1.1 Context

The policy idea of facilitating circular migration entered the European Union’s agenda more than a decade agoFootnote 1 as part of a worldwide buzz among international organisations that it could provide a ‘triple win solution’ that would benefit all: the countries of origin and destination as well as the migrant workers themselves.Footnote 2 It became clear that the European Commission wanted to foster this type of migration in such a way as to allow some degree of legal mobility for migrants back and forth between two countries.Footnote 3 For Member States, this ‘triple win solution’ would provide a tool that resonates with their reluctance to open more channels for legal migration, permanent settlement, and pathways to naturalisation, and it would also reduce any irregular overstaying.Footnote 4 Since circular migration is allegedly of temporary nature, states would be able to satisfy their labour market needsFootnote 5 and at the same time disengage from the integration challenges associated with permanent migration.Footnote 6

In similar vein, countries of origin would supposedly benefit from the social and economic development that circular migration is claimed to facilitate through a steady flow of remittances,Footnote 7 skills and knowledge transfers, as well as brain circulation thus mitigating the negative effects of a brain drain.Footnote 8 Lastly, the advocates of circular migration claimed that it could potentially bring advantages for the migrant workers because, amongst other things, this type of migration is emerging as a natural preference for many migrants, especially when they are encouraged to circulate as a result of flexible policy frameworks.Footnote 9

Many scholars have contested this new ‘triple win solution’ and its alleged positive outcomes for migrant workers, arguing that one could see it is a revival of the guest-working schemes associated with the circulation of ‘labour units’Footnote 10 rather than free choice in the migration decision.Footnote 11 Judging by policy developments in recent years, one can see that there is little enthusiasm among governments for creating rights-based labour migration schemes; obstacles to accessing long-term residence and family reunification are still a reality for many migrant workers, especially those engaged in low-skilled occupations.Footnote 12 Furthermore, as Wickramasekara has argued, the claim that circular migration is a ‘natural preference’ for many migrants is unsubstantiated.Footnote 13 Even though crossing borders to live elsewhere is becoming a lifestyle of its own,Footnote 14 this trend very often concerns highly skilled ‘global citizens’ for whom special regimes are designed and does not necessary entail circularity.

Against the backdrop of the 2015 ‘European refugee and migrant crisis’, several organisations have argued that more legal channels into the EU must be made availableFootnote 15 and some have stressed that stock needs to be taken of the pathways for legal mobility that are already in existence.Footnote 16 More than 10 years after the European Commission began promoting the facilitation of circular migration, there is no clear answer as to whether this type of migration has the potential to provide a legal pathway for migrants into the EU as part of a rights-based policy solution that is beneficial for the migrant worker.Footnote 17

Thus far, much of the literature on circular migration within the context of the EU has focused on conceptualising what is meant by the termFootnote 18 and discussing the critical issues related to this type of migration,Footnote 19 as well as analysing the existing patterns between the EU and its neighbours,Footnote 20 rather than discussing the implementation of the EU’s circular migration approach and its consequences for migrant workers.Footnote 21 Little is known about the ways in which the existing supranational and national structures and the normative frameworks they create influence the possibility for migrants to circulate within and across transnational spaces. At the same time, however, the current policy turn to circular migration policies is largely driven by the relatively recent recognition of the importance of migrant transnational practices.Footnote 22 As Vertovec has emphasised, the study of transnational migration would benefit from examining how transnational social structures and practices have emerged in the light of opportunity structures – such as visa, residency, citizenship, pension, and health care provisions – in both the sending and receiving states and how they influence migrants’ own desires and strategies to conduct their transnational lives.Footnote 23

This study aims to contribute to filling this gap by assessing the implementation of EU policies and legal instruments designed to foster circular migration and, additionally, how they affect migrant workers’ rights in the context of circularity. The study focuses geographically on the Eastern neighbourhood, which comprises countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) attracting migrant workers from the former Soviet Union republics. This region is an interesting case for research because it is understudied both in terms of issues related to legislation and policy of these new countries of immigration as well as in terms of implementation of the EU’s circular migration approach at the national level. Furthermore, the CEE comprises both EU and non-EU countries and is characterised by an increasing cross-border migration after the latest EU enlargement.

