Immigration and Asylum Law and Policy in Europe – serie

Europe has come a long way at least in the institutional response to racism. This book describes the responses of the Council of Europe and the European Union to the worrying trends of racism and xenophobia in the 1990s, and considers the prospects for combating discrimination in Europe using tools that have emerged as a result. Part one looks at the evolution of the Council of Europe apparatus to combat discrimination and the anti-discrimination standards prescribed by its institutions. Part two considers the legislative measures recently adopted by the European Union. The contributions in Part three take a comparative perspective of all measures adopted at European level to combat racial and ethnic discrimination.

This volume traces the developments in the laws and practices of the European Union and five of its Member States (the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Italy) at two points in time: first at the time of the Gulf War following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 2000; secondly, following the terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001. The focus is on the legal status of immigrants and asylum seekers and how that legal status is being modified on grounds of security-related measures adopted over a period of about ten years. Particularly, the question is whether and how far situations have come into existence, which could be considered to be in conflict with fundamental principles of human rights.

Offering the first comprehensive analysis of readmission agreements, this book examines the intersection of immigration and human rights law and the complex interplay between evolving international, regional and national norms. Expanding the current academic and policy discourse on readmission agreements through detailed consideration of the negotiation processes carried out by the European Community, it renders a nuanced review of the underlying strategic objectives and regional effects of these treaties. The book makes a robust challenge to prevailing perspectives in legal scholarship and policy on readmission and refugee protection. The self-contained focus on EC readmission agreements throws light on broader questions of EU migration policy and reveals a detailed and insightful picture of a specific field of EU policy and action.

The Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) is a unique comparative study on indicators of the legal integration of third-country nationals. Though comparing countries on the basis of various indicator types is common in the private sector and increasingly used in policy areas like development, good governance and equality, the exercise remains relatively new in justice and home affairs. The book lays out the instruments used to construct the MIPEX and then situates the study within current debates on integration indicators and policy evaluation. Each chapter considers what the study’s key findings add to our understanding of the state of integration policy development across Europe and of recent legal and policy trends on anti-discrimination, naturalisation, labour market access, and political participation.

A central element of contemporary border regimes is their application to migrants before they reach a state's territory. The main forms of this extraterritorial immigration control are visa requirements, pre-embarkation immigration controls and the interception of irregular migrants at sea. This work analyses the complex relationship of the law to these practices, as legal guarantees are potentially avoided, while the legality of control is often uncertain. It examines the international law framework, including the law of the sea and the extraterritorial application of principles of non-refoulement contained in the Refugee Convention and in international human rights law. The work also includes detailed case-studies of the legal challenges posed by extraterritorial immigration controls in Europe, Australia and the United States.

Practices of immigration detention are largely resistant to conventional forms of legal correction because contemporary liberal democracies justify these practices with an appeal to their territorial sovereignty, a concept that thwarts the very communicability of individual interests in modern constitutionalism. However, this book argues that human rights in the specific context of immigration detention can function as “destabilisation rights”, subjecting to full legal scrutiny those claims that the national state presents as predominantly based on its territorial sovereignty. The resulting destabilisation of territorial sovereignty in both domestic and international constitutionalism will have ramifications for a number of instruments of migration control, the perceived necessity and legitimacy of which is almost exclusively based on the self-referential notion of territorial sovereignty.

Language and integration tests as a condition for naturalisation and various types of legal residence permits are topical issues in several European Member States. The introduction of the tests reflects a change in ideas on the relationship between legal status and integration.Since the introduction of the tests is a rather recent development, little is known of the effects of the formalised testing schemes. Whether the tests have in fact contributed to the integration of immigrants in the host society or whether they function as a mechanism for selection and exclusion is unknown. In this book, experts from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom analyse the policies concerning the integration of newcomers and/or future citizens in their countries.

This book studies the normative intersection between integration, immigration and nationality in the European Union (EU). It examines the relationship between integration and the legal frameworks of admission, stay and access to nationality by third country nationals at national and European levels. Integration is being subject to multifaceted processes transforming its traditional policy and legal settings, as well as its classical theoretical premises and approaches. The Europeanisation of immigration policy has provoked the emergence of distinctive European approaches on integration. The legal elements of integration are being developed through two parallel settings: the EU Framework on Integration and European immigration law. These venues constitute two of the main pillars upon which the common EU immigration policy is being constructed, and their nexus raises several elements in need of reflection and study. This book examines the processes through which integration becomes a norm in nationality and immigration law and policy at the national and EU levels, and the implications of these processes for the legal status of third country nationals and the overall coherency of the common EU immigration policy.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of EU legislation in the area of legal migration. Five Directives on family reunification, long-term residence, students, researchers and highly qualified migrants are critically assessed. Moreover, the implementation of the Directives in three Member States (Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden) and national legislation in two Member States with an opt-out from EU migration law (the UK and Netherlands) are assessed. This includes national rules on the integration of third-country nationals and access to citizenship. The book calls into question the compliance of several European and national provisions with EU principles of law and international human rights.

