Jean Monnet Module on Agenda-Setting in the European Union – ASEU
Agenda-Setting Processes in EU Migration Policy.
Marcello Carammia (University of Malta)
marcello.carammia@um.edu.mt
Description:
This lecture focuses on how past and recent developments in EU integration in migration matters impacted
on the EU’s migration policy agenda. This has been an area of increasing EU activity for the last three
decades or so, and despite the growing number of studies there is still a lack of agreement on many
important questions – starting from the central yet often misleading question whether EU migration policy
is liberal or restrictive.
We move from the analysis of migration flows over the last 50 years – looking at the EU as a whole, as well
as to single European countries to make sense of the differential impact of migration to Europe. We then
focus the factors affecting the migration-management capacity of democratic political systems.
Subsequently, we look at the different stages of EU integration in migration – emphasising both the path
toward increasing supranationalism and the legacy of earlier forms of cooperation on later ones – and see
how throughout this process those constraints to migration control emerged and evolved at the EU level .
We then review the existing explanations of EU integration in migration and EU migration policies, looking
at how integration processes are said to influence migration policy outcomes. A gap currently exists in
theories of EU migration policy, between established explanations of integration in migration that postulate
the development of a “Fortress Europe” on the one hand, and recent studies highlighting (also) some forms
of right-expanding outputs on the other hand.
In the second part of the lecture we analyse the EU migration policy agendas by looking at original data on
attention to and images of migration in the main EU institutions: the European Commission, the Council of
Ministers, the European Parliament, and the European Council. By focusing on policy images and policy
venues, we reconnect developments in EU integration in migration with the increasingly diverse EU
migration policy. We then move on to simulate an EU decision-making process on migration policy, where
stakeholders will seek to uphold their priorities on the final version of a policy proposal of the European
Commission.
Readings
Core readings:
1
Boswell, Christina, e Andrew Geddes. 2011. Migration and mobility in the European Union. London:
Palgrave Macmillan., ch.1 [Available at EDC]
Boswell, Christina. 2007. «Migration Control in Europe After 9/11: Explaining the Absence of
Securitization*». JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 45(3): 589–610.
Guiraudon, Virginie. 2000. «European Integration and Migration Policy: Vertical Policy-making as Venue
Shopping». Journal of Common Market Studies 38(2): 251–271.
Further readings:
Geddes, Andrew, e Virginie Guiraudon. 2004. «Britain, France, and EU Anti-Discrimination Policy: The
Emergence of an EU Policy Paradigm». West European Politics 27(2): 334–353.
Guiraudon, Virginie. 2003. «The Constitution of A European Immigration Policy Domain: A Political
Sociology Approach». Journal of European Public Policy 10(2): 263–282.
Huysmans, Jef. 2000. «The European Union and the Securitization of Migration». JCMS: Journal of Common
Market Studies 38(5): 751–777.
2