Since the ratification of the Amsterdam Treaty in 1999 the European Union is emerging as a key actor within migration policy. But in order to understand the current development it is important to have a clear picture of the EU’s historical trajectory in the field of migration. In this paper the discussion thus focus esexclusively on the pre-Amsterdam era. It sets out with a brief historical overview of the early decades of European integration and accounts for labour migration’s crucial function in the founding logic of the EEC. While supranational competence over migration policy was very limited during this period, the discussion shows that the way in which competence was allocated between supranational and national levels would be highly consequential for the future development. Following this, the major part of the paper is devoted to an examination of the Community’s transformation during the second half of 1980s and the first half of the 1990s. The measures introduced under the banner of the Single Market, particularly those pertaining to the free movement of persons, instigated a development whereby immigration and asylum would be progressively treated as ‘common’ Community matters. Equally important, the paper shows that Community activity in the area of migration also addressed a range of other matters, many of which went beyond the issue of people moving across external and internal borders. From then on, Brussels began to address the situation of ethnic minorities of migrant background, thus bringing the growing problems of ethnic exclusion and racism on to the EU agenda. On the whole, it was the question of how to better ‘integrate’ ‘legal immigrants’ and ethnic minorities into Community societies that received the most attention. In this fashion, the present paper examines the EU’s interventions in the area of immigration and asylum together with its efforts in the realm of migrant ‘integration’. Although very few accounts have undertaken to analyze jointly the EU’s approaches to immigration and migrant ‘integration’, this paper demonstrates that in order to provide a comprehensive analysis of the issues in question, these policy areas need to be approached as inextricably intertwined and as mutually conditioning.

The widely accepted narrative that refugees admitted to the European Union constitute a fiscal burden is based on a seemingly neutral accounting exercise, in which migrants contribute less in tax than they receive in welfare assistance. A “fact” that justifies increasingly restrictive asylum policies.

In this book Peo Hansen shows that this consensual cost-perspective on migration is built on a flawed economic conception of the orthodox “sound finance” doctrine prevalent in migration research and policy. By shifting perspective to examinemigration through the macroeconomic lens offered by Modern Monetary Theory, Hansen is able to demonstrate sound finance’s detrimental impact on migration policy and research, including its role in stoking the toxic debate on migration in the EU. Most importantly, Hansen’s undertaking offers the tools with which both migration research and migration policy could be modernized and put on a realistic footing.

In addition to a searing analysis of EU migration policy and politics, Hansen also investigates the case of Sweden, the country that has received the most refugees in the EU in proportion to population. Hansen demonstrates how Sweden’s increased refugee spending in 2015–2017 proved to be fiscally risk-free and how the injection of funds to cash-strapped and depopulating municipalities, which received refugees, boosted economic growth and investment in welfare. Spending on refugees became a way of rediscovering the viability of welfare for all. Given that the Swedish approach to the 2015 refugee crisis has since been discarded and deemed fiscally unsustainable, Hansen’s aim is to reveal its positive effects and its applicability as a model for the EU as a whole.

The agreements reached within the frameworks of the Amsterdam Treaty and the Tampere European Council in 1999 would set off a flurry of activity in the areas of EU immigration, asylum and migrant/minority ‘integration’ policy. In conjunction with these policy areas moving up the EU agenda, moreover, this rapidly growing activity would expand well beyond the confines of the Amsterdam and Tampere programmes. The European Commission’s bold move to declare an end to the era of‘zero’ extra-Community labour immigration, as well as the expanding ‘externalization’ of the EU’s immigration and asylum policies to third countries, are just two of several examples highlighting this dynamic development. This paper focuses on the unfolding EU policies in the fields of ‘integration’, anti discrimination, immigration, and asylum. In terms of demarcations, it covers the development up until the conclusion of the Tampere Programme (1999–2004), leaving off at the beginning of its multi-annual successor agenda, the Hague Programme (2005–10). The examination proceeds through a double movement, surveying and analysing both internally and externally directed policies, as well as their intimate and often contradictory interplay. The paper sets out by scrutinizing supranational initiatives in the field of migrant/minority integration and anti-discrimination,focusing specifically on the strong interaction of this enterprise with labour-market policy and the issues of citizenship, social exclusion, and ‘Europeanvalues’. It then goes on to explore the European Commission’s objectives and assumptions concerning its calls for a sizeable increase in labour migration from third countries. Besides relating this to the internal requirements of the EU’s transforming labour market, it also discusses the external ramifications of the EU’s developing labour migration policy. The remaining sections scrutinize the EU’s emerging asylum policy. It attends, inter alia, to the EU’s ever-widening smorgasbord of restrictive asylum instruments and security-oriented immigration policies, which, as the paper goes on to argue, together serve to transform the right of asylum into a problem of ‘illegal immigration’. Above all, this predicament is discussed in relation to the growing importance of immigration and asylum matters in the EU’s external relations.

