Changing Migration Regimes in the EU Borderland : A Longitudinal Data Analysis of Migration Policies and their Enforcement at the Border

Absztrakt (kivonat)

This research examines the transformation of migration regimes against the background of changing political, social and economic constellations of the EU zone. By making use of statistical methods and extensive data from different sources, this paper analyses the migration regimes of twenty one liberal democracies of the EU with a focus on immigration policies and their enforcement, by asking whether the EU has become generally more restrictive or increasingly selective after the millennium and whether the 2015 refugee crisis has resulted in a change in this trend. It shows that, instead of general restrictiveness, member states have been growingly adopting mechanisms of selection of migrants according to a neoliberal market paradigm that underpins migration policies, with a new regime characterized by harsher border surveillance and exit measures, that is strict on family and irregular immigrants, that since 2015 closed itself to asylum-seekers and refugees, while it eased entry corridor for high-skilled migrants, business people and international students. Furthermore, it provides evidence that the 2015 migrant crisis has pushed countries to adopt more restrictive measures on a short-term only. Based on the findings that border surveillance and irregular immigrants have been in the spotlight of policy makers, this research tries to understand the main determinants of restrictiveness at the border in terms of rejection of immigrants through a longitudinal and cross sectional analysis of EU countries. The research provides evidence that politics do not drive migration responses, rather that labor market structures are the most salient feature in determining more lenient responses to immigration.