Whither EU Migration Policy?

Georg Menz is lecturer in political economy at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Migration is a highly topical and extremely politicised issue in contemporary European affairs. Eight trends are currently discernible, some of which may appear at first to contradict each other:

1. Governments throughout Europe are experimenting again with schemes to promote temporary labour migration. For the first time since the 1973 oil shocks, governments are thus prepared actively to recruit labour migrants. The most attractive candidates fill labour-market shortages either at the high-skill, high-pay end in sectors such as information technology, or at the bottom end in sectors such as personal care, tourism, agriculture and construction. Thus, Romanian engineers work for German computer companies, Moroccan workers pick Spanish olives, and Slovak youths may be found changing the sheets in Austrian hotels.

2. The recent electoral successes of right-wing populist parties in France, the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, Portugal and Denmark seem to point in a different direction from this labour-migration trend. Voters endorse xenophobic, nativist rhetoric and policy. Whether flamboyant in word and deed like Holland’s late Pim Fortuyn or staunchly conservative in demeanour like France’s Jean-Marie Le Pen, Europe’s New Right milks diffuse anxieties over economic internationalisation, alienation from the existing political system, and old and new nationalism by blaming a convenient scapegoat: immigrants. Existing immigrant communities are accused of unwillingness to integrate or—better yet—assimilate, while new immigration is rejected outright, on the grounds that “the boat is full”.

3. The European Union, not least because of the increasing urgency of the issues immigration raises for its member states, is making serious noises about moving towards a common asylum and migration policy by 2004. In October 1999, an entire meeting of the European Council in Tampere, Finland, was devoted to attempting to establish a common procedure for refugees and to outlining the contours of a future direction in asylum and migration policy. “Zero immigration” was explicitly rejected as a policy goal. More recently, the June 2002 EU summit in Seville also focused on these questions.

4. Migration has become a very “securitised” issue. While the modern nation-state has always considered control over access to its physical territory a basic constitutive right, in the post–11 September climate of anxiety over the possibility of terrorist attacks by immigrants who might exploit increasingly transparent borders, European governments have stepped up the surveillance powers of law enforcement agencies, especially with regard to Muslim immigrant groups. Enthusiasm for a policy beyond Fortress Europe waned significantly between Tampere and Seville.

5. The formerly liberal asylum laws of western Europe are undergoing dramatic change. While lip service is still being paid to the generous 1947 Geneva Convention on Refugees, the sad reality is one of increased border patrols, carrier sanctions on airlines and shipping companies, and quick deportation schemes to “safe” third countries. There are also domestic administrative measures clearly intended to render the status of political asylum less attractive to claimants, such as payment in kind, grocery vouchers and appalling living quarters. Moreover, southern European countries in particular do not seem to hesitate in pursuing “beggar-thy-neighbour” policies. Thus, local authorities in the south of Italy, overwhelmed by the arrival of sea-borne refugees from Albania, Turkey, Iran and countries even further afield, simply put these individuals on trains—northbound with a one-way ticket.

6. Quite aside from all the rhetorical clamour over asylum-seekers and the wisdom of recruiting labour migrants in an era of mass unemployment, the numerically largest and most important source of migration—family reunion—was in fact never entirely closed and continues to add to existing migrant communities throughout Europe. Family reunion programmes thus reinforce the existing ethnic distribution of migrants: Turks go to Germany and the Netherlands, Moroccans and Algerians to France and Belgium, Pakistanis and Jamaicans to Britain. EU member states now want to curb this flow by passing a directive putting age limits on the eligibility of children for family reunification.

7. Despite an often belligerent media, despite governments eager to please right-wing nativist voters and parties by appearing tough and unwelcoming to undesired immigrants, the demographic reality in modern Europe—west and east—is one of an inverting age pyramid. Demographically, the Old Continent is getting older. Life expectancy is rising thanks to medical advances, while birth rates are declining because of social change and deficiencies in (affordable) child support facilities. The end of mass unemployment may be just around the corner, and labour market shortages, particularly in highly skilled niches or unattractive low-pay sectors, are already surfacing.