Enligt EU, OECD, FN och andras skattningar räknas behovet till tiotals miljoner nya invandrare under det närmaste halvseklet. Tillväxt och invandring har blivit två sidor av samma mynt i EU:s ekonomiska och politiska strävan, något som framgår tydligt i unionens tillväxtstrategi "Europa 2020". Budskapet hörs även från EU:s regeringar; men av flera orsaker, däribland dagens djupgående lågkonjunktur, har många regeringar också tystnat i frågan, medan andra börjat vända sig mot en ökad arbetskraftsinvandring.

Until a few years ago, our chosen multicultural approach allowed some cultural and religious groups to pursue an aggressive strategy against our values. The targets of this ill-conceived ‘attack’ were individual rights, equality of gender, respect for women and monogamy. We have to combat this dangerous attitude, which can destroy the fabric of our societies, and we have to work hard to build up and pursue a positive integration approach (Frattini, 2007).

While this ill-concealed Muslim-baiting statement could have been issued from within any one of the national political establishments in today’s Europe, the enunciator in the particular case before us is no one less than ‘Europe’ herself; that is, the European Commission as represented by its vice-president and Commissioner responsible for Justice, Freedom and Security, Franco Frattini. But as seen, the statement, which was made at the Lisbon High-level Conference on migration in 2007, does not only depict European culture as verging on the edge of being annihilated by an aggressive Muslim ‘enemy within’. It also identifies the original cause of this emergency: multiculturalism.

Gurminder Bhambra's Annual Lecture points the way to aparadigm shift in how the social sciences should approachthe nation-state,both historically and in our own times.That is to say, perceiving of Britain historically as a nation-stateor as an imperial state will make all the difference;and, as Bhambra demonstrates, it is precisely the failureto grasp the imperial fact that prevents us from grasping‘the shared histories that have configured our present’.This article reflects on the crucial imperial fact outlined byBhambra, and it applies its radical consequences for ourapproach to the broader Western European scene andthe world at large in the postwar period. Our contemporarynation-statesystem, it is argued, is not the inventionof Westphalia and European objectives, but rather theproduct of decolonization and thus a reaction and alternativeto the European designs for the modern world order,in general, and the postwar order, in particular. In relationto this, the article also explains how Bhambra's work helpsestablish a historically informed critique of methodologicalnationalism, as opposed to the many misconceptionsperpetuated by our current theoretical consensus of what‘methodological nationalism’ entails.

 En antologi där forskare, samhällsdebattörer och författare presenterar självständiga, mer eller mindre personliga, mer eller mindre kritiska, analyser och kommentarer till tillståndet i Sverige och världen. Om integration, den svenska självbilden, den europeiska identiteten, nationalism och mycket annat. Avsikten med boken är att utmana och inspirera till debatt och nytänkande, inte minst i synen på Sverige och svenskheten.

En antologi med olika perspektiv på Sveriges medlemskap i EU. De medverkande skribenterna tar upp  miljöpolitik, feminism, högerpopulismen, reformismen som politisk linje i EU, det ekonomiska samarbetet och visionen om ett Folkets Europa.

