The EU as a strategic actor in international migration policy?

Abstract

While the EU has strived for a strategic, leverage-based approach to external migration policy since the inception of cooperation on the issue (Boswell, 2003), research on policy initiatives in the external dimension of migration has shown both the normative and practical limits of this approach: the external dimension has long been a complicated issue for “normative power Europe” (Manners, 2002), with the conflicting priorities of holding up human rights and deterring unwanted migration (Lavenex, 2006). On a policy-level, initiatives were shown to be driven by institutionalized practices, embedded in broader frameworks for relations with non-EU countries (such as enlargement or Neighborhood Policy) (Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik et al., 2024; Lavenex & Stucky, 2011), and often hindered or rendered incoherent by parallel bilateral migration cooperation between Member States and non-EU countries (Hampshire, 2016). Over the last decade, however, the EU and the Commission specifically have been pursuing a more openly strategic and geopolitical approach to foreign policy. Since the Russian aggression on Ukraine, questions of geopolitics have also (re)entered discussions about immigration and asylum policy in the EU, while the adoption of the New Pact on Migration and Asylum arguably also constitutes a turning point away from a human-rights based approach (Wolff, 2024). Against this backdrop, this panel investigates whether the EU has become a more strategic actor in external migration policy. The papers in the panel analyze different initiatives and policies in the external dimension, from resettlement to return and readmission to funding to rhetoric and actions related to the “instrumentalization” of migration by non-EU countries. They ask to what degree EU action can be considered “strategic” and which factors facilitate or hinder a strategic approach, paying attention to intra-institutional differences and bargaining, the coherence between EU-level and Member State action and between stated goals and actually implemented actions as well as the rhetorical strategies behind “strategic” language in the external dimension. By shedding light on both EU ambition and rhetoric and actual patterns of cooperation and policy-making, the papers in this panel contribute to our understanding of not only EU external migration policies, but also the role of migration within the EU’s broader foreign policy in this “geopolitical era”.

Title	Details
Do refugee policies change depending on where the refugees come from? Evidence from the United Nations and the European Union	View Paper Details
The strategic use of resettlement in the EU and its (limited) impact on the adoption of the EU Resettlement Regulation	View Paper Details
Member States’ Return Cooperation with Non-EU Countries: Supporting, Replicating or Undermining EU Readmission Policy?	View Paper Details
Why Money Isn’t Enough: Italy and the Stalemate of EU-Africa Return and Readmission Policies	View Paper Details
The instrumentalisation of migration as an emerging paradigm in EU policy-making?	View Paper Details