On The Governance Of European Irregular Migration

Globalization and migration are mutually driven. Although the development of globalization promoted the cross-border population flow, the free international migration is confined by increasing sophisticated policies and regulations, which led to the appearance of the issue of irregular migration.As the contemporary model of regional integration, EC/EU, on one hand, needs to promote the external globalization by encouring free exchange with the countries outside the region; on the other hand, it needs to pursue the internal globalization by free flow of all elements inside the region. The European integration process promoted the EC/EU social development and progress, in which immigrants had played an important role. However, with the development of the integration and the impact of various factors at home and abroad, the major European countries gradually shift from the laissez-faire immigration policy to a pro-active restrictive immigration policy. Regular migration channels have been narrowed, many immigrants only can enter or settle through irregular ways. As the number of irregular migration grows, they have brought EU a series of questions concerned politics, economy, culture, security and become one of the core issues in recent years.From the perspective of governance, this paper mainly analysis the EC/EU governance of irregular migration issue within the theoretical framework of governance, combined with the relevant theories of international relations, ethnology, sociology and history, expected to summarize and conclude some experience, shortcoming, or rules of EU irregular migration governance. The history of European integration is also considered the history of EC/EU governance. Governance is a process that all actors manage the issues of common interests. EC/EU has gradually formed its own model of governance in the process of integration. The traditional sovereignty of national governance transfered upward or downward continuously, and gradually formed the EU multi-governance model including the coexistence of a national governance, supra-national governance and sub-national governance. At the same time, the scope of governance continuously expanded from economic governance to the "three pillars" covered the current economics and politics, security and foreign affairs, justice and home affairs. Primarily, the issue of irregular immigrants arose from the Member States level, by 90's, it has become EU's common issue. The governance of irregular immigrants is also conducted under the European Union governance system via multi-national, supra-national, sub-national levels separately. Based on the current international community realities, the EU member states remain the most important actors of governance, but the role of supra-national governance has become increasingly prominent, while the sub-national governance plays a more and more helpful complementary role. Although faced many challenges, the EU governance of irregular immigrants is also a developing process of good governance. It needs the coordination among all the EU member states to overcome these obstacles.