The paper accounts for what is perceived of as the European Union's dual and evergrowing dependence on migration. Accordingly, whereas it is now officially acknowledged that extra-EU/extra-OECD migrants have become indispensable cogs in the EU's transforming economy—as spelled out in the EU's Lisbon Strategy for 'growth and jobs'—as well as indispensable replacements in the EU's shrivelling demography, migrants have also become indispensable scapegoats for a range of social problems that the EU's political life no longer seems capable of remedying. This is a European Union where a growing part of the economy has become dependent on the utilization of the cheap and flexible labour provided by temporary and undocumented migrants and rejected asylum seekers who lack rights. But it is also a European Union where governing bodies at both national and supranational levels have become dependent on security rhetoric (and with it an abundance of securitized migration policies) that metamorphoses and criminalizes the economically much-needed undocumented into the EU's most unwanted: the illegal immigrant. Integral to this development there is also a strong tendency on the part of both national and EU policy to pair the stated need for more ('legal') extra-EU labour migrants with reassurances to the public that these migrants by no means will burden the social welfare systems, nor be allowed to tamper with national and European cultural values.

The paper argues that this unfolding state of affairs needs to be analyzed as being part and parcel of the changing conceptions and frameworks of rights in the EU (both with regard to human rights and rights of citizenship) resulting from a quarter of a century of neo-liberal restructuring combined with a securitized migration policy and an increasingly exclusionary ethno-cultural and, above all, anti-Muslim identity politics. In this context, finally, the paper pays particular attention to the concept, politics and policy framing of EU citizenship, thus demonstrating the current centrality of EU migration policy for our grasp of the concrete content, registers and overall purpose of EU citizenship.

One aspect of the compound of issues hiding behind the word -migration- is irregular migration, sometimes referred to as -undocumented-, -sans papier- or -illegal- migration. In this book the notion -irregular- is most often used as ideas about what is legal and illegal when it comes to migration are far from clear and also extremely politically volatile. The irregular migrant is, in fact, at the centre of one of the great paradoxes of European politics today: the openly declared demographic need for more labour and the strong consensus on a toughening migration regime, limiting the possibilities to enter regularly into the Union. This is linked to a growing concern about informalisation of the labour market and populist anti-immigrant mobilisation, gaining influence in many European countries today. The irregular migrant, although often forced to -play in the dark-, in real life as well as in the narratives of national and Union development, is however a key figure behind many central political discussions today. Therefore, to understand what is at stake for the migrant forced into the precarious situation of irregularity and for the communities and governments that are sending, receiving and sometimes deporting, sometimes turning a blind eye, the discussion must be connected to questions of globalisation, out-sourcing, welfare change, human-, migrants-- and workers- rights, as well as to long standing debates on multiculturalism, racism and anti-racism, diasporas and xenophobia in European communities. But experience, research and policy vary greatly across Europe. However, as migration is about crossing borders and (EU) policy, for some time now, has seeked solutions that transcend national borders, research and public discussion must do the same. This book is an attempt to assemble contributions from researchers across the EU, the new member states, selected candidate countries, some of the neighbouring countries in Eastern Europe, the Western Balkans and the Southern Mediterranean. Methodologically there is a great variety among the contributions, which is suitable since one hardly gets anywhere with a multileveled and complex issue like irregular migration without a multidisciplinary approach. This is also motivated by an additional ambition of this book to, beside bringing together different European experiences, also try to link better the otherwise often separate discussions on globalisation, labour market change, racism and xenophobia to migration, both irregular and regular. Hence, to study migration means opening for a discussion of political economy, development issues and large scale legal, social and political transitions, as well as local communities and networks, individual strategies of survival and personal fates, joys and tragedies. We have divided the book into five parts representing different aspects of this large topic.

Det centrala temat för denna bok är förändringar i formerna för kollektiv organisering och i kollektiva strategier för politiskt inflytande. Utvecklingen pekar på att det politiska samtalet i ökande utsträckning förs oberoende av traditionella arenor där politiska partier värvar röster från medborgare som deltar i politiska val. Nationalstatens dominans som organisatoriskt centrum ifrågasätts ofta och de politiska partierna har tappat sin centrala position. Istället söker nya aktörer politiskt inflytande på nya arenor.

