Explaining the Immigration Policy Mix: The Selective Openness Towards Asylum and Labour Migration

Immigration policies are ‘mixed bags’ consisting of a plethora of regulations on various sub-domains. In this article, we disentangle immigration policies and analyse the specific policy mix that countries choose in the regulation of immigration. Thereby, we distinguish between policies on asylum and policies on labour migration. How do states combine the humanitarian and economic motivation to admit migrants? Despite an increasing scholarship on explaining immigration policies, we know surprisingly little about what drives the specific immigration policy mix a country chooses. Is the selective openness of Western democracies driven by institutional dependencies or by partisan choice? We analyse 23 European democracies between 1980 and 2010. The findings suggest that countries vary substantially in their immigration policy mix but that they have converged over time.