Member states’ role orientations in the migration/refugee crisis: hard-wired or oversimplifications?

The lack of progress in enacting policy responses to the 2015-current migration crisis is frequently blamed on irreconcilable member state preferences, which are supposedly hard-wiring states into ‘arrival’, ‘transit’, ‘destination’, and ‘free-rider/bystander’ roles. But are these roles really set in stone; or would a deeper, empirical examination yield a more nuanced picture? This paper uses issue-by-issue hand coding (the ‘confrontational method’) to enable a more fine-grained analysis and comparison of individual Member State positions, a technique more commonly applied to the coding of political party positions at a domestic level. Subsequently, the paper employs dimension reduction techniques to empirically test the veracity of the aforementioned conventional role orientations. Using dimension reduction techniques allows for both an empirical assessment of these pre-existing role labels, as well as for an experimental approach at finding underlying issue dimensions not identified by or consistent with those roles. In light of specific developments, such as the recent ‘hybrid attack’ migration movements on the EU’s borders with Belarus and Northern Cyprus, the controversy regarding physical barriers and the (non)use of development funds for migration purposes, we seek to assess whether such temporary dynamics produce notable shifts in the role orientations or preferences of affected states. The paper would serve as a stepping stone for comparing the applicability of role orientations between policy fields. For example, analysts project similarly strong role labels in the Covid Relief Fund and European Stability & Growth pact negotiations: are these traceable empirically to specific dimensions, and do these dimensions or role orientations have commonalities with other policy fields?