"Uncovering EU immigration legislation: Policy dynamics and outcomes"

[From the introduction]. As the new millennium dawned, the European Union (EU) began negotiating the first of several important pieces of EU legislation on immigration, which had been possible ever since Brussels gained limited powers in this area under the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty (Hix and Niessen 1996, Geddes 2000). This was a startling development, considering the fact that border control is an area of “high politics” and a core feature of the Westphalian state; and especially considering the politically charged and controversial debates swirling around immigration in Europe. If governments were often accused of “losing control” over immigration, one wonders why some would be willing to turn immigration policy over to Brussels (and why others were opposed). This raises a puzzling question, to be answered in the pages that follow: which European governments supported an EU immigration policy, and why