How do Member States Return Unwanted Migrants? The Strategic (non‐)use of ‘Europe’ during the Migration Crisis

Abstract

This article analyzes how Member States have used the opportunities and avoided the constraints of the EU's multilevel governance architecture to return unwanted migrants. Drawing on sociological approaches to the EU and a broad understanding of return policies, we investigate the ways in which the northern Member States, notably Germany and Austria, have increasingly relied upon the EU's operational and financial resources to achieve their goal of pursuing a bold return policy. A key 'usage' of Europe has been the pooling of political and financial power to externalize and informalize its return policy. At the same time, the northern Member States' deliberate -yet widely under-researched -'non-use' of Europe, such as using and maximizing national leeway, has been an equally important strategy to reduce migratory pressure and achieve higher return rates.

Introduction to Special issue: ‘migration governance in an era of large movements: a multi-level approach’

“…In lieu, intergovernmental cooperation is filling this gap, as the emerging global consensus for the Global Compacts and the design of new arrangements towards third countries demonstrate, i.e. the EU compacts and Turkey deal (Slominski and Trauner 2018).…”

“…The EU, which has a long tradition as a driver of such 'linkages' to 'non'-migration policy has since the crisis relaxed rules of origin for products manufactured by refugee labour and energy policy in the Jordan/Lebanon Compacts (Panizzon 2017), 7 and experimented with new legal frameworks, including the Turkey deal (Zoeteweij-Turhan and Turhan 2017). While the new arrangements 'sidestep' the ordinary EU legislative process and risk to fall outside the judicial scope of review of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), they affirm a new 'turn' in the EU 'external dimensions' of migration policy (Slominski and Trauner 2018). We are interested in mapping the 'multi'-level and multi-thematic framework of external relations from a governance perspective.…”

Deserving Shelter: Conditional Access to Accommodation for Rejected Asylum Seekers in Austria, the Netherlands, and Sweden

“…Within the context of western Europe, Austria has particularly restrictive asylum policies. Austrian border and asylum policies underwent a radical shift after the summer of 2015, from a policy waving asylum seekers through uncontrolled borders to a restrictive regulation: The federal government took a leading role in closing the "Western Balkan Route" and introduced an "emergency law," which authorized Austrian border actors to reject and return asylum seekers directly at the border in an "emergency" situation (Slominski & Trauner, 2017). Nevertheless, Austria is one of the few countries in Europe in which NRAS have access to state-organized accommodation.…”

Global refugee crisis and the service industries

“…Lebanon, hosting 1 million refugees, has the highest ratio of refugees per its total population: 1 in 6 (UNHCR, 2018b). As a consequence, the research agenda has also shifted to questions related to refugee governance and the management of refugee flows (Allen et al, 2018;Dreher, Fuchs, & Langlotz, 2019), the protection of 'unwanted' refugees (Bauböck, 2018;Slominski & Trauner, 2018) and more co-ordinated and effective integration policies and processes (Grzymala-Kazlowska & Phillimore, 2018;Wolf & Ossewaarde, 2018). In addition, a number of studies have emerged on how various industry sectors may facilitate and benefit from refugee integration in the host economies (Korkmaz, 2017;Lundborg & Skedinger, 2016;Wikström & Sténs, 2019).…”