1.2 Understanding the Term ‘Circular Migration’

1.2.1 Definitions of Circular Migration

In order to assess circular migration policies, it is important to first define what is meant by this term. Previous literature review of this topic demonstrates that ‘circular migration’ was first referred to in the academic literature on urbanisation, rural development, and internal migration in developing countriesFootnote 24 in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a spontaneous pattern of mobility.Footnote 25 Zelynski defined circulation in the context of migration as ‘a great variety of movements usually short term, repetitive and cyclical in nature but all having in common the lack of any declared intention of a permanent or long lasting change of residence’.Footnote 26 Later, the concept’s introduction into the international policy-making discourse marked a shift in the use and understanding of circular migration – from a pattern of spontaneous movement to a potential migration policy tool.Footnote 27

Hitherto, however, neither academics nor policy researchers have been able to arrive at one universally accepted definition of the notion of circular migration. It was not until the first Global Forum on Migration and Development in 2007 that a working definition was provided at the international level: ‘Circular Migration is the fluid movement of people between countries, including temporary or more permanent movement which, when it occurs voluntarily and is linked to the labour needs of countries of origin and destination, can be beneficial to all involved’.Footnote 28 This definition, developed by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), recognised that circular migration can take different forms and that it could be either temporary or permanent. It also included an aspirational policy element related to ‘mutual benefit and voluntariness’.Footnote 29

Skeldon further argues that circular migration is a subset of return and temporary migration, where the migrant ‘engages in a regular and repetitive series of outward and return movements between an origin and a destination or destinations’, and is ‘free’ to return at any time.Footnote 30 The author emphasises that circular migration is repetitive, regular, and involves more than one return. However, his key point is that circular migration occurs at its best when individuals are entitled to free movement across international boundaries and when it is in line with the idea of ‘voluntariness’ that has been developed by Newland et al.Footnote 31

Furthermore, according to Skeldon, it is contradictory to talk about managing circular migration because this will turn it into a temporary migration programme.Footnote 32 In other words, facilitating spontaneous circular migration that already occurs is a more successful policy option than managing migration by placing restrictions on labour and human rights, length of stay, or change of employer. As demonstrated above, this is a distinctive feature in the definitions that have been given by some scholars and policymakers.Footnote 33 Cassarino is equally critical in this regard, arguing that circular migration programs build upon past temporary schemes aiming to manage labour migration, whose adoption is linked to new ‘security-driven safeguards’.Footnote 34 These authors believe that the concept of managed circular migration does not differ greatly from the old guest-working models that were developed after World War II that emphasised restrictions and security in order to manage migration. For instance, according to the German model, which was notable for both its scale and its administrative framework, guest workers were to be used as ‘temporary labour units’Footnote 35 to be returned when no longer needed by employers.Footnote 36 This allowed employers to have full control over the worker’s status, from recruitment to deportation.

Hugo, who was among the first scholars to start using the term, stresses the elements of repetition and regularity in his definition: ‘circular migration refers to repeated migration experiences between an origin and destination involving more than one migration and return’.Footnote 37 He argues that circular migration is best understood as an occurring and spontaneous migration pattern that should be facilitated and encouraged through policy measures by both destination countries and countries of origin; moreover, where permanent settlement occurred, it would not hinder circulation in the long term.Footnote 38 Such is the policy example from Sweden, which built on the idea of facilitating circulation of settled migrants back to their countries of origin in order to promote development as part of its migration policy.Footnote 39

Many authors have also emphasised the economic characteristics of circular migration along with the element of repetition and temporariness.Footnote 40 Fargues takes a rather normative approach and underlines the essential policy ingredients: circular migration is characterised as ‘temporary, renewable, circulatory, legal, respectful of the migrants right, and managed in such way as to optimise labour markets at both ends, in sending and receiving countries’.Footnote 41 As to the notion of ‘circulatory’, the author means freedom of movement between countries of origin and destination, as per the definitions given by Skeldon and Newland et al. Fargues also emphasises the importance of migrants’ rights and suggests that another important aspect of a circular migration policy could be the enhancement of skills and skill transfers.Footnote 42

To summarise, the general understanding of circular migration is that it entails repetitive, recurrent, and temporary cross-border movement for short or long periods of residence in a country of destination and then a return to the country of origin. It is of crucial importance to stress that authors such as Skeldon, Hugo, and Newland et al. do not perceive permanent migration or settlement as counter to circular migration. Rather, they have a broad understanding of this type of migration as a fluid movement. A good example illustrating this is the case of ‘circulatory transmigration’ of Chinese migrants into New Zealand over the past few decades, where migrant families circulate according to the specific needs of their members at various stages of their life cycle.Footnote 43

