Horizontal and Vertical Diversity: Unintended Consequences of EU External Migration Policy

ABSTRACT

Unintended consequences arising from EU external migration policy are a result of the multi-actor nature of this policy and of policy interactions. In addition, scholars face serious methodological challenges in establishing what the EU’s ‘intent’ is in external migration policy and, therefore, in determining which consequences are intended and which are unintended. The literature on the implementation and evaluation of EU external migration policy is in its infancy, and future work should take into account all policy outcomes – both those that were intended and those that were not.

KEYWORDS:

• EU migration policy
• unintended consequences
• policy interactions
• multilevel governance

Notes

1 Asylum policy regulates the admission of persons who fear persecution in their home country, in line with the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. Asylum-seekers are those who have filed an application for asylum in a host country, and refugees are those whose asylum application has been granted. Migration policy regulates the admission of migrants, i.e. those who move for any other reason than asylum – employment, education, family, retirement, etc.

2 This article is not concerned with the external effects of internal policies or the ‘reverberation’ of the EU outside its borders, but only of those policies which are negotiated together with non-EU countries. The EU’s visa list (Council Regulation (EC) No. 539/2001) is an example of an internal policy that undoubtedly has external effects, in that it states which countries’ citizens need a visa to enter the EU. But the list itself is determined within the EU, between the Council and the European Parliament, therefore this is not an instance of EU external migration policy.

3 The policy analysis literature acknowledges that ambiguity of policy objectives may be purposeful because it allows a broader range of actors to throw their support behind a policy (Hogwood and Gunn 1984, 222).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Natasja Reslow

Natasja Reslow is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law at Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands.