European Migration Law

This book is a reflection of the social reality of mass migration in the EU from a legal perspective. It consists of a collection of essays reflecting on important current issues including the scope of the powers allocated to the EU, the cooperation of the EU with third countries and the emergence of international migration legal norms.

Migration is one of the greatest societal challenges of our time. It has many facets, from mass movements to escape war, climate, or human rights abuses to the search for economic opportunity and prosperity. Illicit industries facilitate border crossings at the expense of safety, and governments face problems of processing and integrating new arrivals. These challenges have had a profound impact in Europe, calling into question central values of solidarity and human rights. This book analyses the law and policy of migration in the European Union (EU) and its relationship to understandings of the EU as an international human rights actor. It examines the role crisis plays in determining the priorities of migration policy and the impact political exigencies have on the rights of migrants. This book problematises the EU Area of Freedom, Security, and Justice as a ‘home.’ Taking a governmentality approach to critique discourse, the idea of a holistic approach is deconstructed to explore notions of wellness, resilience, responsibilisation and externalisaton. The EU’s pursuit of a holistic approach to managing migration in crisis indicates problems with EU solidarity, and the tactics employed to bring the crisis under control reveal security concerns that provoke questions about the EU as an international human rights actor. Both this framework for analysis and the empirical findings make a significant contribution to how the migration crisis can be theorised using adaptable conceptual tools. Under this form of governance, migration becomes a phenomenon to be treated so that its symptoms are ameliorated. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of the EU, migration, and human rights as well as policymakers, commentators, and activists in these areas.

This book brings together, in one context, the European and international legal regimes on migration as applicable to the territories of the Member States of the EU. Its focus is on European Community legislation under Title III and Title IV of the EC Treaty, treaties concluded between the European Community and third countries, and international treaties concluded within the framework of the Council of Europe and the United Nations.

Large-scale migration constitutes an unavoidable social reality within the European Union. A European polity is made possible and tangible by the individual acts of migrants crossing the internal borders, developing a transnational life and integrating into European societies. Consequently, migration has become a special feature of the self-understanding of the European Union: its existence depends upon a continuing flow of persons crossing the borders of the Member States, and also upon the management of the flows of third-country nationals knocking at its doors. To respond to this challenge, the Union has developed common European migration policies. This book is a collection of essays which aim to explore a selected number of issues related to the development of these policies. It presents the current state, and the future of European immigration law discussing the political rationales and legal competences driving the action of the Union in this area. It reflects on the cooperation of the Union with third countries and on the emergence of international migration legal norms. It illustrates the role of the European Courts and the emergence of new actors through the adoption of EU instruments.

Principally, this book comprises a conceptual analysis of the illegality of a third-country national's stay by examining the boundaries of the overarching concept of illegality at the EU level. Having found that the holistic conceptualisation of illegality, constructed through a combination of sources (both EU and national law) falls short of adequacy, the book moves on to consider situations that fall outside the traditional binary of legal and illegal under EU law. The cases of unlawfully staying EU citizens and of non-removable illegally staying third-country nationals are examples of groups of migrants who are categorised as atypical. By looking at these two examples the book reveals not only the fragmentation of legal statuses in EU migration law but also the more general ill-fitting and unsatisfactory categorisation of migrants. The potential conflation of illegality with criminality as a result of the way EU databases regulate the legal regime of illegality of a migrant's stay is the first trend identified by the book. Subsequently, the book considers the functions of accessing legality (both instrumental and corrective). In doing so it draws out another trend evident in the EU illegality regime: a two-tier regime which discriminates on the basis of wealth and the instrumentalisation of access to legality by Member States for mostly their own purposes. Finally, the book proposes a corrective rationale for the regulation of illegality through access to legality and provides a number of normative suggestions as a way of remedying current deficiencies that arise out of the present supranational framing of illegality.

A critical discussion of EU and ECHR migration and refugee law, this book analyses the law on asylum and immigration of third country-nationals. It focuses on how the EU norms interact with ECHR human rights case law on migration, and the pitfalls of European human rights pluralism.

Immigration law continues to be an issue of substantial interest in the European Union. The institutions and the Member States are formulating the type of immigration law which the Union will have following the substantial move of competence in the field from Member State level to the Union with the amendments to the EC Treaty introduced by the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1999. This is a particularly important period within which to take stock of the existing immigration law of the European Union and how it has been developed. In order to understand the current law and lay the foundations for the future, a historical analysis of the development of European Union immigration law is needed. This volume charts the development of European Community immigration law from the conclusion of the EEC Treaty to the present day, first focussing on the development of the law relating to Community nationals and their third country national dependents, then looking at the extension of Community immigration law to third country nationals through agreements between their states of origin and the EC. Special attention is given to the rights of Turkish workers under the agreement between Turkey and the EC and the possibilities of residence and economic activity for nationals of the Central and Eastern European countries under the Europe Agreements. The centre of analysis of this book is the individual migrant: what are the rights and duties of the individual and what is his or her relationship of rights on the one hand with the Member State and on the other hand with the European Community? This book examines the structure and content of European Community immigration law from the perspective of the individual most closely affected by that law.

The main objective of this book is to present the on-going process of European integration via a comprehensive analysis of the institutional dynamics of, and politics linked with, the emerging migration law and policy of the European Union. More specifically, it presents the historical evolution, the main institutional legislative and policy steps, the position of, and interactions among, the different actors, and the factors impeding the formation of a common policy at EU level. On this basis a critical analysis is provided of the main institutional problems, the current policy framework, the overarching rationale as well as of the content and quality of the nascent EU migration law. The book is divided into three parts. The first two parts provide a comprehensive study of the institutional framework and the substantive EC/EU law respectively. The third and final part provides a more general analysis of the policy-making process. Since the major achievements in the field of migration are recent, the book focuses to a great extent on the post-Amsterdam era. However, for reasons of coherence and in order to better evaluate recent developments, a concise overview of the origins of this policy is provided. Moreover, special emphasis is placed on the Schengen acquis, since its mark on European affairs has been and remains pronounced. Overall the attempt has been to provide an account, which is up to date with extensive historical references and combines both an academic and practical perspective to the legal and political issues involved. The approach based on the above elements will contribute to a new understanding of the main aspects of EU migration law and its policy ramifications and will be of use to both academics and practitioners alike.