Gastarbeiter policy. Second, the treaty's labour markets effects are analysed using concepts from the migration literature. The formerly unified German labour market is disaggregating into three tiers with substantial wage differences, reinforced by powerful push–pull factors and counter-productive re-regulation. The effects on the Polish labour market are small, if unfavourable. Third, the implications of the Treaty for the German labour market include the possibility that employers can now import labour instead of outsourcing production in the geographically static service sector. Finally, the implications of EU eastward enlargement are examined.

Immigration to Spain: Implications for a Unified European Union Immigration Policy

This article examines the difficulties of establishing a joint policy regarding the free movement of people within the European Union by focusing on changing immigration policies in one member — Spain. Previous studies have shown that negotiations toward harmonizing national policies on border control and immigration among EU members have many sticking points. By comparing Spain, a country of recent immigration, to Germany, a country with a longer history of non-European immigration, the difficulties of harmonizing immigration policies to satisfy this varied constituency become clearer. Administrative control of entry, estimates of legal and illegal immigrants present, and the current state of bilateral relations with Morocco are examined to illustrate the political difficulties of a unified immigration policy within Spanish society and for the EU. Spain is a threshold to the EU as well as a destination. Conclusions suggest that control of borders, although difficult, may be the easier part of implementing a joint immigration policy. Control of settlement is more difficult and problematic, involving the role of immigrants in European society. Moreover, high rates of native unemployment may coexist with immigration, given local demand for low-skilled, low-paid workers.

The External EU Immigration Policy: The Need to Move Beyond the Orthodoxy

"Anti-immigration sentiments have recently engrossed the European Union (EU).... This article will, first, give an overall picture on immigration in the Union; secondly, show that the...justifications for barring EU bound immigrants are flawed and generate negative repercussions on the EU's foreign policy and external relations with third states; thirdly, propose an alternative paradigm within which to conduct the discourse on the EU immigration policy."

Immigration to Spain: Implications for a Unified European Union Immigration Policy

Immigration to Spain: Implications for a Unified European Union Immigration Policy

Immigrant and Ethnic Minorities and the EU's ‘Democratic Deficit’

AbstractThis article explores the links between the development of European Union immigration policy and the frequently analysed ‘democratic deficit’. It shows that immigration policy at EU level emphasizes tighter control of the numbers of immigrants and asylum‐seekers, rather than the development of measures to combat racism and xenophobia. This emphasis stems from the provisions of the Single European Act, as free movement of EU nationals was seen as necessitating firm control of external frontiers. The consequence of this policy, it is argued, is accentuation of both institutional and participatory aspects of the ‘democratic deficit’.

European Union immigration policy: Phantom, fantasy or fact?

Moves to complete the single European market by 1993 together with worldwide migratory pressures have forced immigration onto the European Union's political agenda. Intergovernmental co‐operation has been the preferred, but disputed method by which member states are developing a more co‐ordinated immigration and border control policy. The EC institutions have become involved despite attempts by national governments to protect sovereignty and to promote subsidiarity. The Maastricht Treaty negotiations highlighted divisions between member states and policy development has been slow. Despite introducing more restrictive immigration controls, EU states have already become countries of immigration but have yet to acknowledge this.