How to improve sustainability of the Schengen agreement on open borders?

Abstract

At the height of the migration crisis, around 2.4 million asylum claims were submitted in the European Union Member States. The enormous weight of a massive inflow of migrants and immigration‐related threat perceptions prompted Member States to start reintroducing border controls at EU internal borders, which resulted in a ‘temporary suspension’ of the Schengen agreement on open borders. With the use of zero‐sum phenomena and application of public goods theory to asylum policy, the article seeks to explain the influence of a structural limitation of European integration in the form of asymmetric integration of asylum policy on the sustainability of the Schengen agreement on open borders. To eliminate this structural limitation and thus strengthen the sustainability of the Schengen agreement on open borders, the article proposes a fully functioning Common European Asylum System (CEAS) based on a unified asylum system and governed by a centralized EU institution.

Finnish Civil Servants on Harmonization in the Asylum System: A Study in Horizontal Europeanization

“…Rather than a Europeanization of policies, there has been a "renationalization'' of migration policies in many European states (e.g., Brekke & Staver, 2018). Ultimately, the failure to find common policies on migration also challenges the Schengen area of free movement (Börzel & Risse, 2018;Nikolić & Pevcin, 2022). In Finland, the tenfold increase in the number of asylum seekers was considered a challenge for the reception system in 2015 (Wahlbeck, 2022).…”

Demographic sustainability in Italian territories: The link between depopulation and population ageing

“…Italy's entry into the Schengen area in 1997 may have facilitated the emigration of young people to more economically developed countries that were already destinations for Italian emigration, such as France and Germany. On the other hand, immigration flows were certainly facilitated by the Schengen agreement, as non-European people who were already present in one of the countries of the area could freely migrate to other countries of the area (Nikolić and Pevcin, 2022). Similarly, the entry of other European countries into the Schengen area, including Eastern European countries, has led to an increase in the number of European foreigners moving to Italy.…”