EU Policies on Migration and Asylum

Differentiation and Politicization: The Case of EU Migration Policy examines the implementation of differentiated integration in EU migration and asylum policy. The research seeks to expand and deepen on the conceptual and factual interaction among core state powers, politicization, the rise of Euroscepticism, the public constraining dissent and the application of different forms of polarity within EU legal framework. Eleftheria Markozani argues that growing Euroscepticism may not only generate the application of opt-outs of particular member states, as previous research has also shown. Instead, she supports that the coincidental increase of politicization of a policy field and Euroscepticism in many member states can provoke the introduction of other forms of polarity, such as flexibility, in EU legal rules. The study begins with the cases of UK and Denmark, outlining the way that the mobilization of exclusive national identities raises the demand for differentiation. However, it , continues with the introduction of flexibility in the Commission's proposals on the 2020 New Pact on Migration, through the lens of the aggregated level of politicization and the rise of right-wing Eurosceptic parties in many states of EU. While the treaty opt-outs have been related with Euroscepticism since the Maastricht Treaty through the polarization provoked by referendums and elections, the 2015 refugee crisis resulted in the EU institutions' endorsement of flexibility within the Dublin system, a secondary legal rule.

This title provides a comprehensive overview of European migration law. More than three dozen directives and regulations are discussed throughout this volume, together with numerous court judgments, international treaties, reform proposals, and factual developments. This careful inspection of EU legislation and cases is accompanied by analyses of domestic and international developments, as well as contextual factors influencing the real world of migratory movements. Across eighteen chapters, Daniel Thym discusses core features of visas and border controls, asylum and legal migration, integration and return, association agreements, and international cooperation. The work consists of two parts. In the first part, Thym provides an analysis of the general framework behind the EU rules on migration and the changing positions of the supranational institutions. Central to this part is a discussion on the significance of human rights and the case law of the Court of Justice. Several chapters identify general features guiding the interpretation and the administrative implementation of the common rulebook. In the second part of the book, Thym explores the policy design and the substance approached through a thematic, rather than a chronological, lens. These chapters provide a reliable inventory of the policy design, the legislation and judgments on all areas of European migration law.

Constituting a major contribution to literature on the European Union, this comprehensive Companion analyses the structure and value of the EU, capturing the normality of its politics alongside crises and political breakdown. Examining the EU through the lenses of political science, history, law, sociology and international political economy, the Companion provides a holistic outline of the methodological controversies and core theoretical approaches in European studies. Taking a closer look into the governance of and regulation within the EU, chapters consider its range of actors and decision-making processes before exploring the regulation and redistributive policies of the internal market. Forward-thinking, the Companion concludes with a discussion of the EU's strategies in responding to issues of increasingly global significance, including climate change, migration and war. Reflecting on the evolution of politics beyond the nation-state, it predicts a shift in the EU's raison d'être from inward narratives of internal prosperity to outward narratives of increasingly competitive international power. International and interdisciplinary in scope, the contributions will be invaluable to students and scholars of international and EU politics, policy and relations. Tracing the potential future directions of the EU, it will also be a vital resource to policymakers working in EU regulation and governance.

After a long time of neglect, migration has entered the arena of international politics with a force. The 2018 Global Compact for safe, orderly and regular migration (GCM) is the latest and most comprehensive framework for global migration governance. Despite these dynamics, migration is still predominantly framed as a state-centric policy issue that needs to be managed in a top-down manner. This book proposes a difference approach: A truly multi-stakeholder, multi-level and rights-based governance with meaningful participation of migrant civil society. Drawing on 15 years of participant observation on all levels of migration governance, the book maps out the relevant actors, "invited" and "invented" spaces for participation as well as alternative discourses and framing strategies by migrant civil society. It thus provides a comprehensive and timely overview on global migration governance from below, starting with the first UN High Level Dialogue in 2006, evolving around the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) and leading up to the consultations for the International Migration Review Forum in 2022.

Contributing to our understanding of the impact of the 2015 migrant "crisis" on the future of EU integration, this book views the "crisis" as an accelerant to existing problems, namely Brexit, the growing popularity of anti-immigrant far right parties and the rise of xenophobic and antiliberal governments from the Baltics to the Balkans. Providing analysis at the national, regional and EU level, this book shows how the countries on the migrant route have been affected according to their degree of integration with the EU and the specific socio-political and economic conditions of each country. The volume will be of interest to scholars of international relations, security studies, border studies, EU policies, migration studies and Southeast European studies.

Building upon the concept of migration regime, this open access book brings together the works of scholars who have investigated logics and routines of action in the field of immigration control within a single and innovative theoretical framework. The chapters cover a wide range of policy domains, from visa policy to the externalisation of controls, labour migration to asylum, internal controls towards irregular migration to restrictions for intra-EU mobility. By unravelling organisational strategies and practices across Europe, the book does not only contribute to dismantling the very idea of the European North-South divide in migration but also shows how Europe really works in the field of migration in times of deep economic, asylum and health crises.  In this perspective, the book questions the widespread understanding of migration control outcomes as simply the result of more or less effective state policies without considering the embeddedness of the national policy goals and strategies in the dynamic interplay of different economies, institutional cultures and geopolitical positions.

