ABSTRACT
This entry starts out explaining the motives and context guiding the establishment of the European Union (EU) in post-war Europe, in particular the liberal rationale of facilitating the free movement of people, goods, and capital, and offering protection to displaced and persecuted individuals through the 1951 Refugee Convention. The introduction of guest worker and family reunification schemes is then explained by placing European migration politics in a postcolonial context, where the European industries had gradually lost access to the cheap labor reserves of the colonies. It proceeds to detail how European migration policy turned abruptly restrictive following the 1973 crisis, and how this sparked the renaissance of nationalist parties and a development toward more border control, seemingly at odds with the emphasis on free mobility. The Schengen and Dublin Conventions are used to illustrate the further development of this policy drive, and it is shown how EU initiatives such as the 1999 Tampere Programme, the 2002 Seville Council Conclusions, and the launch of Frontex in 2004 seemed to exacerbate the paradoxical relationship between the union’s control policies and its emphasis on free mobility and trade. It is argued, however, that the contradiction between the EU’s labor and trade policy and its border control policy drive is only surface deep, as the increasing focus on the surveillance, detection, and deportation of so-called “illegal migrants” has the effect of generating both an emerging market for the industry of border security and the social dumping of a postcolonial and irregular migrant workforce exploited in the European construction, agriculture, and service industries.
