ABSTRACT
The European Union has been cited by some as a paradigm case in the unfolding of a post-national or even global dynamic. Giddens (1995), for example, has argued that the EU stands as both a response to and an expression of globalisation, whereby member states relinquish some aspects of sovereignty with a view to promoting national interests – an expression of the dialectical nature of globalisation. Soysal (1994) also sees Europe as a key reference point for post-national membership, describing the EU as ‘the most comprehensive legal enactment of a trans-national status for migrants’ (p. 147). She is referring here to free movement and the attendant rights conferred on nationals of all member states (and additionally those of the EEA), though not yet extended to TCNs resident in one of the member states.1 In fact, in tandem with efforts to establish a single market, we find that much of the collaborative effort with respect to migration has focused on control and that this, as much as the expansion of migrants’ rights more generally, has been at the heart of post-national developments. It is in this context that a harmonised European immigration regime is seen as a necessary part of moves towards a free market (see Sassen, 1998).
