From Free Movement to Migration Crisis: Events and Ideas in Europe

FROM FREE MOVEMENT TO MIGRATION CRISIS: EVENTS AND IDEAS IN EUROPE By Meghan Luhman A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, Maryland February 2017 DISSERTATION ABSTRACT The principle of free movement has existed in some form since the founding of the European Economic Community in 1957. This principle was originally meant to facilitate the movement of industrial workers, but over time it expanded to include additional categories of people including students, trainees, family members, and retirees. With the establishment of European citizenship in the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, all EU citizens now have the right to work and reside throughout the territory of the European Union, subject to certain conditions. In spite of the fact that free movement has to some degree become a part of the everyday life of Europeans, the implementation of this principle has not been without controversy. In fact, free movement sometimes contributes to the sense there is a “migration crisis” in Europe. When, and for whom, is free movement perceived as a crisis, and why? This dissertation develops a theory of migration crisis, arguing migration crisis is a narrative mechanism used by political actors to define certain migration flows as a challenge to the nation-state. This is part of a dynamic process through which governing elites and civil society groups compete over dominant migration policy narratives and narratives of national identity. In the process, debates over free movement morph from narrowly-defined migration policy debates to debates over fundamental ideas such as national identity, sovereignty, and the legitimacy of the European Union. Surprisingly, given the number of references to a migration crisis in contemporary European public discourse, a theorization of migration crisis is largely absent from Comparative Politics scholarship. Examining the cases of the free movement of EU migrants in the UK, Roma in France, and more broadly, asylum seekers in the EU, the argument moves beyond comparative statics and ideal-types at the national level, as well as ii paradigmatic ideas that drive consensus at the regional level. Based on qualitative document analysis and 26 interviews with migration policy stakeholders in the European Union conducted from 2012 to 2014, this dissertation traces the dynamic and contingent process by which ideas are invoked through mutually constitutive narratives of migration crisis and national identity. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It has been a very long and difficult journey but also an extraordinary privilege. Though the pursuit of a Ph.D. is in many ways a solitary endeavor, there is no way I could have done it alone. I am indebted to my committee and faculty mentors for their support, patience, and inspiration: Nicolas Jabko, Erin Chung, Michael Hanchard, and Margaret Keck. Each one of them shaped my intellectual trajectory in indelible ways, from encouraging big questions, to improving my thinking and writing, to being supportive of my academic pursuits even as I adjusted my goals and schedules when I became a parent. I would also like to thank Patrick Simon, who sponsored my visit to INED in Fall 2013/Winter 2014, supported by the Chateaubriand Fellowship. I am also grateful to the Educational and Cultural Trust Fund of the Electrical Industry for providing a dissertation writing fellowship. Graduate school would be impossible without friends. I became friends with a number of fellow graduate students in the field—too many to name—with whom I shared lively discussions about French and European politics; their interest in my project and camaraderie buoyed my spirits. Back at home, a group of Hopkins friends, particularly Daisy Kim, Nicole Thornton, and Karyn Wang, read my work and, perhaps more importantly, supported me as a person in addition to a potential scholar. My aspirations for an academic career would have never happened in the first place without the support and sacrifice of my parents, who always encouraged my interest in learning and made many material sacrifices to give me the best education. Fortunately, I inherited my stubbornness from them, for sometimes that was the only thing that kept me going during this long, challenging journey. iv There are two people to whom I dedicate this dissertation. The first is my husband, Zachary Luhman. He supported my decision to enter a Ph.D. program, knowing it would alter our lives significantly. Even then, neither of us went into it expecting it to take this long nor to require such significant time apart. I know this journey was not always easy on him in many ways. He sacrificed a lot to get me here; it is no exaggeration to say I could not have done this without him. The second person to whom this dissertation is dedicated is my son, Ryan Luhman. Despite the drudgery of the writing process and the often depressing state of world politics, not a single day has gone by since his birth where I have failed to laugh. Though he is too young as of yet to be aware of what I have been working on, I hope someday that my completion of this work provides him an example of the fruits of curiosity, hard work, and persistence. Further, I hope he grows up to see a world in which policymakers use their power and ideas to improve the lives of as broad a swath of humanity as possible, regardless of nationality, migration status, or other perceived differences. