The politics of European Union migration governance

First published: 22 July 2018Four dimensions of potential change in EU migration governance are identified and used to evaluate events in 2017. First, there can be change in the underlying drivers of migration (such as relative inequalities of income and wealth or the effects of conflict either within or between states) that can then affect decisions to migrate. It can be difficult to objectively measure the effects of potential drivers of migration (economic, social, political, demographic and environmental, plus their interactions) on actual migration flows, which means that perceptions and understandings by decision-makers and the wider public (whether accurate or not) of what is going on ‘out there’ have powerful effects. Second, change in EU policies and associated practices. EU policies have an ‘internal’ dimension (Schengen and common EU migration and asylum policies) plus an ‘external’ dimension attempting to affect actions or responses in non-EU countries. Policy change includes the depth and density of co-operation evidenced by the outputs of these processes as well as by the policy focus (for example, more or less open or closed to various kinds of migration). Third, change in the participants to involve a greater role for EU institutions, a diffusion of interest in migration within the EU institutions (certainly it is the case that almost all Directorate Generals within the Commission are now in the ‘migration business’), a greater role for EU agencies such as the European Asylum Agency (EAS) and the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (EBCG), and, more involvement by international organizations such as the International Organization for Migration (IOM) or United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Fourth, change in the politics of migration including both political mobilizations on migration as well as in public attitudes to migration. Public attitudes can be influenced by objective data on, for example, the scale or type of flows or the economic or fiscal effects of migration, but evidence suggests that they are also powerfully shaped at individual level by values and emotions (Dempster and Hargrave, 2017)