Suchergebnisse

With Ireland as the latest member state to derail a constitutional settlement for the European Union, the EU's "democratic deficit" remains high on the European political agenda. Vivien Schmidt's contribution to this debate, Democracy in Europe, falls into a category familiar among its leading experts, from Fritz Scharpf and Giandomenico Majone to Joseph Weiler and Andrew Moravcsik, who have all argued that the problem does not lie with the EU—such as it exists legally and institutionally—but that the still highly nationalized European public and media have basically got it all wrong (.).

With Ireland as the latest member state to derail a constitutional settlement for the European Union, the EU's "democratic deficit" remains high on the European political agenda. Vivien Schmidt's contribution to this debate, Democracy in Europe, falls into a category familiar among its leading experts, from Fritz Scharpf and Giandomenico Majone to Joseph Weiler and Andrew Moravcsik, who have all argued that the problem does not lie with the EU—such as it exists legally and institutionally—but that the still highly nationalized European public and media have basically got it all wrong (.).

With Ireland as the latest member state to derail a constitutional settlement for the European Union, the EU's "democratic deficit" remains high on the European political agenda. Vivien Schmidt's contribution to this debate, Democracy in Europe, falls into a category familiar among its leading experts, from Fritz Scharpf and Giandomenico Majone to Joseph Weiler and Andrew Moravcsik, who have all argued that the problem does not lie with the EU—such as it exists legally and institutionally—but that the still highly nationalized European public and media have basically got it all wrong (.).

In order to contextualise the papers in this special issue, this paper presents an overview and framework for understanding the importance of East-West migration in Europe associated with the EU enlargement process. The new patterns and forms of migration seen among East European migrants in the West--in terms of circular and temporary free movement, informal labour market incorporation, cultures of migration, transnational networks, and other phenomena documented in the following papers--illustrate the emergence of a new migration system in Europe. Textbook narratives, in terms of standard accounts of immigration, integration and citizenship based on models of post-colonial, guestworker and asylum migration, will need to be rethought. One particularly fertile source for this is the large body of theory and research developed in the study of Mexican-US migration, itself a part of a regional integration process of comparative relevance to the new European context. While the benefits of open migration from the East will likely triumph over populist political hostility, it is a system that may encourage an exploitative dual labour market for Eastern movers working in the West, as well as encouraging a more effective racial or ethnically-based closure to immigrants from South of the Mediterranean and further afield.

In order to contextualise the papers in this special issue, this paper presents an overview and framework for understanding the importance of East-West migration in Europe associated with the EU enlargement process. The new patterns and forms of migration seen among East European migrants in the West--in terms of circular and temporary free movement, informal labour market incorporation, cultures of migration, transnational networks, and other phenomena documented in the following papers--illustrate the emergence of a new migration system in Europe. Textbook narratives, in terms of standard accounts of immigration, integration and citizenship based on models of post-colonial, guestworker and asylum migration, will need to be rethought. One particularly fertile source for this is the large body of theory and research developed in the study of Mexican-US migration, itself a part of a regional integration process of comparative relevance to the new European context. While the benefits of open migration from the East will likely triumph over populist political hostility, it is a system that may encourage an exploitative dual labour market for Eastern movers working in the West, as well as encouraging a more effective racial or ethnically-based closure to immigrants from South of the Mediterranean and further afield.

It is no small ambition to bring together a comprehensive overview of contemporary migration theory across the social sciences and humanities. Such has been the explosion of interest in international migration in the past decade or so that no scholar nowadays can feel adequate when confronting the avalanche of literature that has followed. The rather heroic enterprise presented here has the virtue of letting disciplinary perspectives speak for themselves in a congenial dialogue, rather than attempting a unified theory, the most prominent of which have typically emerged from a base in economic theory (Massey et al. 1998; Hammar et al. 1997). It is thus highly instructive to read each chapter as a guide to the specific mindset of various disciplines toward the subject. Nonspecialists will learn as much about what political scientists, anthropologists, demographers, economists, or lawyers do from reading the respective chapters, as about political science, anthropological, demographic, economic, or legal approaches to migration theory (.).

It is no small ambition to bring together a comprehensive overview of contemporary migration theory across the social sciences and humanities. Such has been the explosion of interest in international migration in the past decade or so that no scholar nowadays can feel adequate when confronting the avalanche of literature that has followed. The rather heroic enterprise presented here has the virtue of letting disciplinary perspectives speak for themselves in a congenial dialogue, rather than attempting a unified theory, the most prominent of which have typically emerged from a base in economic theory (Massey et al. 1998; Hammar et al. 1997). It is thus highly instructive to read each chapter as a guide to the specific mindset of various disciplines toward the subject. Nonspecialists will learn as much about what political scientists, anthropologists, demographers, economists, or lawyers do from reading the respective chapters, as about political science, anthropological, demographic, economic, or legal approaches to migration theory (.).