1.2.2 Circular Migration in the EU Context

In 2005, the European Commission initially defined circular migration as a spontaneous pattern: ‘[…] migration, in which migrants tend to go back and forth between the source country and the destination country […]’.Footnote 44 The 2007 Commission Communication conceptualised it further as ‘a form of migration that is managed in a way allowing some degree of mobility back and forth between two countries’, marking a shift in the Commission’s approach towards the policy idea of circular migration management. In 2010, the European Migration Network was commissioned to carry out a study on circular migration.Footnote 45 Instead of applying the definition promulgated by the Commission, it proposed its own definition: ‘a repetition of legal migration by the same person between two or more countries’.Footnote 46 This definition stressed that circular migration takes place through legal channels and that circularity may occur between more than two countries.

This ambivalence in defining circular migration at the EU level required data collection through interviews in order to further clarify the meaning of the term.Footnote 47 One of the interviewees in this study, who participated in the introduction of this concept in the EU’s policy agenda, shared that the concept was deliberately left broad so as to capture a wider policy context and instruments based on different Treaty articles.Footnote 48 The term ‘mobility’ was not only used to forge an explicit link to the EU visa policy but also to denote the circular ‘back and forth’ movement as well as ‘to bring in the concept of dynamics’.Footnote 49 Another interviewed official emphasised that different stakeholders would associate circular migration with something that they were familiar with, such as for example, guest working schemes and seasonal work.Footnote 50

An interviewed Council official said that, according to his personal understanding, circular migration referred to a scheme of temporary migration.Footnote 51 It was mostly used as a tool to achieve ‘a status of protected people’ so that migrants could keep their work permits and use them again when they go back to the country of destination.Footnote 52 Circular migration was also seen as an incentive against ‘illegality’. However, for the interviewee, the biggest question was whether one could control circular migration patterns, which by their very nature were spontaneous acts. He associated managed circular migration with the creation of schemes that seemed complicated and beset with problems.Footnote 53 Another interviewee working at an international organisation shared the view that EU policy discussions on circular migration were, indeed, focused on establishing temporary migration schemes.Footnote 54

A European Commission official confirmed that ‘[…] we want to have well-managed migration and therefore when we talk about circular migration, we have to put in a management scheme’.Footnote 55 On a personal level, however, the official believed in the model that facilitated spontaneous circular migration, even though this model could not be promoted among Member States because ‘spontaneous’ sounded like ‘uncontrolled’.Footnote 56 According to the interviewee: ‘[…] for this reason, people have preference for a more organised system, even though in reality, it hardly happens’.Footnote 57

One of the interviewed academics underlined that this was a concept ‘especially established to look nice on paper: it allows the policy makers to show the voters that it is something that it is manageable, so it is a tool.Footnote 58 If you have a tool, it means that you can manage a phenomenon’. According to this interviewee, there were Member States such as Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and France where one could not ‘tell the voters that you are going to have temporary migration scheme, but when they were given this beautiful package of circular migration, they adopted it and moved it up on the European agenda’.Footnote 59 In addition, this academic noted, it was also developed to attract funding from the donors: ‘the donors would never give money for temporary migration schemes but it is a different thing for circular migration. In the end, it is exactly the same’.Footnote 60

As this section demonstrates, there is no uniform understanding of the policy concept of circular migration in the EU context either. The understanding of this notion by EU actors differs in terms of the approach to managing this type of migration – by establishing temporary schemes or facilitating spontaneous patterns – as well as concerning the aims of these measures and the spectrum of mobility – between two or more countries. This poses a conceptual challenge and for the purposes of this study requires the adoption of a working definition that would guide the assessment of the implementation of the EU’s approach to circular migration. In order to do that, one needs to further distinguish circular migration from other types of migration and also look into the different patterns of circular migration.

1.2.3 Towards a Working Definition of Circular Migration

Typologies of patterns of circular migration naturally vary depending on each author’s approach to defining circular migration. Newland et al., for instance, outline three patterns of circular migration, differentiating between the character of the movement and the level of the migrant’s skills: seasonal; non-seasonal and low-wage; and, mobility of professionals, knowledge workers, and transnational entrepreneurs.Footnote 61 In his research on circular migration in the Euro-Mediterranean area, Cassarino provides an alternative typology of circular migration patterns, which are shaped by the migrant’s mobility strategy (migrant’s agency) as well as by changing circumstances and structural factors such as state migration and border policies.Footnote 62 According to this typology, patterns of circular migration can be hindered, embedded, and regulated.