8. Finally, despite this workplace need for population inflow, current EU member states, particularly those sharing borders with the 2004 entry candidates, have been most vociferous in advocating the imposition on their eastern neighbours of temporary bans on labour mobility and transnational service provision.¹ In Austria and Germany particularly, there is considerable concern that EU expansion may produce a wave of Polish, Slovak, Czech and Hungarian migration westwards. Populist angst filtered through Jörg Haider’s far-right Freedom party in Austria, and fears of a revival of extremist sentiment in Germany, have resulted in a seven-year transition period during which a temporary labour mobility and service provision ban will apply to the new member states. The transition period was considered necessary despite the recent net reversal of westward migration from Poland to Germany, the rapid economic growth enjoyed by some central European countries, and borders which are de facto already open because of the absence of a visa regime. If Spain and Portugal’s 1986 EU accession is any guide, there should be little migration seven years after the next EU enlargement.

Where is European migration policy heading? What can be expected of future developments at EU and national level? And what do the eight trends described above amount to?

Return of the Guestworker

During the postwar economic boom until the 1973 oil shocks, labour migration was actively encouraged to meet the needs of a rapidly expanding economy. France, Britain, and to a lesser extent Belgium and the Netherlands, turned to their colonial empires, while Germany, Austria and Switzerland, cut off from their traditional labour pools in central and eastern Europe, invited workers from south-eastern and southern Europe.

It was here in German-speaking Europe, which had inherited from nineteenth-century romanticism an ethnic definition of citizenship, rather than the idealistic political one of France (and to a lesser extent Britain), that the concept of Gastarbeiter (guestworker) was invented. “They called for human resources,” quipped Swiss author Max Frisch, “but human beings arrived.” Instead of the easily disposable isolated industrial workers that the authorities had hoped would come to stay for a few years, young ambitious immigrants arrived who had little intention of returning to their home countries. In fact, the end to active recruitment in 1973 encouraged them to bring their wives and families north, before the gates closed. The “guestworker” system was brought to perfection in Switzerland, where cohorts of migrants were regularly “exchanged” for new ones. It had detrimental effects not only on the states employing it, which could continue to adhere to the illusion that they were not countries of immigration, but on the immigrants themselves, who were never encouraged to integrate into host cultures that perceived them as temporary guests.

With the benefit of hindsight, the guestworker concept can be said to have been less than a resounding success. How surprising, then, that we are currently witnessing its resurrection. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany introduced a recruitment programme for skilled workers in 2000, primarily in information technology, and followed this with a recruitment programme for personal carers, such as helpers for the elderly, in 2002. These initiatives continue similar temporary recruitment programmes that the former West Germany experimented with in the 1980s, when it invited Poles to provide help during harvests. Austria, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Spain and Portugal have likewise introduced temporary labour recruitment programmes, primarily in low-skill sectors such as tourism, agriculture and construction. Typically, bilateral labour contracts are concluded with countries that already serve as pools of illegal labour migration. Thus, illegal migration is channelled, controlled and presumably curtailed, with beneficial effects for all involved: higher wages and greater security for workers, and protection from law enforcement crackdowns for employers. In practice, the picture is a lot less pretty, since abusive pay and work conditions often persist and these legal channels are commonly used to transmit illegal workers as well.²

At the low-skill end, receiving countries are arguably simply legalising what is going on anyway. At the high-skill end, European countries are entering into a competition for workers with their former dominions that have traditionally defined themselves as receiving countries of migration: Argentina, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Human resources are henceforth re-emerging as a scarce and valuable commodity produced by the global South, and Europe is eager to challenge the monopolistic access that the classic target countries of immigration used to enjoy.

Yet hesitancy persists about proclaiming Europe a new destination target—at least for skilled migrants. The German programme bears the misleading title “green card”. Unlike the US permanent resident status to which this ostensibly alludes, however, only a seven-year work permit is given to highly skilled migrants under the German scheme. Small wonder, then, that at the high-skill level recruitment figures in Germany have been disappointing: so far, only 10 per cent of the quota has been filled, mainly with Romanians. Given the restrictions, few skilled migrants are willing to choose Germany over Canada or New Zealand, both of which have long had a migration policy offering permanent residency based on points awarded according to skills, formal education level, and command of English.

Fortress Europe

This reluctance to endorse immigration wholeheartedly may well be related to the fact that only desirable labour migrants are permitted access to Fortress Europe (and preferably temporary access at that). By contrast, the vast numbers of undocumented migrants received outside officially sanctioned channels are treated as a nuisance, despite being tolerated de facto.

