Is immigration policy becoming more complex? An analysis of the German migration policy from 1990 to 2023

When studying the evolution of immigration policies, scholars have primarily focused on how regulations governing who is permitted to enter a country and who is not have become more/less restrictive/liberal over time. In this field of research, comparative and longitudinal studies, such as IMPIC or DEMIG, have significantly advanced our knowledge of how to measure policy outputs (i.e. regulations ‘on paper’). Nonetheless, when seeking to comprehend the relationship between policy outputs and outcomes, scholars have observed a disparity between expected and actual migration policy results. This is exemplified, for instance, by cases where, after adopting new restrictions in the law, migration increased. To contribute to a better understanding of the implementation and efficacy gaps in migration policy, we propose the addition of another dimension to the analysis, specifically, 'policy complexity.' In this paper, I first present indicators for measuring the various facets of migration policy complexity, including internal, external, and multilevel aspects. Subsequently, using an original dataset, I employ these indicators to assess whether German immigration policy has become more complex over the period from 1990 to 2023.