European migration policies

AuthorNicolaie Iancu
PositionPh.D. Candidate, Lecturer, AGORA University, Faculty of Law and Economics
Pages91-97
EUROPEAN MIGRATION POLICIES
Nicolaie Iancu*
Abstract
The author’s purpose is to provide a brief overview of the European migration policies that have
sometimes led to the emergence of certa in political dilemmas. Severa l considerations were made regarding the
policies in this field, which may be divided into four categories: la bour migration policy, migra tion contr ol
policy, the asylum and protection systems, respectively, integration policies.
Keywords: policy, migration, asylum, protection, la bour, integration.
Introduction
Europea n governments and electorates a re now fa cing major ch allenges which, in a way, explain the
ambivalent a ttitude towards the phenomenon of immigration: a tendency to encoura ge it, while there ar e also
signs of r ejection, economic opportunism a nd disappointment with the results of the integration pr ocesses, and
the examples could go on.
The conflicts sometimes shift to the internal scene, given the fact that, in many Europea n countries, the
number and the economic and political power of ethnic groups are increasing, leading to new pressur es and
incentives to include the interests of ethnic minorities in the economic and socia l policies, and these tendencies
often clash with populist movements. In this r espect, the specialty literatur e highlights the fact that governments
will insist on a stricter "screen ing" of th e immigration flows, in order to incr ease the number and qua lity of
"wanted" immigrants while firmly blocking the entrance of the "unwanted", even if this catego ry includes,
besides illegal migra nts and refugees, asylum seekers an d humanitar ian cases
1.
I. Labour migration policy. In many countries, there is a serious conflict between the eco nomic and
demographic arguments to encourage and expand labour migration and p ublic opposition to immigration
increase. The European states have dealt with this problem in different manners. In most cases, governments
have managed to include in their legislation certain measures for the liberalization of lab our circulation or
programs to attract labour; most of these were for highly skilled migrants, in the form of point systems,
controlled recruitment procedures in certain sectors or professions, or by facilitating access to employment for
foreign students graduating from national education institutions.
These programs were implemented in addition to the e xisting common provisions applying to skilled
migration that were already present in most European countries: individ ual work permits, knowledge test
employment, or intra-company transfers.
However, explicit attempts to expand these programs have been contested politically, and the most
widespread way of promoting them was to "sell" liberalization "to pack" with promises for a stricter screening of
other migrants, of refugees and other categories that generat e no economic profit2. Governments have considered
it appropriate to introduce as an alternative or in addition certain guarantees that these p rograms are temporary
and will not be permanently established (for example, the German Green Card pro gram). In other cases,
governments avoided political conflicts by implementing the liberalizatio n programs in a less transparent
manner, through acts and decrees that did not require parliamentary sanction and, consequently, drew less media
attention. Another tactics was to toler ate substantial volumes of illegal migration or period ic adjustment
programs, in order to meet the demand for po orly and medium-qualified labour on the domestic market (e.g., in
France, Greece, Ital y, Portugal and Spain). Trying to cover their additional labour needs, many of the i ndustrial
countries "closed" their eyes to the use of irregular migrants as labour. T he practices of tolerance towards this
category, as well as the implementation of p eriodic adjustment programs for unauthorized workers ma y, in
certain respects, be regarded as constituting a factual liberalization of the global labour market3. However, the
Global Commission on International Migration considered that the resort to adjustment programs demonstrates a
lack of coherence between national policies on migration and, respectively, on the labour market. Adjustment
has never been a preferred instrument of economic policy or of labour market intervention, it is rather a means of
last resort used in the case of illegal migrants whose presence has become uncontrollable by other means.
Adjustment programs are controversial, for the most part, with a distinction between those who argue the
benefits of adjustment (as a response to the realities of illegal migration flow increase and the expansion of
* Ph.D. Candidate, Lecturer, AGORA University, Faculty of Law and Economics, e-mail:niancu2009@yahoo.com
1 Boswell, Christina (2005), Migration in Europe, Policy Analysis and Research Programme of the Global Commission on International
Migration, http://www.gcim.org/attachements/RS4.pdf.
2 Boswell, Christina (2005), op.cit.
3 GCIM (2005), Migration in an Interconnected World: New Directions for Action. Report by the Global Commission for International
Migration,
http://www.gcim.org/attachements/gcim-complete-report-2005.pdf.

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