Both typologies capture the intrinsic characteristics of circular migration which can only demonstrate the variety of circular movements if they are examined together. Patterns of circular migration can be differentiated based on the seasonality (or not) of the movement, migrants’ skill levels, and whether the circular migration pattern is regulated or embedded (non-regulated). The only category that does not fit within this joint model is the hindered pattern, which as Wickramasekara stresses, is not a separate category.Footnote 63 The hindered pattern does not actually describe a different type of movement, but rather it presents the factors that could drive circular movement to an end – and which are applicable to both embedded and regulated types. Only by joining the two typologies can one arrive at a variety of circular patterns that, in turn, give a better picture of the diversity that is redolent of circular migration.

Nevertheless, as Skeldon underlines, ‘the identification of a constant, clearly identifiable form of migration that can be called “circular” is problematic’, especially across borders.Footnote 64 The author believes that circular movements are prone to change their duration and composition over time.Footnote 65 Therefore, another fact that poses additional challenges to the conceptualisation of circular migration is the difficulty of separating it from other forms of migration, such as temporary and return migration.Footnote 66 Furthermore, ‘leakage’, as Skeldon refers to permanent settlement in the country of destination, is an inherent characteristic of circular migration.Footnote 67 Despite these challenges, and for the sake of clarity when arriving at a working definition for this study, it is important to attempt to distinguish between the typical features of circular migration and other types of migration and, furthermore, to demonstrate how they relate to each other.

Circular vs. Permanent Migration

Permanent migration involves migration to another country for long-term or permanent settlement. This type of migration, however, does not exclude circularity. Circular migration can ‘leak’ into permanent migration and resume again at some point since there are long-term or permanently settled migrants who engage in circularity to their county of destination. In order to illustrate the blurred line between these types of migration, scholars have coined the terms ‘intermittent circulars’Footnote 68 and ‘circular transmigrants’ in an attempt to distinguish the varying trajectories and experiences of engagement that could span a lifetime and should be seen as holistic circular migration projects.Footnote 69 Actually, more and more scholars consider that in the age of globalisation, which provides for so much accessible communication and transport, this naturally means that ‘all migration is to some extent circular’.Footnote 70

Circular vs. Temporary Migration

The terms temporary and circular migration are frequently used interchangeablyFootnote 71 in policy circles. It is, therefore, important to note salient differences. The main distinction between these two types of migration is that temporary migration ‘involves a one-time only temporary stay and eventual return which closes the migration cycle’Footnote 72 whereas circular migration involves recurrent temporary movements after the initial return. In line with that premise, Newland et al. argue that ‘circular migration is distinct from temporary migration in that circular migration denotes a migrant’s continuous engagement in both home and adopted countries’.Footnote 73 Therefore, circular migration is also seen as being closely connected to transnationalism, featuring migration as well as return to the country of origin.Footnote 74 For instance, a study of Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands demonstrates that their integration in the host country does not lead to less engagement with their country of origin.Footnote 75 They continue to remit as well as transfer skills and knowledge (including through return visits) when they have the capacity to do so and exhibit higher levels of attachment to their country of origin.

Furthermore, both terms relate to temporary movement and stay, thus raising the following question: how long is temporary? According to the working definition given by the EURA-NET project that focuses on the impact of temporary migration, this type of movement can last between 3 months and up to 5 years.Footnote 76 The variations in the range of ‘human mobility experiences’ within this spectrum depend on the different categories of migrants.Footnote 77 For instance, persons who stay in the EU for a period shorter than 3 months are involved in short-term circularity, whereas at the other end of the spectrum – migrants spending more than 5 years outside their home country – are considered to be long-term residents settled more permanently abroad.Footnote 78 Hence, temporary migration excludes any permanent stays.

