6277 HBK EURO POLITICS-A4_246x174 mm

Immigration has become one of the most politically contentious and publicly contested issues in modern-day Europe. Immigration and immigrant-related diversity have become facts of life across the continent, but the adjustment by states to this new reality has not always been seamless. What started as a byproduct of colonialism and ill-conceived guest-worker schemes has now become a cornerstone of Europe’s economic future and a permanent fixture in the make-up of European society. Often described as Janus-faced, immigration presents both opportunities and challenges, where the trajectories of an aging population meet the demands of an increasingly interdependent and competitive international labour market. Although immigration has proven to be an incontrovertible asset in terms of demographic and economic growth, as well as some of the social goods that result from living in a contest of diversity, immigration remains a hotly debated issue that defines both electoral outcomes and the successes and failures of certain governments, even raising questions as to the viability of the welfare state. This chapter presents a general overview of immigration in Europe today, examining both the empirical reality of immigration and the state policies that seek to manage it. The chapter is organized into two parts. In the first part, I provide a brief, descriptive overview of general patterns of immigration in Europe. In the second part, I examine the main policy instruments available to states to control and respond to migration, focusing primarily on immigration, but also including sections on citizenship and integration policy-making. Each section also includes a review of the relevant literature to shed light on how scholars in the field have approached policy analysis. There is general consensus on the push and pull factors that bring immigrants to Europe, but many different perspectives on how – and, indeed, whether – states are managing this flow of people. Indeed, the literature on European migration is so voluminous that it has flourished into a subfield in its own right. The central argument of this chapter is that state policies, and consequently immigrant experiences, are remarkably varied as a result of these different policy configurations. While Europe as both an idea and an institution has never been more unified, immigration, integration and citizenship polices are areas in which we see continued divergence and enduring state sovereignty.