The document discusses EU policies on migration and mobility in a global context. It outlines the main approaches to analyzing migration policy, and distinguishes between migration and mobility. It then examines migration and mobility from an EU perspective, noting that internal EU mobility is framed as a freedom of movement. The document also outlines challenges the EU faces in external cooperation on migration, including having 27 sovereign states with differing interests and priorities.

1. EU policies on migration and
mobility in a global context
Executive training on migration in the Eastern Neighbourhood, Florence,
21-23 January 2013
Agnieszka Weinar
Migration Policy Centre, European University Institute
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2. Outline
• Main approaches to analysis of migration
policy
• Migration vs. mobility
• Migration and mobility EU-way
• EU challenges in external cooperation on
migration
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3. Main approaches to analysis of
migration policy
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4. What is a migration policy?
Migration policy concerns state’s policies of entry, stay and
exit of own and foreign population on its territory (e.g. Zolberg
1999, Brettel and Hollifield 2000)
Migration, immigration, emigration… A purely semantic issue?
-> Myron Weiner, 1987, International Emigration and the Third World.
What does the use of the word “migration” have to say about the balance of
power and discourse-creation?
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5. Types of migration policies
Migration policy regime Cases (in various periods of history!)
Migrant-exporters Implicit: e.g. Jordan, India, Poland, China;
Explicit: Philippines, Mexico
Refugee-producers Deliberate or spontaneous: ex-Yugoslavia,
Rwanda, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria
Emigration-restrainers European states (till late 1700s); USSR, China,
North Korea, Cuba
Immigration-promoters Australia, Canada, New Zealand, but also Gulf
States, Russian Federation
Entry-regulators All states
Out-migration restrainers Economic policies: EU migration and
development (but CAP); US (but Sugar Program);
Military intervention: Kosovo, Haiti
Source: Michael S. Teitelbaum, 2002
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6. Migration policy in the current scholarship
• Main unit of analysis: behaviour of the State (national level), but more
and more often scholars look at the governance of migration, i.e.
interactions between international level and the State (especially in the
case of the EU studies) or local level and the State (specific to integration
policy studies).
!!!! THE STATE = LIBERAL WESTERN DEMOCRACY !!!!
• Main areas of policy action under scrutiny:
– Border policy
– Legal migration policy (including labour migration, but also e.g. students)
– Visa policy
– Asylum policy
– Integration policy
– External dimension
• Main debates in political science:
– Do the States lose control?
– Why do the States allow for unwanted immigration?
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7. Do the States lose control?
• The national States can no longer exercise their sovereignty in the times
of globalization. They are too strongly interconnected and bound by
international level.
(e.g. S. Sassen, Losing control? Sovereignty in An Age of Globalization, 1998)
• The States try to avoid domestic constraints (e.g. policy scrutiny by
courts) and thus move cooperation on migration to an upper level – in
the case of Europe it is European Union.
(e.g. S. Lavenex, Shifting Up and Out: the Foreign Policy of European Immigration
Control, 2006)
• The States do not lose control, they only change the means of this
control, from traditional repressive visible instruments (as physical
borders) to more sophisticated, invisible tools (as new technologies
employed for inland detection or remote control strategies).
(e.g. S. Mau et al., Liberal States and the Freedom of Movement, 2012)
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8. Why do the States allow for unwanted
immigration?
• Domestic vested interests of different groups (employers, business
lobby) change State’s preference. Assumption: low skilled migrants
compete with lower strata of society (less powerful).
(e.g. G. Freeman, Modes of Immigration Politics in Liberal Democratic
States, 1995)
• Liberal economy argument or “gap hypothesis” has it that there is an
implementation gap as regards the restrictive stated objectives and
policy implementation.
(e.g. W. Cornelius et al. Controlling immigration, 2004)
• States can no longer freely implement restrictions as they are bound by
judicial system and the human rights regime.
(Ch. Joppke, Immigration and the Nation State, 1999)
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9. How does it all translate to the EU experience?
• Migration policy in the EU means immigration policy
• EU consists of various types of migration policy regimes:
migrant-exporters, ex-emigration restrainers, immigration-
promoters…
• EU is usually treated as a synonym for Liberal Western
Democratic regime, but EU-27 is varied. Not all can be
analyzed according to the prevailing scholarship.
