The politics of European Union immigration and asylum policy cooperation

Since the implementation of the Treaty of Amsterdam and the incorporation of immigration and asylum policies into European Union competency, regional cooperation on illegal immigration and border control policies has been advanced, there has been mixed cooperation on regional asylum policies, and cooperation on policies regulating the admission of legal immigration has been minimal. Given persistent regulatory challenges, what determines the variation in member state preferences producing these outcomes?; Work on the political economy of immigration and the determinants of immigration policy-making has focused on the disjuncture between policy outcomes and restrictive public opinion, examining the role of liberal legal norms, immigration bureaucracies, and business and humanitarian interests in producing expansive policy outcomes.; I argue, alternatively, that variations in public opinion inform member state negotiating positions across migration policy areas. Public opinion influences the political costs of making credible regional commitments, encouraging least common denominator outcomes that preserve latitude in responding to domestic demands. The regionalization of policy-making through the European Union thus has heightened the importance of public opinion in the most restrictive member states. Economic interests have had some traction over regional policy-making where they compliment hesitancy to cede competency over legal immigration admissions decisions to regional actors. Legal norms, while not decisive across policy-areas, have provided a context for cooperation where domestic judiciaries across the European Union have recognized a basic set of social and civil rights for foreigners. Yet restrictive public opinion in member states such as Germany, Austria, and Greece has greatly influenced the lowest common denominator negotiating positions of these states on specific immigration and asylum issues, as well as regional outcomes under unanimous voting rules.; I conclude that theories focused on the domestic distributional consequences of immigration policy-making fail to capture important dynamics involved in regional negotiations, in particular the influence of restrictive public opinion on state leaders' evaluations of the potential costs of proposed common migration policies with interstate distributional consequences.