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Immigration and Asylum in the EU: A Resilient Policy for Integration?

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Routes to a Resilient European Union

Abstract

This chapter addresses immigration and integration policies at both the EU and the member state levels. It reviews attempts to achieve a common asylum policy at the EU level, including the Commission’s proposal for a new pact on migration and asylum in September 2020; and it suggests that the failure to achieve such a common policy impels member states to take compensatory measures to control immigration and asylum-seeking. When the Union’s system is unable to handle immigration, a shift from European to national solutions takes place—as became evident in the ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015. This chapter describes the ‘civic turn’ in integration policy which has taken place across European states since the early 2000s—a turn which has involved a stronger connection between integration policy and immigration control. The conclusion is that efforts to control immigration indirectly—e.g., through measures aimed at discouraging or deterring certain categories of migrants from coming—run the risk of jeopardizing the overarching goal of integration policies: i.e., to improve the social and economic integration of migrants.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Karin Borevi

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  1. Karin Borevi
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Correspondence to Karin Borevi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Law, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Stockholms Län, Sweden

    Antonina Bakardjieva Engelbrekt

  2. Uppsala, Sweden

    Per Ekman

  3. Stockholm, Sweden

    Anna Michalski

  4. Hägersten, Stockholms Län, Sweden

    Lars Oxelheim

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Borevi, K. (2022). Immigration and Asylum in the EU: A Resilient Policy for Integration?. In: Bakardjieva Engelbrekt, A., Ekman, P., Michalski, A., Oxelheim, L. (eds) Routes to a Resilient European Union. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93165-0_9

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