Karaktären på och omfattningen av förändringen är dock oklar. Vad ska komma i det gamlas ställe?Denna bok fokuserar på sociala rörelsers försök att påverka politiken. Hur har deras strategier formats och hur har det politiska landskapet förändrats i sitt sätt att strukturera medborgarnas möjligheter till politiskt deltagande? Boken kombinerar ett statsvetenskapligt och ett sociologiskt angreppssätt och ger dessutom utblickar mot såväl Danmark som övriga EU

This set brings together published articles, papers and book chapters that are central to an informed understanding of race and ethnicity today. The volumes are arranged around four key themes and will resonate with both researchers and teachers in related fields, as well as those who are engaged in policy issues directly arising from racial and ethnic structures and behaviour. With a new introduction and index, this internationally focused, multidisciplinary collection is an invaluable reference tool and teaching aid.

Migrationen har idag vuxit fram som en av EU:s allra viktigaste frågor. EU:s migrationspolitik under 50 år är den första boken på svenska som beskriver och analyserar den Europeiska unionens migrationspolitik som den utvecklat sig under den europeiska integrationens drygt halvsekellånga historia. Det är migrationspolitiken så som den kommer till uttryck i EU:s policy, lagstiftning och visioner som står i förgrunden. Ansatsen är bred och syftar till att ge ett helhetsperspektiv på migrationspolitiken i EU. Boken ägnar därför lika stort utrymme åt migrationspolitikens externa dimension (t.ex. asylpolitik och odokumenterad eller s.k. illegal invandring) som åt dess interna dimension (t.ex. integrationspolitik och den fria rörligheten), och gör en djuplodande analys av den ofta motsägelsefulla relationen mellan dessa båda dimensioner. Som boken visar är det bara genom ett sådant integrerat perspektiv som vi kan nalkas migrationsfrågans verkliga dimension och sprängkraft i dagens EU. Boken belyser även EU-projektets historiska kopplingar till migrationspolitik. Dessutom lägger framställningen vikt vid att kontinuerligt relatera migrationspolitiken till den rådande politiska ekonomin i EU, och ger en bild av hur skiftningarna i det politisk-ekonomiska klimatet i EU påverkat migrationspolitiken under årens lopp. Boken vänder sig till forskare och studenter inom Internationell Migration och Etniska Relationer (IMER), Europastudier, statsvetenskap, sociologi och historia. Den är också av intresse för dem som arbetar med migrationsfrågor inom organisationer, myndigheter, massmedia och folkbildning.

EU:s sammanhållning är satt på sitt hittills svåraste prov. I den ekonomiska krisens spår ser vissa medlemsländer arbetslösheten stiga dramatiskt och tvingas till kraftiga neddragningarna i välfärden. I andra medlemsländer går krisen relativt obemärkt förbi. Otryggheten och skillnaderna på Europas arbetsmarknad utgör grogrund för nationalism och främlingsfientlighet. Krav hörs på en mer restriktiv migrationspolitik. Samtidigt står Europa, med sin åldrande befolkning, inför en allvarlig demografisk och välfärdspolitisk utmaning. Många hävdar därför att EU:s konkurrenskraft och tillväxt på sikt måste bygga på en kraftigt ökad arbetskraftsinvandring.

Den här boken behandlar dynamiken mellan arbetslöshet, migrationspolitik och nationalism som en avgörande framtidsfråga för EU. Vilka konsekvenser har den stigande arbetslösheten och de växande nationalistiska strömningarna för migrationspolitiken i Europa? Klarar EU att hantera de motsättningar som följer av att vissa medlemsländer trappar upp sin argumentation för nationella särlösningar? Kommer den fria rörligheten och EU:s gemensamma arbetsmarknad att kunna upprätthållas? Räcker tilliten mellan EU-länderna för att enas om ett gemensamt regelverk kring arbetskraftsinvandringen, som på en gång tillvaratar migranternas rättigheter och löser unionens långsiktiga demografiska problem?

Detta är den femtonde årgången av Europaperspektiv.  Boken är tvärvetenskaplig och innehåller nio kapitel skrivna av forskare inom juridik, statskunskap och ekonomiska ämnen, som ur olika perspektiv diskuterar EU:s nya migrations- och arbetsmarknadspolitiska utmaningar i en tid präglad av en ekonomisk kris som sätter sammanhållningen på stora prov.

Sverige har aldrig varit en etniskt homogen nation och är det än mindr e i dag. Detta allt mer heterogena land präglar dock inte dess arbetsm arknads villkor och arbetssätt. Dess logik bygger fortfarande på exklu