Migrant Workers on the Borderline: A Socio-Legal Study of the Implementation of an EU Directive

This masters thesis in Sociology of Law is a comparative study which explores Europeanization, or more specifically how an EU directive is interpreted by the relevant bureaucratic institutions of a selection of EU countries. Through a discourse analysis based on gender theory, it is shown that from currently developing EU legislation on work permits emerges a policy of differentiation between migrant workers based on to what type of work these permits pertain. It is also shown through a further text content analysis of easily available official information on work permit application procedures that the institutions of a selection of EU countries interpret the EU legislation discourse very differently. The results indicate the existence of norms that are shaped by an institutional procedure, norms that cause the actual social effect to deviate from the intended effect. Using a model based on multi-level governance, the socio-legal part of the thesis explores how a bureaucratic institution can be used as an instrument of power as interpreted from the ideas of Michel Foucault, and some problematic issues of norm-setting that occur in that process. It also explores from a gender perspective the Foucault-based concept of the subject in process as presented by Moya Lloyd as well as Ruth Lister’s idea that citizenship is an experience as well as a legal status. The methodological part suggests a method for indicating Europeanization using a combination of critical discourse analysis and content analysis. It also provides a preliminary formula that—with some modifications—may provide a quite time-efficient but at the same time legally and socially comprehensive means of indicating Europeanization trends in comparative studies. The work retains a socio-legal focus intent on exploring the process by a bureaucratic institution of interpreting a legislative directive into a social context