Convergence, capitalist diversity, or political volatility? Immigration policy in Western Europe

ABSTRACT

Are immigration policies in European countries converging? Or do some countries remain more open to immigrants than others? We address these questions through an analysis of labour migration policies in five European countries from 1990 to 2016. Using an original immigration policy index (ImPol) to measure policy restrictiveness we examine whether policies have converged, to what extent immigration regimes reflect distinct ‘varieties of capitalism’, and whether national policy trajectories are shaped by domestic politics. We find little evidence of convergence; mixed evidence that immigration policy regimes reflect capitalist diversity; and strong evidence that policies respond to changes in domestic political conditions. Whilst ‘varieties of capitalism’ may set the broad parameters for immigration regimes, the direction and timing of policy changes are determined by domestic political competition.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigration
• labour migration
• political economy
• varieties of capitalism

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge funding under the EU FP7 Temper project (Grant number: 613468). We would also like to thank members of the Temper project for their coding and help with developing the ImPol index: Amparo González-Ferrer, Yoan Molinero Gerbeau, Tatiana Eremenko, Oliver Wolf and Mélanie Jolivet-Guetta. Finally, thanks to Marc Helbling and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the paper.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author [James Hampshire], upon reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Erica Consterdine is a Lecturer in Public Policy at Lancaster University.

James Hampshire is Reader in Politics at the University of Sussex.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 For methodological details including coding scheme of ImPol see Consterdine and Hampshire (2016).

2 We ran separate tests using only entry conditions to verify our results for general, low-skilled and high-skilled, and the results of the separated and aggregate analyses correspond with one another. We do find moderate convergence on conditions attached to admission on the general route, especially in the mid-2000s (likely due to implementation of the 2003 European Long Term Residents’ Directive). However, there is little convergence on entry criteria.

3 Devitt (2011) examines capitalist diversity and migration, but focuses on labour migration flows rather than policy. Paul (2016) examines VoC and policy outputs, but her analysis is limited to a comparison of Britain and Germany. Ruhs (2018) covers more countries, but only for a single year (2009) and tests only temporary labour migration programmes for each country.

4 Our analysis has considered only labour migration policies, which, in contrast to other migration streams such as family or humanitarian forms of migration, are discretionary and therefore not subject to the same kinds of legal constraints.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Seventh Framework Programme: [Grant Number 613488].