This book studies the implications for third-country nationals of the adoption of the Long-term Residence Directive. This Directive has the potential to become a subsidiary form of EU citizenship which escapes direct control by Member States. Hence, this Directive brings the prospect of transforming Member States’ control over the relationship between territory and population. In order to arrive at this conclusion, the book looks at its content and at the way in which Member States have implemented some of its most controversial articles. It then explores how the Court of Justice could interpret those articles, taking into account its previous jurisprudence on Turkish workers and EU citizens and calling into question the compliance of several national provisions with EU law.

More than a decade has passed since the appearance of the first issue of the European Journal of Migration and Law, which was established to examine the intertwining of issues of law and migration in the EU. This volume has been compiled to celebrate that anniversary. The journal itself is the basis for the book: authors who have written the most significant contributions for the journal on the relevant issues to the Area of Freedom Security and Justice (AFSJ) have revised and updated their articles in light of current developments. These are supplemented with new chapters on issues which have turned out to be particularly important to the development of the field. The success of the journal has demonstrated the need for informed, independent academic research on the changing nature of immigration and asylum in Europe, and this volume too seeks to meet that need. It offers a unqiue and lively collection of essays covering the field of EU immigration and asylum law from a variety of perspectives.

Migration on the Move examines the dynamics of migration and asylum law over the past two decades and highlights profound changes that have taken place in these fields as a result of growing EU competences to deal with migration and asylum questions. The book maps the transformation of the migration field by focusing on three interrelated issues: the effects of Europeanization and the shifting power relations that it implies; placing Europe’s laws and policies in a global migration context, and critically examining to whom ‘project’ Europe belongs. The contributors offer a multidisciplinary analysis of key aspects of the migration and refugee crisis and their implications for policies, principles of law, and the treatment of people in Europe today.

This collective volume draws on the themes of intersectionality and overlapping policy universes to examine and evaluate the shifting functions, frames and multiple actors and instruments of an ongoing and revitalized cooperation in EU external migration and asylum policies with third states. The contributions are based on problem-driven research and seek to develop bottom-up, policy-oriented solutions, while taking into account global, EU-based and local perspectives, and the shifting universes of EU migration, border and asylum policies. In 15 chapters, we explore the multifaceted dimensions of the EU external migration policy and its evolution in the post-crisis, geopolitical environment of the Global Compacts.

Since the past few years, the considerable influx of refugees to the EU has led to a profound reconceptualisation of its immigration control strategy, with emphasis on the co-option of new partners, such as the private sector or third countries, and the prevention of movement through extraterritorial controls. The externalisation of immigration control has also been increasingly linked with the securitisation and criminalisation of asylum, particularly in the form of tackling human smuggling to which those in need usually resort to. This edited volume that comprises of contributions by both legal scholars and practitioners, provides a multi-faceted overview of these legal responses and examines their implications from a human rights and rule of law perspective.

This collective volume examines how EU citizenship reconstructs in unexpected ways what citizenship as a status means and stands for. EU citizenship can neither be accurately described as a citizenship status similar to national citizenship, nor as an immigration one. The book examines the tension at the heart of attempts to grasp the nature of EU citizenship as supranational status in relation to family reunification, social rights and expulsion. It shows that while events such as Brexit stress the importance of EU citizenship, the construction of supranational citizenship along the axis of non-discrimination and equality remains a work in progress that requires the efforts of all actors involved - institutions, implementing authorities, courts and citizens.

Over the past two decades, EU Member States have regularly complained about the perceived abuse of EU law via marriages of convenience, allegedly contracted between mobile EU citizens and third-country nationals. During the pre-Brexit years, the UK had been voicing particularly strong concerns about the issue, which ultimately resulted in regulatory changes both at the EU and national level.In this book, Aleksandra Ancite-Jepifánova pursues two interrelated aims. First, she evaluates the compatibility of EU-level measures addressing marriages of convenience with EU free movement law by focusing on the Citizenship Directive. Second, she examines the regulation of the issue in UK law in so far as it concerns the residence rights of EU citizens and their family members, both pre-and post-Brexit.

Migrants coming to and moving within Europe typically experience inadequate recognition of their professional qualifications and wrongful discrimination. This book describes and critically assesses international, European and EU laws and policies governing migrant integration in Europe, with a particular focus on those concerning the recognition of migrants' skills. It argues that at least certain parts of EU law require clarification, restatement and even reform. The book formulates practical proposals to improve the governance of migrant integration in Europe, making it more coherent, effective and fair.