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10. MIGRATION
VS
MOBILITY
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11. What is the difference?
• Intuitive: mobility is positive, migration is negative
(mobility is perpetual, migration is final)
• Applied to different categories of people: e.g.
students and researchers don’t migrate, they are
mobile;
• Applied in different policy settings: e.g. intra-regional
mobility, but inter-regional migration
• Applied to different policies: e.g. visa policy can
enhance mobility while labour migration policy
supports migration.
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12. Migration and mobility
EU-way
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13. Internal EU mobility
• Freedom of Movement:
– Economic interest of Implicit migrant-exporter of 1960’s:
Italy
• From Migrant Workers to EU citizens in less than 30
years (Maastricht Treaty 1992); coordination of social
security – 1 May 2010!
• the Directive 2004/38/EC on freedom of movement
- one of the most often breached EU law
• Non-EU citizens only relatively recently allowed to
access this right (2004) but EEA + EFTA are in.
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14. Mobility and enlargement
• In 1990’s all EU states abolished visa obligation for the citizens
of the 8 post-communist states. De facto open borders for
tourists and visitors. Effects?
• Enlargement of 2004: transition period for full access to
labour markets. Effects?
• More mobility = access to labour markets or visa
liberalisation?
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15. EU migration vs. mobility in migration policy documents
II. Legal Migration and Mobility II.3. Integration
II.1. Promoting legal migration channels II.3.1 Promoting and exchanging
II.2 Economic migration information on integration
II.1.1 Satisfying labour market needs II.3.2 Mainstreaming in other policy areas
II.1.2 Skills recognition II.3.3 Involving other stakeholders
II.1.3 Global Approach to Migration and II.3.4 Promoting values and cohesion
Mobility II.4. Managing Migration and Mobility
II.1.4 Mobility Partnerships and other II.4.1 Visa Policy
(bilateral) agreements with third II.4.2 Frontex
countries II.4.3 Schengen Governance
II.1.5 Highly qualified workers II.4.4 Agreements with third countries
II.1.5 Students and Researchers II.4.5 Use of modern technology
II.2. Family Reunification II.4.6 Training of Border Guards
COM SWD 3rd Report on Immigration and Asylum, 2011
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16. EU migration vs. mobility in migration policy documents
“The EU concept of mobility covers two categories of persons:
people who stay in their countries of destination for up to
three months as well as so-called short-term migrants. In any
event, it seems that every person who legally moves to a
Member State up to 12 month period regardless the purpose
of the stay is for the EU a mobile person as opposed to a
migrant who takes up a residence for the period of 12 months
and beyond.”
S. Mananshvili, 2013.
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17. EU migration policy…
… does not really exist.
• Levels of governance:
– Prerogative of EU Member States
– EU level (what is EU???)
– regional level (Regional Consultative Processes:
transgovernmentalism)
– international level (UN Lisbon effect)
• Limited topics of exclusive competence
• Similar levels: Canada and the US.
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18. EU challenges
in
external cooperation
on
migration
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19. Challenges
• International cooperation on migration is a
major challenge for sovereign States in
bilateral relations
• EU as an actor of external policy
– Objectives, actors, implementation
• Global Approach to Migration and Mobility
– Outside of the external policy
– One-sector approach
– No external tools
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20. Main challenges in external dimension of the EU
migration policy:
1) the limited ability of the EU to define its migration policy
with its 27 sovereign States;
2) tensions between the national and supranational level in
the EU as regards international cooperation on migration;
3) the diverging interests and priorities of sending regions
and/or partner countries;
4) the limited implementation capacities of the EU and its
Member States, as well as of partner countries.
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21. Conclusions
• Discourse on migration policy has been gradually skewed to limit the
concept to immigration policy.
• The states usually go through different migration policy regimes in
different historical periods.
• EU is a collation of various migration policy regimes but unifies them
under the labels Out-migration-restrainers and entry-regulators.
• EU policies on migration and mobility are not clearly divided. Traditionally
mobility is seen as a prerogative of EU nationals but analysis of EU
documents and language proves that the two concepts are more
intermingled, especially recently, and for a reason: to add a positive tone.
• EU policies on migration and mobility face challenges both internally and
externally, but the weaknesses are more visible in the external action.
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22. Thank you for attention!
www.carim-east.eu
agnieszka.weinar@eui.eu
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