In contrast to those temporary migration stays that do not last for more than 5 years, the circular migration cycle has no formal beginning or end. It could begin for less than 3 months in the case of seasonal migration or continue after 5-year-long periods, when a third-country national qualifies for a long-term residence status, and even last until the person becomes eligible for naturalisation and is granted citizenship. Therefore, circular migration can encompass both temporary and longer-term stays. The distinctive feature is that circular migrants spend significant periods of their lives in both their countries of origin and destination.Footnote 79

Circular vs. Return Migration

Usually the term ‘return migration’ refers to a one-off movement back to the country of origin. Nevertheless, as was the case with the example of permanent migration, return does not exclude circularity. There are migrants who live abroad and permanently return to their countries of origin, but there are also migrants who return temporarily and continue to circulate. Thus, the main difference with circular migration is that one-off return migration closes the migratory cycle and circular migration ‘implies more than just a single out-and-return movement’.Footnote 80

Circular vs. Labour Migration

Circular migration occurs primarily for economic reasons such as higher wages, economic survival, and better working conditions, and can thus be considered as being predominantly labour migration.Footnote 81 As mentioned above, circular migrants can have different skill levels and work in a variety of different sectors. Moreover, it is important to distinguish it from cross-border commuting as another type of economic circulation that is not considered circular migration. Commuting involves a return to the country of origin within the same day or within the working week and therefore does not involve long stays abroad.

Circular vs. Other Types of Migration That Are Circular in Nature

It is important to differentiate circular migration from shuttle and pendular migration,Footnote 82 which are also referred to as incomplete migration.Footnote 83 These types of migration emerged in the post-1989 period between the CEE countries. They possess a ‘quasi-migratory character’ and denote the movement of ‘incomplete migrants’ that does not last for more than 3 months after which they return home, having usually entered as ‘false tourists’ on a short-term visa and informally engaged in petty trade commerce or interregional trading.Footnote 84 For example, this was the strategy used predominantly by Ukrainians in Poland.Footnote 85 However, the main difference with circular migration is that this type of movement falls within the ambit of short-term mobility and involves migrants working irregularly on the basis of a tourist visa. Finally, ‘liquid’ migration’Footnote 86 is a concept applied to intra-EU mobility and not easily applicable to third-country nationals facing legal barriers.Footnote 87

Circular Migration vs. Mobility

Traditionally, the term ‘mobility’ in the EU context was reserved for the free movement of persons. After 2006, however, with the publication of the Commission Communication ‘Global Approach to Migration one year on’,Footnote 88 the term ‘mobility’ began being used in the context of the external dimension of the EU’s migration policy as well, denoting cross-border mobility. As Mananshivili stresses ‘the boundaries of this concept have not been demarcated yet, and accordingly, its precise legal definition is so far absent at the EU level’.Footnote 89 Since this is an implementation study, the usage of both terms in the context of this book follows the EU’s usage.

Despite the conceptual challenges, this section of the book has outlined some of the key characteristics of circular migration that will form the basis of a working definition: it is legal labour migration occurring through legal channels; it is repeated migration, involving more than one outward movement and return; and it is temporary migration encompassing both temporary and long-term stays. To sum up, this study adopts the following working definition: circular migration involves legal temporary migration of economically active migrants, moving repeatedly between their countries of destination and their countries of origin.Footnote 90 This definition is left broad on purpose, following Skeldon’s understanding that a clear-cut identification of circular migration is difficult as it changes over time and is prone to leakages into permanent migration that are not considered opposite but rather interconnected types of migration.

1.3 Analytical Tools

This book takes as a starting point the rights-based benchmark framework for assessment of circular migration policies that was developed for this study.Footnote 91 Previous work on this topic suggests that the key policy areas and problematic issues that need to be considered if this type of circular migration is to be facilitated are entry and re-entry conditions, work authorisation, residence status, and social security coordination.Footnote 92 In addition, this study focuses on two policy areas that are considered secondary – entry conditions for family members and recognition of qualifications – but which could influence the willingness of migrants to engage in circular migration. They are illustrative of the diversity of issues associated with this type of migration. As already argued elsewhere, family reunification might not be an issue for a seasonal worker engaged in circular migration for less than 3 months.Footnote 93 By contrast, it could become an insurmountable obstacle for a worker who embarks on a 1-year contract and wishes to bring family members along. Finally, it is important to examine the issues arising from rules on recognition of qualifications; advocates of circular migration claim that it enables ‘brain circulation and skill transfer, yet there is evidence that this is not always the case.Footnote 94

The developed analytical framework aims to assess whether these policy areas provide a ‘win’ for the migrant worker within the context of the ‘triple win solution’ that circular migration ostensibly offers. The premises thereof are, firstly, whether the migrant has a certain degree of voluntarism and ‘free’ movement or generally a free choice in the migration decision. This condition differentiates circular migration policies from general time-bound migration policies that are redolent of the guest-worker models.Footnote 95 In other words, if policymakers want to implement effective circular migration policies, they need to design them in such a way so as to accommodate the migrants’ transnational links with both the country of origin and destination, as well as to allow the possibility for migrants to determine their own trajectory.Footnote 96 Secondly, what needs to be assessed is whether these policies adequately protect the migrant workers’ fundamental rights and rights that allow them to benefit from the circulation, such as export of social security benefits when they return home and provisions to ensure that their qualifications can be recognised.