Time is one of the most important means for the exercise of power. In Migration Law, it is used for disciplining and controlling the presence of migrants within a certain territory through the intricate interplay of two overlapping but contradicting understandings of time - human and clock time. This book explores both the success and limitations of the usage of time for the governance of migration. The virtues of legal time can be seen at work in several temporal differentiations in migration law: differentiation based on temporality, deadlines, qualification of time and procedural differentiation. Martijn Stronks contests that, hidden in the usage of legal time in Migration Law, there is an argument for the inclusion of migrants on the basis of their right to human time. This assertion is based in the finite, irreversible and unstoppable character of human time.

This  book looks at the background to the policy of free movement in Europe and discusses the consequences. European integration changed migration conditions considerably: Under the concept of "freedom of movement", border crossings between EU member states as well as work and settlement by nationals of other member states were largely facilitated; internal borders thus lost their significance. At the same time, the question of how to deal with a common external border and the migration of "third-country nationals" gained in importance. The essential explains why migration from outside Europe was increasingly understood as a problem of security policy and why this still determines the measures for designing a common external border today.

Based on a systematic and empirical comparative study of six European Union countries, Christel Querton explores judicial decision-making in the context of persons fleeing armed conflicts in the EU. Addressing and redressing misconceptions about the relevance of the Refugee Convention, this book demonstrates how appellate authorities across the EU approach situations of armed conflict predominantly through outdated understandings of warfare and territoriality. Thus, they apply a higher standard of proof than is warranted by international refugee law. Adopting a gender perspective, Querton also shows how appellate authorities fail to acknowledge the gender-differentiated impact of armed conflicts. Drawing from gender and security studies, this book proposes an original conceptual framework which, supported by existing international legal standards, reframes the definition of 'refugee' and better reflects the reality of violence in modern-day conflicts. In doing so, it re-asserts the Refugee Convention as the cornerstone of international protection.

This book investigates the politicisation and framing of immigration in the media and political arena in Central Europe, examining two countries - Czechia and Slovakia - in the period surrounding the "European migrant crisis". Following years of immigration being practically invisible as an issue in the socio-political debates in most Central and Eastern European countries, it became a key concern because of the crisis. Analysing news media items and plenary speeches, this book reveals how securitisation eclipses humanitarian considerations, dominating the discourse around immigration and that media and politicians are the two most important intermediaries from which citizens take cues on issues they rarely experience directly themselves. Finally, it also shows how the media and political arena portray immigration differently based on the origin, religious background, and legal status of immigrants. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of migration studies, global governance, international organisations, security studies, and media studies, as well as more broadly for public law, comparative politics and East/Central European politics.

This volume offers a systematic philosophical analysis of the normative challenges facing European refugee policy, focusing on whether the response to it can be based on European values. By considering the refugee policy through the lens of European values, cosmopolitan norms and universal human rights, the contributions expose the weaknesses and limitations of existing regulations and make proposals on how to improve them. The EU is often seen as a cosmopolitan project. Europe is supposed to be a community of states that aspires to be guided by cosmopolitan norms. However, the idea of a cosmopolitan Europe has never been unanimously shared, and in recent years, it has come under increasing scrutiny, particularly with regard to the EU's refugee policy. The guiding idea of this book is that a deeper philosophical understanding of the normative issues at stake can foster greater conceptual clarity and enrich political debates on the future of European refugee policy. The first part of the book revolves around the question of whether the rise in refugee numbers over the past decade has led to a crisis in the EU and, if so, how this crisis relates to or impacts European values. The second part traces the history of the discourse on "European values" and examines from a philosophical perspective how we can plausibly understand these values in terms of their moral grammar, their normative content and their implications for the behaviour of the EU and its member states. Finally, the third part puts forth recommendations for a feasible and normatively more compelling European refugee policy based on human rights, human dignity, justice and democratic self-determination as the decisive normative requirements. Cosmopolitan Norms and European Values: Ethical Perspectives on Europe's Refugee Policy will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in ethics, political philosophy, political science, social sciences and law. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book explores the criminalisation of irregular migration in Europe. In particular, it investigates the meaning, purpose, and consequences of criminalising unauthorised entry and stay. From a theoretical perspective, the book adds to the debate on the persistence of irregular migration, despite governments' attempts at deterring it, by taking an interdisciplinary approach that draws from international political economy and criminology. Using Italy and France as case studies, and relying on previously unreleased data and interviews, it argues that criminalisation has no effect on migratory flows, and that this is due to factors including the latter's structural determinants and the likely creation of substitution effects. Furthermore, criminalisation is found to lead to adverse consequences, including by contributing to vicious cycles of irregularity and insecurity. 

This book analyses why the Ukrainian state established asylum laws and policies in the thirty years since 1991, even though the number of asylum seekers was very low. International and non-governmental organisations transferred international asylum norms to Ukraine. Various state and non-state actors participated in this process, translating, spreading, and resisting those norms. In many cases, legislative adoption was driven by domestic politicians' pursuit of recognition by international organisations, such as the European Union and the Council of Europe, and by their desire to meet conditionality requirements. NGOs sought to influence administrative practices, alternating between confrontational and conciliatory, formal and informal approaches, and often relying on personal contacts. Actors used and shifted between scales in order to transfer norms or resist transfer. In the process, they produced, renegotiated, and confirmed those scales. For instance, NGOs resorting to the European Court of Human Rights to prevent refoulement placed the European scale above the national scale. This book offers a new multi-actor and multi-scalar analysis of policy transfer.

This Book examines the European Union’s policy responses to large-scale dis- placement of refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine and the activation and imple- mentation of the Temporary Protection Directive from interdisciplinary per- spectives. The activation of the EU’s Temporary Protection Directive for the first time in European history to receive nearly 5 million people fleeing the war Ukraine begs the following question: Does it represent a new era or a turn- ing-point in EU asylum policy? The various chapter contributions assess this question by first analysing central issues related to the scope, implementation and debates raised by the Temporary Protection Directive. In particular, various chapters focus on the implementation of the Temporary Protection Directive across various European countries, its medium and long-term impacts, as well as ‘lessons learned’ from policies adopted by non-EU states hosting large-scale refugee communities. The Book then studies the extent to which the Tempo- rary Protection Directive represents a game-changer in the wider EU asylum policies by comparing the EU’s temporary protection policy covering Ukrain- ian refugees with the one driving the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum and Member States’ asylum policies towards non-European refugees, which put especial emphasis on contained mobility, responsibility shifting and external- isation. This includes an assessment of the relationship and compatibility of EU asylum policies with international and EU rights and principles, with par- ticular attention to those related to non-discrimination, solidarity, and justice.

This open access Regional Reader describes population movement circulating within the Mediterranean area, for any reason or from any region, be them European, African, Asian or originating from any of the Mediterranean shores. It showcases a plurality of approaches to and applications of Mediterranean migration, contributing to a regional approach to migration studies, thereby defending this regional approach by scaling Mediterranean migration issues. This book covers a large set of questions related Mediterranean migrations to the migration research agenda, such as: market and economy, politics and policies, super-diversity and intersectionality, media, society, welfare and the environment through five main parts:  Geo-political Mediterranean Relations, Governance, Policies and Politics, Mobility drivers and Agency, Cities, History and Social Transformations, and Economy and Labour Markets. This Regional Reader provides an interesting read to scholars, researchers, but also policy makers and civil society organizations' high representatives, international foundations and institutions interested in linking the Mediterranean and migration.

During the 2015 and 2016 refugee crisis the EU called on the Member States to engage in protection burden-sharing. This proposal found strong opposition from some of the Visegrad Group countries, including Poland, which expressed their reluctance to the relocation scheme securitizing the political narrative towards refugees. On the contrary, in 2022, during the Russian military aggression against Ukraine, Poland strengthened an "open door policy", showing a humanitarian approach towards Ukrainian refugees. This book uses a public goods theoretical framework to examine the various public goods characteristics of refugee protection in such scenarios. It is argued that the publicness and character of refugee protection is socially shaped by norms and identities. States perceive refugee protection, including benefits and costs, in different ways. The author focuses his analysis on the security/humanitarian dichotomy in states' perceptions of refugees to investigate the accompanying vision of the inherent costs and benefits. The conceptual part of the book provides conclusive support of an alternative constructivist mode in public goods theory for understanding refugee protection burden-sharing.

This book examines the impact and effects of refugee externalisation policies in two regions: Australia's border control practices in Southeast Asia and the Pacific and the activities of the European Union and its member states in North Africa. The book assesses the underlying motivations, processes, policy frameworks and human rights violations of refugee externalisation practices. Case studies illuminate the funding, institutional partnerships, geopolitical impacts, financial costs and the human price of refugee externalisation. It provides the first truly comparative analysis of asylum externalisation and explores maritime interdiction, extraterritorial process, containment and third-country interception, and communication campaigns in Southeast Asia and the Middle East/North Africa. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of refugee and asylum studies, law, politics and the arts, legal practitioners, non-governmental organisations and policymakers grappling with the issues of detention, refugee externalisation practices and the growing need to find safety for the world's most vulnerable.

This book analyses the politicization of immigration and the European Union in Italy, the UK, and the European Parliament (EP) from 2015 to 2020. The book uses the case studies of Italy, the UK, and the EP to study party positioning specifically towards immigration and the European Union, to understand to what extent mainstream-left, mainstream-right and populist parties adopt different framing strategies to compete on the new cultural dimension created by globalization. The book draws on saliency theory, issue ownership theory, and yield theory to investigate the multidimensional nature of political competition, and the relevance of institutional settings in determining party framing strategies. Bridging two fields that typically do not interact--party politics and migration studies--this book fills gaps in the academic literature and as such will be appropriate for students and researchers interested in party politics, European politics, immigration politics, populism, and text analysis.