Introduction

Policies relating to migration and immigration are always embedded in a range of different policy fields, subject to contrasting strategic interests and discursive framings, and embroiled in the contentious politics of who can or should enter and ‘belong’ in a state, and under what terms. For the European Union (EU) this complexity is multiplied. It is not a state, and it has uneven, and shared or secondary control over its borders; it has highly variable policy instruments at its disposal and highly variable political legitimacy to intervene in different policy areas (for a recent review, see Wallace et al, 2010). Nonetheless, despite this complexity, this chapter argues that there is an identifiable, and increasingly clearly articulated form of migration governance evident at EU level, which has important roles to play in member states. This chapter traces key elements of the EU's migration governance through the history of the EU's engagement in and production of policies on migration. It argues that migration governance in the EU is made coherent, ‘manageable’ and authoritative by linking two political and discursive logics – those of utility and security – via a third, social integration.

In particular, the chapter suggests that there is an incomplete and problematic but remarkably little contested set of claims and institutional re-orderings (see also Stone Sweet and Sandholtz, 1998; Börzel, 2010) whose centrality has been cemented with the most recent legal and programmatic changes in the EU of 2009 and 2010. They determine the scope and character of EU migration governance, through the underpinning logic of linking security, utility and social integration. This attempt to construct coherent migration governance in the EU is articulated with the highly politicised arenas at national and local level (see the case study chapters in Part II of this volume), leading to profound effects on differential inclusion and representing a significant impetus to the imbrication of EU migration governance in the Union's member states.

Migration governance in conditions of complexity

This chapter treats the interest and activities of the EU in migration policies as being about the creation of migration governance. As such, this chapter is concerned with analysing the configuration of processes, actors, institutions and outputs in the field of migration in the EU as something more than the sum of its parts – as governance.