REGIONAL INTEGRATION AND (HAULED) MIGRATION POLICY: WHAT DOES THE EUROPEAN EXPERIENCE TEACH US?

MARGHERITIS, ANA; MALDONADO, MARTIN A.

Journal of European Public Policy

Taylor and Francis

Año: 2007 vol. 14 p. 152 - 166

1350-1763

This article focuses on selected pieces from the growing literature on international migration to Europe from a regional and policy-making perspective. The analysis identifies lessons from the European experience with respect to two issues: the relationship between policies of regional integration and international migration, and the conditions under which a common (regional) policy of incorporation of immigrants into the host societies might be agreed upon. The purpose is twofold: to provide a critical assessment of the state of the art and to advance the debate through the suggestion of new research venues. We argue that most of the selected literature misses the relation of mutual causation between migration and regional integration policies, partly due to an overemphasis on the benefits of supranational institutionalization, and partly due to the difficulties of conceptualizing the hybrid character of the EU institutional supranationality and the peculiar nature of its politics of migration. We also suggest exploring a distinctive process that  haracterizes the migration policy area: ‘hauled’ policy convergence; that is, the development of a common policy which occurs largely because it is necessary for other dimensions of the regional integration process to continue, but which countries are reluctant to engage in. In other words, hauled convergence is the minimum policy harmonization needed in a very sensitive policy area (such as migration) for regional integration to advance deeper and further in other areas.