While there may be a tendency across Europe to abandon the restrictive stance towards migration characteristic of the post–oil shock era, it is equally true that a sharp distinction is being drawn between “useful” (labour) migrants and refugees, who are much less welcome but are accepted in lip service to the Geneva Convention, albeit with much moaning and groaning. Although labour migrants may be actively solicited, every effort is made to render asylum and refugee status unappealing and to impede physically refugees from reaching Europe’s shores. Bavaria’s interior minister Günther Beckstein has made this point bluntly: “We need to distinguish between those [migrants] that will do us good, and those that take advantage of us.”

Given the saliency of the migration issue, it is unsurprising that efforts have been made at the EU level to secure common policies on immigration and asylum. Such efforts began in the early 1990s and were prompted by a number of factors: the increase in actual immigration western Europe experienced following the collapse of state socialism in the east; a rise in the number of political asylum claimants; and the electoral successes of far-right xenophobic parties in key countries such as France and Germany. In France at this time, the law was modified so as to deny the automatic bestowal of French citizenship on children born on French territory to non-French parents. Minister of the Interior Charles Pasqua proclaimed “zero immigration” an official target, and President Jacques Chirac launched an infamous populist attack on the “odours and noises” of large immigrant families, whom he also effectively accused of sponging off the welfare system. On the other side of the Rhine, violent attacks on foreigners, especially asylum-seekers, mounted, and German asylum laws, hitherto among the most liberal in Europe, were drastically tightened.

Until recently, observers could rightfully criticise the construction of a “Fortress Europe”: external border controls were stepped up and visa policy toughened, while at the same time interior borders were abolished in the interest of the single market. Although it is true that the abolition of internal borders raised the question of how to deal with non-EU citizens, the current restrictive path of EU immigration policy was not predetermined: it seemed to grow out of national or multilateral initiatives, notably the 1990 Dublin and Schengen agreements. Both agreements emerged from bilateral moves among individual member states and were only later integrated into subsequent treaties, notably Maastricht and Amsterdam. This lumping of immigration and political asylum into the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam (Articles 61 and 62)—thus placing them within the realm of responsibility of ministers for police, justice and domestic security affairs—was indicative of a growing trend towards securitisation. The common ground that could be found was to draw up a list of states whose residents required visas to visit the European Union (unsurprisingly, most of them turned out to be so-called Third World countries). EU migration policy is also firmly within the sphere of the Council of Ministers, which impedes public and parliamentary scrutiny and assures firm member-state control over this sensitive issue.

Barriers to a Unified Stance

The October 1999 Tampere European Council meeting was dedicated exclusively to the issues of migration, refugees and asylum, underlining the importance they have assumed in the eyes of European policymakers. The need for a common policy in this area was broadly agreed, echoing similar admonishments in the Amsterdam Treaty. However, so far progress towards this goal has been hampered because the intergovernmental decision-making mode adopted often sees the very divergent national traditions of migration policy clash in the Council of Ministers.

I have already commented on the radically distinct “ethnic” versus “idealist” concepts of citizenship held respectively by German-speaking Europe on the one hand, and by France and Britain on the other. Related to this conceptual divide are the distinct traditions of tolerating temporary labour migration (guestworkers) and of accepting more permanent labour migrants from the former colonial empires. In the present European Union, there is an additional cleavage between countries with a long history of immigration, often pre-dating the two world wars (France, Britain, Germany), and countries that only over the past decade have become targets, rather than sources, of migration (Spain, Portugal, Greece, Ireland and, to some extent, Italy). This latter experience is shared by some of the central European applicant countries. Since the mid-1990s, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary have matured from being transit countries for migrants en route to the “golden West” from Ukraine, Belarus, the former Soviet Central Asian republics, and points even further east, to becoming target countries for such migrants.

Given these important differences in tradition, experience and interest, it is unsurprising that little has been accomplished so far. Even now when pan-European challenges exist (such as demographic trends and labour-market shortages in some sectors), there is a remarkable degree of inertia in designing common asylum and migration policies. The unfortunate tradition of short-sighted “beggar-thy-neighbour” practices continues, particularly with regard to undesired refugees. Germany, once by far the preferred EU destination of asylum-seekers and refugees, especially from war-torn Yugoslavia, used to be vociferous about the need for a pan-European burden-sharing. Now that the war has ended and Britain is emerging as a more popular destination for refugees, German enthusiasm for such a scheme seems to be waning.

