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When Europeanization backfires: The normalization of European migration politics

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Abstract

This article investigates the impact of European cooperation on the dynamics of domestic policymaking in the field of migration policy. While European migration policy has gradually communitarized since the Amsterdam Treaty, member state governments have not yet fully caught up with the new reality. This is also reflected in a state of the art that, in contrast with the developing European Union (EU) studies literature at large, is still dominated by intergovernmentalist analyses, which assume that member states have full control over the integration process. The article zooms in on the Family Reunification Directive of 2003 and its domestic political impact in the Netherlands. The Dutch case illustrates that the realities of EU migration politics are increasingly at odds with intergovernmentalist assumptions and that it is high time for scholars of migration politics to broaden their theoretical perspective.

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Notes

  1. The Commission report questioning the legitimacy of integration requirements unless they served exclusively to facilitate integration was published only in 2008. The compatibility of the Dutch policy of integration abroad with the Directive had been questioned before by law scholars (cf. Groenendijk et al, 2007), but this had not yet been picked up in political debate.

  2. Article 7.1.c of the Directive stipulates that member states may require evidence that the sponsor has ‘stable and regular resources which are sufficient to maintain himself/herself and the members of his/her family, without recourse to the social assistance system of the member state concerned. Member States shall evaluate these resources by reference to their nature and regularity and may take into account the level of minimum national wages and pensions as well as the number of family members’.

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Acknowledgements

We are indebted to Ilke Adam, Markus Haverland, Amandine Crespy and the anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on previous versions of this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for History, Leiden University, Postbus 9515, Leiden, 2300 RA, The Netherlands

    Saskia Bonjour

  2. Department of Political Science, Maastricht University, PO Box 616, Maastricht, 6200 MD, The Netherlands

    Maarten Vink

  3. Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Italy

    Maarten Vink

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  1. Saskia Bonjour
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  2. Maarten Vink
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Correspondence to Saskia Bonjour.

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Bonjour, S., Vink, M. When Europeanization backfires: The normalization of European migration politics. Acta Polit 48, 389–407 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/ap.2013.11

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