Ireland’s evolving migration policies: building alliances and a liberal European identity through the EU migration policy crisis

ABSTRACT

Although Ireland’s migration policy has converged towards EU norms, it has overall been more influenced by the UK, and maintaining the common travel area, and by domestic politics, than by Europeanisation. Since migration is not highly salient or contentious in Ireland, the Irish government was free in 2015 to participate in the EU response to the migration policy crisis. Ireland opted in to relocate asylum seekers from Greece and Italy, and to resettle refugees from Lebanon, to provide personnel to the European Asylum Support Office and to dispatch the defence forces to participate in Operation Sophia in the Mediterranean. This practical expression of solidarity with those Member States with an external border also served to garner solidarity from the EU in the era of Brexit, and to reinforce a particular European identity for Ireland based on liberalism and cosmopolitanism, in the era of ‘illiberal democracy’ from certain quarters of the EU.

KEYWORDS:

• EU migration policy
• Ireland asylum-seekers
• European refugee policy
• policy crisis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Aideen Elliot is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Maynooth University. Aideen received her MA in Social Anthropology of Development from SOAS, University of London where she conducted research on anti sex-trafficking policy. Her PhD research ‘Beyond the Borders: EU Migration Policy Making’ has been awarded the Irish Research Council (IRC) Government of Ireland Scholarship. Her study uses extensive fieldwork in Brussels to examine EU migration policy from the perspectives of the policy makers and influencers, exploring the ways in which migration policy is perceived, conceived and lived by those charged with policy making and professionally implementing it. She contributes opinion pieces to The Irish Association for Contemporary European Studies (IACES) https://www.iaces.ie/

ORCID

Aideen Elliott http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7392-4720

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Post-Graduate Scholarship (2016–2020).