"Changing patterns and parameters in EU immigration policy"

Menz, Georg. (2003) "Changing patterns and parameters in EU immigration policy". In: UNSPECIFIED, Nashville, TN. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Traditionally, "negative integration" has prevailed in EU migration policy, namely the market-enhancing encouragement of internal migration. By contrast, "active integration" efforts to create a common asylum and immigration policy (CAIP) have made far less progress. However, the EU has vowed in the Amsterdam Treaty to construct such policy. Meanwhile, given demographic trends, member states are unlikely to sustain restrictive policies "Fortress Europe" notwithstanding the post-September 11 "securitization" of migration and the electoral rise of xenophobe parties. This paper analyzes both why past efforts to create a CAIP have encountered difficulty and outlines what contours such future policy will take once these differences are overcome. It examines the ideological, historical and institutional factors that have traditionally hampered a CAIP and will condition it. Firstly, the EU's dedication to market-building through negative integration and its recent endeavours towards positive integration; secondly, drawing on historical institutionalist insights the embedded trajectories in key member states and their reorientation as well as the cleavage between (southern) countries of emigration and (northern) countries more accustomed to immigration; and, thirdly, the institutionalization of unanimous decision-making in the Council of Ministers and its reform.

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