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………….…iv List of Figures………………………………………………………………………………vii Chapter 1: Introduction……………………………………………………………………....1 Chapter 2: The Narrative of Benefits Tourism and the Ratcheting Up of Free Movement Debates in the UK……………………………………………………………………............38 Chapter 3: L’Affaire Leonarda: Narratives of National Identity and Migration Policies in Tension in France……………………………………………………………………..……...70 Chapter 4: More Europe? Less Europe? No More Europe? Narrating Diagnoses and Solutions to Europe’s Migration Crisis……………………………………………………..108 Chapter 5: Conclusion……………………………………………………………..………134 References…………………….……………………………………………..………...…...150 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1. News Coverage from 1999 - 2015 on Crisis of Free Movement……………..…..6 Figure 2.1 Unfavorable Opinion of Enlargement to Bulgaria and Romania, UK vs. EU average, 1990s………………………………………………………………………..………44 Figure 2.2. UK News Coverage of “Benefit Tourism,” 1997-2015…………….…………...45 Figure 2.3. Growth in Nigel Farage’s visibility re: EU migration…………………….……..55 Figure 2.4 Ukip leaflet distributed in Greater London, 2013………………………………..57 Figure 3.1 Friction between policies and ideas in "L'Affaire Leonarda"…………………....75 Figure 3.2. French News Coverage of Roma and EU by year, 1999 – 2015………………..87 Figure 3.3. Reported demonstrations and school blockades, October 18, 2013 through November 5, 2013…………………………………………………………………….……..99 Figure 4.1 Policy debate in focus: narrative of solidarity and the quota mechanism……....113 Figure 4.2. European Parliament Election Results, 2014…………..................................... 116 Figure 4.3. Comparison of 2014 to 2015 Arrivals to Greece by Month. International Organization for Migration (2016)……………………………………………..…………..119 vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION I. Free Movers or Migrants? In the region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais in Northern France, a high-speed train called the Eurostar enters a tunnel traveling under the English Channel towards the United Kingdom. Over 10 million people travel on the Eurostar each year, including a subset of young European professionals sociologist Adrian Favell (2004) calls “eurostars,” traveling to London, “the unquestioned symbolic capital of Europe.” On any given train you might also find students hailing from France or Germany or elsewhere in the EU enrolled in full or part- time study in the UK, as over 125,000 students were in 2014-15. These cross-border movements are now part of business as usual in the EU. The original, limited intention of free movement in the European Economic Community was to facilitate the movement of industrial workers between France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg in the post-WWII rebuilding period. The reasons for intra-EU migration have greatly expanded to include study abroad, internships, and work training placements, and personal reasons such as romantic and family relationships and retirement (Recchi et al 2006). Travel between countries was made easier by the completion of the Channel Tunnel, the establishment of several high-speed train routes connecting major European cities, and the rise of discount airlines, which have all reduced costs and travel times from one EU member state to another. In short, EU migration has become more heterogeneous and relatively commonplace: ten percent of EU citizens report having worked in another EU member state at some point in their lives (Schmid-Drüner 2016).1 Intra-EU migration is also increasing. According to a report commissioned by the European Commission, in 2011, 12.6 1 By way of comparison, roughly 31% of the U.S. population have moved across state boundaries (Molloy, Smith and Wozniak 2013). 1 million EU citizens resided in a member state other than the one of their citizenship, a 24% increase from 2007 (EY 2014). There are several indicators which suggest free movement is alive and well in the EU. Along the Eurostar route, however, a passenger on the train might look out the window and see that free movement between European countries is not accessible to all. Over 1,500 people of the Roma ethnicity live in camps in the vicinity of Lille, France, one of the main Eurostar hubs. Despite the fact that many Roma are European citizens, France has continually evicted the camps in the name of public order and returned Roma to Romania, even as it has faced the rebuke of the European Commission. Across the English Channel, free movement for workers from Romania and Bulgaria and the prospect of them settling en masse in the UK became the catalyst for the referendum that resulted in Brexit.

Load more