The European Union: Shaping Migration Patterns in the Neighbourhood...and Beyond?

Laure Delcour 

Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques (IRIS); ENA; College of Europe
June 8, 2013

Amtenbrink, F., Kochenov, D. (eds), The European Union's Shaping of the Legal International Order, Cambridge University Press, 2013 
Abstract:      
Since the beginning of the last decade the Union has more and more sought to pursue its migration policy externally, especially in its neighbourhood. Migration issues are salient under the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) created in 2004. Neighbours indeed play a key role in migration flows to the EU, either as countries of origin or transit countries. While the migration toolbox used under the ENP was conceived for a specific external policy targeting bordering countries, this chapter maintains that its impact is not circumscribed to the EU’s fringes. The ENP migration toolbox indeed provides the Union with a leverage affecting migration patterns beyond the EU’s Southern and Eastern peripheries. By shaping ENP partner countries’ response to international migration, the EU influences migration flows and governance not only in the neighbourhood, but also in adjacent regions. In a policy area characterised both by interdependence of states’ migration policies and the lack of an international migration regime, the neighbourhood thus plays a pivotal role in the EU’s approach to migration worldwide and in the EU’s influence on global migration patterns.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 15

Keywords: European Union, neighbourhood, migration, transregionalism

Full text available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2276437