Nevertheless, despite the obstacles to achieving a common stance, it is unlikely that European migration policy will remain stalled indefinitely. The stakes are too high, the pressures too numerous. Given that both the European Commission (the EU executive body) and member states have the right to propose policy (the latter until 2004, when the right to submit proposals passes to the commission alone), they will scramble to influence the contours of future developments. While national governments may enjoy a first-mover advantage in agenda-setting and may seek to propose programmes already tried and tested back home, it must be kept in mind that decision-making proceeds unanimously. This renders lowest common denominator solutions most likely.

Outflanked by the Right

What commonalities can be identified? Europe wants and needs migrants, but only those of immediate economic benefit. Willingness to accept refugees on humanitarian grounds alone is dwindling, even though these refugees may well benefit the societies and economies of recipient countries in the long term. Never mind the shifting age pyramid: no European country is yet prepared to declare itself a country of immigration. When an expert group commissioned by the German government suggested that Germany do precisely that, the subsequent draft bill was fervently vetoed by the opposition in parliament.

Whether in France, Britain or Germany, the official line of interior ministers is the need for present migrant communities to “integrate”. This stance would be less problematic if it marked an end to the “guestworker approach” (which is certainly not confined to German-speaking Europe), or if it signalled a serious willingness by recipient countries to accept that they have become multi-ethnic polities. Moreover, “integrating existing migrants first” is unfortunately a demand that is also voiced by Europe’s smarter New Right. The “Armani fascists” in Austria or Denmark no longer simply urge that all foreigners go home, as France’s National Front does. Instead, they postulate “integration” for those already present, and that the doors be shut against newcomers. This stance dovetails all too well with the separation of foreigners into desirables and undesirables espoused by more moderate, mainstream politicians.

Apart from selective pathways into Fortress Europe, to be carved and outlined in the near future, the great walls surrounding it will remain insurmountable. Not only has the surge of right-wing parties throughout Europe made a more progressive policy unlikely at both the national and EU levels, but migration has also become increasingly “securitised” in the aftermath of the 11 September terrorist attacks on the United States. Migrants, especially from Muslim countries, were cast as a potential threat to domestic security. The irony went largely unnoticed that the Hamburg-based al-Qaeda cell, to which lead 11 September hijacker Mohammad Atta belonged, consisted of exactly the type of young, ambitious, skilled, and seemingly apolitical and well-integrated migrants Germany and other European countries seek to attract. Instead, across Europe legislation was implemented to extend police powers and the array of surveillance permitted. Migrants in particular are targeted and commonly treated as second- or even third-class citizens, their personal data made widely available to law enforcement agencies.

Eastern and Southern Europe

Central and eastern European countries, currently on the brink of EU entry, have already been integrated into the EU migration regime. Realising these countries’ potential as both direct and transit sources of undesirable migrants, the European Union, since the 1993 Copenhagen summit, has prodded and cajoled them into imposing visa requirements on non-EU nationals, into stepping up patrols along their eastern borders, and into accepting the status of “safe” third countries. This status means that asylum-seekers arriving in EU countries from central and eastern Europe can be sent straight back without their claim for asylum being considered.

The main implication of the 2004 enlargement will be the eastward shift of the Schengen agreement abolishing internal border controls between EU member states in exchange for tighter enforcement along the union’s external frontiers. Newcomers such as Slovakia, Hungary and Poland, which traditionally expended few resources on controlling their eastern borders, have in the past few years begun to beef up controls as visa requirements on countries like the Ukraine have been enforced. The popular fear of a massive migration wave from the east appears unlikely to be realised. Not only have the new candidates accepted temporary restrictions on labour mobility and service provision, but their nationals have already enjoyed a decade of visa-free entry into the European Union. Indeed, along the German–Polish border—the area marking the largest immediate discrepancy of income worldwide—the heavy westward migration of the early 1990s has since declined and recently even become negative as successful migrants return home. Rather than a huge influx of east European migrants, enlargement is more likely to see a simple continuation of current patterns, i.e., temporary migration accompanied by semi-legal or illegal work.

More attention is likely to be paid to Europe’s “weak underbelly”, the countries bordering the Mediterranean. The Straits of Gibraltar have fast become Europe’s Rio Grande, separating the haves from the have-nots. North African port cities are transit points for migrants from sub-Saharan countries. Given the impending 2004 accession of two more Mediterranean nations, Malta and Cyprus, it is likely that the most desired final-destination countries, such as France, Germany and Britain, will lend the two newcomers financial and logistical support to help fend off unwanted migrants.

