The Political Economy of Managed Migration

European governments have rediscovered labor migration, but are eager to be perceived as controlling unsolicited forms of migration, especially through asylum and family reunion. The emerging paradigm of managed migration combines the construction of more permissive channels for desirable and actively recruited labor migrants with ever more restrictive approaches towards asylum seekers. Nonstate actors, especially employer organizations, trade unions, and humanitarian nongovernmental organizations, attempt to shape regulatory measures, but their success varies depending on organizational characteristics. Labor market interest associations' lobbying strategies regarding quantities and skill profile of labor migrants will be influenced by the respective system of political economy they are embedded in. Trade unions are generally supportive of well-managed labor recruitment strategies. But migration policymaking also proceeds at the European Union (EU) level. While national actors seek to upload their national model as a blueprint for future EU policy to avoid costly adaptation, top-down Europeanization is recasting national regulation in important ways, notwithstanding highly divergent national regulatory philosophies. Based on field work in and analysis of primary documents from six European countries (France, Italy, United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, and Poland), this book makes an important contribution to the study of a rapidly Europeanized policy domain. Combining insights from the literature on comparative political economy, Europeanization, and migration studies, this book makes important contributions to all three, while demonstrating how migration policy can be fruitfully studied by employing tools from mainstream political science, rather than treating it as a distinct subfield.