In line with these premises, a two-level benchmarkFootnote 97 framework for assessing circular migration policies has been developed.Footnote 98 On the primary level, international and European standards developed in the field of human rights, migration, labour, and social security law are identified as benchmarks in the study’s key policy areas. Only those provisions that cover the two premises of voluntarism and protection of migrants’ rights are included within the benchmark framework, meaning that they are employed as aspirational standards against which circular migration policies can be assessed.

On the secondary level, the benchmark framework includes policy instruments that can help in the implementation of these benchmarks. They are identified as being conducive to circular migration management on the basis of a literature review of the lessons that have been learned from the application of similar time-bound labour migration policies, such as the experience with guest-worker schemes as well as good practices that have been identified among the emerging new generation of circular migration programmes.Footnote 99

Each of the chapters containing analysis of the rights of migrants in the six policy areas at stake with circular migration commences with a presentation of the benchmarks that are applied as analytical tools to assess existing policies. A summary of the benchmarks can also be found in Annex V.

1.4 Focus

With regard to the presented definition of circular migration and the policy issues at stake with this type of migration, this study discusses the formulation of the legal and policy instruments of EU migration policy that aim to foster circular migration or which incorporate elements of circular migration (referred to hereinafter as the EU’s approach to circular migration) as well as their implementation at the national level in CEE. It focuses on the rights of migrant workers in six policy areas – namely entry and re-entry conditions, work authorisation and residence status, social security coordination, entry and residence conditions for family members, and recognition of qualifications – in order to assess whether the EU is fostering rights-based circular migration.

This book examines what has been achieved in relation to the two categories of circular labour migration that were targeted by the EU: temporary engagement of EU settled third-country nationals returning to their countries of origin and temporary opportunities for entry and re-entry for persons residing in a third country for the purposes of working in the EU.Footnote 100 The first category covers third-country nationals who reside in one of the Member States and who travel back and forth to their country of origin in order to engage in some form of professional activity. This category refers mainly to diaspora members who decide to circulate.

The second category incorporates those third-country nationals who reside outside of the EU but temporarily engage in a professional activity within a Member State and afterwards return to reside in their country of origin. According to the European Commission, circularity in this case is to be achieved on the basis of simplified re-entry procedures to and from the Member States where the migrants were temporarily engaged professionally.Footnote 101 Unlike the common understanding that circular migration concerns predominantly low-educated migrants who rely on their vocational skills,Footnote 102 this EU category covers a broad range of migrant categories engaged in employment, research, study, intercultural exchanges, and voluntary work. As demonstrated above, in most cases migrants engage in work-related circular migration. Therefore, this study focuses on economically-driven circular migration and excludes migration where the main purpose is study, intercultural exchange, or volunteering.

These two categories of circular migration are to be facilitated at the European level based on a two-fold approach. Firstly, the Commission planned to promote it through a legislative framework by using existing legal migration instruments and introducing special measures in future legislative acts. Secondly, it has been incorporated as a policy instrument within the context of the Global Approach to Migration and Mobility (GAMM), which is the overarching framework of the EU external migration and asylum policy. The European Commission has planned to facilitate the development of circular migration schemes with third countries within the framework of the GAMM. This raises the question of what kind of migrant categories this two-fold approach covers.

