Preliminary Programme

Book presentation: The ‘European migration regime’ refers to the set of rules, formal or informal, at the European level, governing international migration movements. By moving after the Second World War from bureaucratic, arbitrary and at times restrictive practices to structural openness, this regime has taken a path different from both the global migration regime and the migration regimes in other regions. The free movement of people within the European Union, European citizenship, and the Schengen agreements are unique for the openness they create within Europe. Globally and in other regions, migration rules have taken a different course, characterised by increased border controls and fewer options to migrate. European regulations are also among the most restrictive for migrants from outside Europe. The book resorts to the archives of the European Union, the Council of Europe, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. It also relies on the German political archives in Berlin and the archives of the French Ministry of the Interior and the Élysée in Paris. This investigation highlights the role that Germany played in transforming the European migration regime. In the structuralist literature on international relations, the concept of ‘hegemony’ means 1) the mobilisation of the resources 2) of a preponderant actor 3) to organise and stabilise an international order 4) in a way that maximises the long-term interests of that actor. The evolution of the post-war migration regime in Europe rested on the mobilisation of German resources. The German economy disproportionately absorbed most of the new migrants created by the open migration regime and transferred the bulk of social security benefits abroad for these migrants. The size of the West German labour market stabilised this regime and won the support of other countries of immigration. The regime served the German strategy to stabilise and unify Western Europe in the Cold War, which was conducive to German Reunification. An open migration regime in Europe also favoured the penetration of foreign markets by German firms. The thread in the transformation of the European migration regime from 1947 to 1992 was the support that Germany provided. As the first edition stops around 1992, the second edition will continue the journey until the aftermath of the migration crisis of 2015–2016. The new chapters will deal with the gradual convergence of national asylum legislation through the Dublin system, cooperation to strengthen the EU’s external borders, and cooperation with third countries to reduce migration flows upstream. Besides, they will assess the migratory stakes of the successive enlargements of the EU to the east. They include the conflicts about ‘posted workers’ from new member states. Migration flows from central and eastern Europe also tipped the political balance in the United Kingdom in favour of leaving the bloc in June 2016. (Show less)

The History of the European Migration Regime is a systematic and thorough account of the emergence of a unique free migration space within Europe. He shows how Germany (and not Italy as many other scholars have claimed) played a deciding role in forging the gradual freedom of labour migration within the European Community (and finally the EU), stressing that this was far from a linear process with a clear plan in mind. This process started as early as the 1950s when Germany, but also other Western European countries, experienced shortages of labour that the availability of colonial migrants could not solve. Apart from economic interests, Germany also had (geo)political reasons for urging such policies, since it would damage its reputation as a representative of the West if it could not accommodate large numbers of refugees from Eastern Europe. It, therefore, needed other community members as a safety valve in case criticism emerged. Freedom of migration within the European Community offered a workable way out in case the demand for labour in Germany was insufficient. Comte’s meticulous analysis of the national and European sources in the period 1947–1992 shows that the gradual extension of the freedom to move within the European Community was the outcome of constant negotiations between member states, but foremost between Germany and France. (Show less)