Although Xenophobia Remains a Persistent Problem in Europe And

INTEREST GROUP POLITICS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: MIGRANT INCLUSION ORGANIZATIONS AND POLITICAL BEHAVIOR ACROSS LEVELS OF GOVERNANCE Melissa Schnyder Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Political Science, Indiana University, November 2006 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Doctoral Committee Robert Rohrschneider, Ph.D. Karen Rasler, Ph.D. Beate Sissenich, Ph.D. Timothy Bartley, Ph.D. May 1, 2006 ii © (2006) Melissa Schnyder ALL RIGHTS RESERVED iii This dissertation is dedicated to my family, its immigrants and descendants, both past and present. iv Acknowledgements This dissertation represents both a product and a process, and each aspect has been influenced by many people. First, I owe much to my husband, Derekh Cornwell, who helped me to conceptualize the idea and lent much assistance with methods. More importantly, however, I am thankful for his support, love and encouragement throughout graduate school. He unselfishly shouldered a disproportionate share of the burden so that I could complete the fieldwork necessary for this dissertation. I am also grateful for his wisdom which helped me to maintain perspective and for his sense of humor which allowed me to laugh my way through many difficult times. I am very thankful for his presence in many defining events over the last few years. I also thank my family for their support. I am lucky to have parents who value education and who would do just about anything to see me finish the Ph.D. I am grateful to them for instilling in me a sense of curiosity and a desire to question rather than simply accept. I thank my sister Shayna for always listening and offering help when it was needed. I am also very lucky to have my nieces – Sophia, Sienna, Savannah and Serena – who provided me with many moments of laughter over the years. The process of writing the dissertation, especially the time I spent in Brussels, was a life- changing experience that would not have been possible without the generous assistance of my dissertation chair, Robert Rohrschneider. I owe him many thanks for enabling the initial fieldwork that gave rise to the ideas that underlie this dissertation. I am much indebted to him for the many wonderful opportunities he opened for me as a scholar. I am particularly grateful for the chance to work on his MEP project in Brussels, which also gave me the opportunity to meet many individuals in the European Parliament, European Commission, and pro-migrant NGOs. The discussions I had with these people in Brussels gave me the idea for this project and laid the foundations for its contributions. However, Professor Rohrschneider helped me to refine these ideas into a finished product. The most valuable things I know about being a researcher and scholar are thanks to him. He is a scholar in the true sense of the word, and his achievements are v inspirations for me. I am very thankful for his support, encouragement, hours spent reading my chapters, and comments that made them much improved. Importantly, he taught me that it is just as important to “market” myself and my scholarship as it is to undertake the research in the first place. I hope to one day be as careful, clever, and intelligent a researcher as he is. The other members of my committee have also been invaluable to me throughout this process. I truly appreciate the early comments that Dr. Tim Bartley provided on my proposal; our discussion about “puzzles” helped me to better frame the issue. Dr. Beate Sissenich has been an inspiration for me; I only hope to one day know as much as she does about the EU. I also appreciate her comments on the proposal, as they helped me to think about what exactly I was trying to explain. She has also been a source of great encouragement in offering advice about sharing my work. Finally, I very much appreciate the opportunity I had to work with Dr. Karen Rasler. I am thankful that she always had faith in my ability to complete projects on time. Most importantly, her example as a Political Science scholar has given me much inspiration over the years. During my time in Brussels I was lucky enough to encounter many people who influenced this work. I am thankful to the people at the Institute for European Studies for their hospitality and assistance, especially Richard Lewis and Anthony Antoine. Richard in particular was a defining influence on my work in Brussels and graciously allowed me to participate in many different professional venues on migration. I am also grateful to Maggie Nicholson, the Commission for Educational Exchange between the United States, Belgium, and Luxembourg, and the Fulbright program for financing and supporting my research abroad. I owe an immense debt of gratitude to the 114 very overworked migrant and refugee organizations across Europe that answered my survey and participated in interviews. Without their participation, this project would not have been possible. Finally, I am lucky to have made many wonderful friends over the course of graduate school. Thanks to Matt Loveless, Steve Hofmann, and Lori Poloni-Staudinger for our working vi group discussions. I am grateful to Noha Shawki for being a good friend, and to Courtney Bowman-Padula for initially inspiring my immigration research. Last but not least, I thank the other Fulbrighters in Belgium for their graciousness, friendship and lasting memories. I am fortunate to have ended my graduate career in their company. vii Abstract Melissa Schnyder INTEREST GROUP POLITICS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: MIGRANT INCLUSION ORGANIZATIONS AND POLITICAL BEHAVIOR ACROSS LEVELS OF GOVERNANCE This project explores why similar organizations located in similar countries in the European Union (EU) working on behalf of similar interests will undertake very different strategies to achieve their policy goals. I focus on organizations working toward a migrant inclusion policy agenda across twenty EU countries, and compare their political activities across levels of governance. I develop an interconnectivity model based on group ties to explain activity. In particular, I examine how an organization’s ties with a range of other actors shape activity levels and activity choice, as compared to more traditional social movement explanations. A broad range of activities are examined, including lobbying, protest, judicial action, media use, and collaborative efforts with others. The findings support the proposition that the nature and strength of an organization’s connections strongly influences its political activity across each level of governance. At the national level, increasingly strong connections to other like-minded actors serve to increase and moderate activity. Moreover, groups that maintain strong connections with actors beyond the state are more likely to expand their activities across levels of governance, including the EU level. In addition, I find evidence of a “solidarity effect” among networks of NGOs across levels of governance that increases the likelihood of collaborative activity. Interesting findings also emerge with respect to the other predictors. For example, I find evidence that the more radical groups, while not excluded from EU political processes, tend to resort to “back door” strategies whereby they target less visible institutions. Moreover, these groups tend to be excluded from collaborations at the national level, forcing them to look beyond their nation-states for partners. Overall, the findings lend strong support to the interconnectivity model developed in this viii dissertation, suggesting that the nature of group ties helps to not only explain the choice of activity but also the target. This study is based on original data collected through the Survey of European Pro-Migrant and Refugee Organizations. In general, the sample of groups included is broadly representative of the population, lending confidence to the conclusions drawn from this study. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter One: Introduction: Pro-Migrant and Refugee Organizations in Europe………...1 Chapter Two: A Focus on Migrant Inclusion……………………………………………19 Chapter Three: Actor Connectivity and Social Movement Theory.………………………41 Chapter Four: Overview of the Data: The Survey of European Pro-Migrant and Refugee Organizations……………………………………………………….……66 Chapter Five: Conventional and Challenging Political Activity at the National Level…………………………………………………………………….131 Chapter Six: From the National to the Supranational: Institutional Lobbying and Challenging Activity at the EU Level………………………………......184 Chapter Seven: From the Visible to the “Behind the Scenes:” Collaborative Activity at the National, Transnational and Supranational Levels…………….....230 Chapter Eight: Conclusion: The Politics of Migrant Inclusion in Europe………………281 x LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND APPENDICES Tables Chapter One Table 1.1 Selection of Newspaper Headlines in France, 1991-2001…………………………..14 Table 1.2 Success and Activity of the Far-Right in Europe……………………………………15 Table 1.3 Asylum Applications to Europe by Country of Origin, 2005……………………….18 Chapter Four Table 4.1 Descriptive Statistics of the Sample of Pro-Migrant and Refugee Organizations…………………………...…………………………...………………112 Table 4.2 European Commission as a Source of Income for Pro-Migrant and Refugee Groups…………………...………………………….............................112 Table 4.3 National Differences in Membership of Groups………………………….............113

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