The first part of the EU’s approach to circular migration covers the legal migration directives adopted before the circular migration concept was introduced in 2005, such as the EU Long-term Residence Directive,Footnote 103 as well as the Researchers’Footnote 104 and Students’ DirectivesFootnote 105 which were repealed and replaced by the new Students’ and Researchers’ Directive.Footnote 106 It also includes legal instruments that were adopted after 2005 and featured in the gradual development of the circular migration approach at the EU level: the Blue Card Directive,Footnote 107 the Seasonal Workers’ Directive,Footnote 108 the Single Permit Directive,Footnote 109 and the Intra-corporate Transferee’s Directive.Footnote 110 Thus, this legal approach to circular migration encompasses the sectoral legal migration framework that has already been promulgated at the EU level and which regulates the conditions of entry and residence for different categories of immigrants, such as highly-skilled workers, seasonal workers, students and researchers, family migrants, and EU long-term residence holders. The second part of the EU’s approach to circular migration, within the framework of the GAMM, does not limit the spectrum of migrant categories that can participate in circular migration schemes.

In order to analyse the whole spectrum of economically-active migrants who can engage in circular migration, this study focuses on migrants in both low-skilled (e.g., seasonal) and highly-skilled occupations (e.g., Blue Card holders, researchers, intra-corporate transferees). As outlined above, circular migration can also include migrants possessing a more permanent status. Indeed, the EU’s approach to circular migration aims to also facilitate such migration for third-country nationals who have settled in a Member State and are willing to go back to their countries of origin. Hence, it is crucial to include EU long-term residence holders within the scope of this study. Any such analysis would be incomplete if it were to exclude the family members of third-country nationals who move between two countries for different periods since this type of migration can have an impact on the family life of the migrants. What should be kept in mind, however, is that in reality these categories are not constant and there are shifts from one form of migration status to another throughout the lives of migrants as they fall in love, reunite with families, settle, or decide to restart their engagement in circular migration. Therefore, this study also attempts to take account of these shifts in migration statuses.

To conclude, the purpose of this study is to answer the core research questions: how has the EU’s approach to circular migration been implemented through its legal and policy instruments and does it provide for rights-based circularity for migrant workers in the CEE context? In order to answer that question, this study covers within its scope economically-active third-country nationals in both low- and high-skilled occupations with temporary and permanent statuses as well as their family members who are engaged in circular migration to and from the EU.

1.5 Structure

This book is organised into nine chapters. Chapter 2 presents the employed methodological framework of this interdisciplinary research. It discusses the case study selection by outlining the differences and similarities in terms of contextual factors and legal and policy issues. This chapter concludes with a focus on the data sources used and the ethical considerations at the heart of this study.

Chapters 3 and 4 place circular migration into its European legal and policy context by focusing on the process of formulation and implementation of the EU’s circular migration approach respectively. Chapter 3 starts by examining the genesis of the circular migration notion in the EU’s migration policy and outlines the formulation of a two-fold approach towards its facilitation at the EU level, incorporating legal migration directives as well as policy initiatives developed under the auspices of the GAMM. Chapter 4, then, brings together the legal and policy instruments developed as part of the approach at the EU level in order to assess its implementation and establish whether it provides rights-based outcomes for migrant workers according to the developed benchmark framework for analysis.

Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8 focus on national variances of instruments conducive to circular migration as part of this implementation study on the EU’s approach. Chapter 5 is an introduction to the national approaches to circular migration facilitation developed in Bulgaria and Poland, which are chosen as case studies of this book. Chapter 6 brings together the developed EU and national instruments in Bulgaria and Poland conducive to circular migration and assesses their implementation against the background of the developed benchmarks concerning entry and re-entry conditions for migrant workers. Chapter 7 focuses on EU and national instruments in the policy areas of work authorisation, residence status, and social security coordination which are considered key policy areas that need to be taken into account if this type of migration is to be facilitated. Finally, Chap. 8 assesses entry and residence conditions for family members and recognition of qualifications, which despite being secondary policy areas could still influence the willingness of migrants to engage in circular migration.

The above four chapters are based on legal analysis of national and transposed EU instruments, updated as of September 2019. In addition to this layer of legal analysis, these chapters incorporate insights into the implementation dynamics of the EU and national instruments conducive to circular migration on the basis of data collected through focus groups with migrants from Ukraine and Russia in 2016 (before the introduction of a visa-free regime with Ukraine); interviews conducted with stakeholders in the period 2013–2017; data on permits retrieved from the national administrations of the two countries chosen for case studies as of mid-2019 (where possible); and, available data in recent studies.

The book culminates with Chap. 9, which returns to the study’s main research question, namely: how has the EU’s approach to circular migration been implemented through its legal and policy instruments and does it provide for rights-based circularity for migrant workers in the CEE context. It concludes by proposing policy recommendations to this end.