Even among Mediterranean countries themselves, which have only recently mutated into migrant destinations in their own right, the populace’s willingness to accept or at least tolerate migration seems to be waning. In Spain, agricultural workers from the Maghreb have been attacked. In Portugal, there is growing reluctance to accept more construction workers from Angola, Mozambique and the island of Sao Principe. In Greece and Italy, popular antipathy focuses on Albanians, but may soon extend to other migrant groups, including the growing number of “boat people” arriving in derelict vessels from the Middle East and Africa. Far-right parties are already represented in government coalitions in Italy and Portugal. Mediterranean hospitality was at least partly contingent on large numbers of migrants continuing northwards. Should they stop doing so, impeded further by northern government measures, attitudes in the Mediterranean south will certainly turn quickly.

The Path Ahead

Given, on the one hand, negative demographic trends in all of Europe that will sooner rather than later put an end to the age of mass unemployment, and on the other rapid population growth, continuing economic misery and political instability in the global South, one might easily imagine a “win–win” scenario in migration policy: European countries would accept a certain annual contingent of southern migrants, based on an individual country’s size and demographic needs. This straightforward migration channel would not affect the right to political asylum, which would continue to exist, yet might be claimed less frequently, as potential migrants would no longer be forced to apply for asylum as one of the few legal channels for admittance. However, it seems unlikely that such an audacious, yet honest, solution would gain majority political support.

Equally unlikely, though, because of the high profile and urgency migration has assumed, is a continuation of EU inertia combined with national policies coloured by past concepts and ideological approaches. The most likely outcome, I argue, is an EU migration and asylum policy based on the lowest common denominator among themselves that member states can relatively easily identify as such. National (and/or European Commission) initiatives may set the agenda, but they have to secure a majority among all parties concerned.

Such a majority seems likely for channels allowing high-skill and low-skill migrants into Fortress Europe. Labour-market shortages and the demands of organised business favour some adaptation of a pan-European temporary labour migration programme. Family reunion will continue to be commonly disregarded as a major source of migration, and so is unlikely to be regulated at the EU level. Henceforth, the European Union will compete globally for skilled (and unskilled) migrants with former classic immigration target-countries. In attempting to attract the cream of the crop, the European Union will thus opt for the present-day Canadian, rather than the early-twentieth-century US, model.

The resurgence of the far right makes remote any more inclusive migration policy. Indeed, projecting present trends into the future, as far as “undesirable” refugees and asylum-seekers are concerned, future policy both at the national and European levels will probably be more and not less restrictive. Some current policies are already testing the limits of the Geneva Convention, or even trespassing outright into forbidden territory, as does the practice of immediately deporting refugees back to so-called safe third countries.

Once select channels into Fortress Europe have been opened, even more rigorous efforts to exclude uninvited entrants may be expected. In this, the richer northern countries will assist their poorer eastern and southern neighbours, as the embattled zones of entry emerge more clearly than today along the eastern borders of Poland, Hungary and Slovakia, and the shores of the Mediterranean. Repression on the external frontiers will find its domestic equivalent in the heightened control and surveillance of migrants amid the paranoid post–11 September climate. Not all demands for migrants to integrate are unreasonable, but opportunities for them to do so must first be afforded.

On migration and asylum, Europe appears to be “muddling through” and blending various national approaches in search of an overall policy that addresses—very cautiously—the practical need for labour migration. The outcome is hardly audacious or progressive, and it is debatable whether it can even be effective. Competing with the comparatively welcoming migration target-countries of the Americas and Australasia is ambitious, but unlikely to succeed given the importance of ethnic networks. And if the analogy to the US–Mexican border holds, seeking to exclude unwanted migrants from the south and east is a lost battle. Rendering asylum status less attractive not only puts under strain the liberal self-definition and values of Western societies, but will fail to deter refugees fleeing political persecution. If a policy appears thus flawed, would it not make sense to revise it?

Endnotes

1. “Transnational service provision”, one of the Maastricht Treaty’s “four freedoms”, refers to the provision of a service, for instance in construction, in country B by a company from country A. The worry of EU border countries such as Austria and Germany is that this might see the wages of their domestic workers being seriously undercut by Polish, Slovakian and Czech companies.

2. See Georg Menz, “Beyond the Anwerbestopp? The German–Polish Labor Treaty”, Journal of European Social Policy 11, no. 3 (August 2001).