This paper provides a fresh account to the origin and evolution of European Union (EU) asylum and migration cooperation through the analytical lens of ‘timescapes’ (Adam 2008). It shows that a particular pattern of cooperation can be revealed if one contextualises the political decisions to pursue this cooperation initially outside the supranational framework and its subsequent inclusion through the Treaty of Amsterdam. More specifically, this pattern is one of institutionalising a ‘reactive sequence’ - a chain ‘of temporally ordered and causally connected events’ (Mahoney 2000: 509). A sequence is deemed to be ‘“reactive” in the sense that each event within the sequence is in part a reaction to temporally antecedent events’ (ibid). In the case of EU asylum and migration cooperation, this reactive sequence is identified as the decisions to set up Schengen and the so-called Ad Hoc Group on Immigration.
This paper will show that the formation of the Schengen Group outside of the then Community framework caused the non-members – especially the UK – to push for establishing a comparable intergovernmental arrangement within. The reason for this, as will be demonstrated, was the concern of some of the non-Schengen members that the more ‘liberal’ Schengen model could become the modus operandi for European asylum and migration cooperation. Seeking to minimise the (strong) likelihood of this scenario at the time, the UK proposed the creation of an Ad Hoc Group on Immigration that tackled the regulation of migratory flows from the viewpoint of security. The assumption was that the Ad Hoc Group on Immigration will fill the institutional ‘space’ that Schengen may have likely occupied in due course. This reactive sequence constitutes the origin of European cooperation in these two policy fields, and the evolution of this cooperation has been a process of institutionalising this compromise (see Figure 1 below).
What this perspective offers to studies of the European integration process is a rich account that is lacking in standard teleological and bargaining models. In particular, it provides the analytical tool to empirically investigate the ways in which spillover occurs beyond the neo-functionalist tenets. Specifically in this case, the attention is focussed on the conditions under, and the context against, which Schengen started (i.e. to realise free movement of persons). The causal linkage between the free movement objective and the initiation of EU external migration cooperation remains contested in the literature (see debate in for e.g. Lavenex 2001), and this paper aims to contribute to this debate. The paper will conclude by discussing the methodological and empirical obstacles to a time-centred analysis and suggest some ways of overcoming them.
