The Limits of Unilateral Migration Control: Deportation and Inter-state Cooperation
In: Government & opposition: an international journal of comparative politics, Band 43, Heft 2, S. 168-189
ISSN: 1477-7053
AbstractDespite the recent proliferation of policy initiatives designed to curb illegal immigration, advanced industrialized states have made little headway towards the goal of effective migration control. Examining the case of deportation in Germany and the European Union, this article contends that one of the most fundamental reasons underlying this failure is a unilateral policy bias that fails to take into account two related conditions. First, policies of migration control directly and substantially impinge upon the interests of foreign governments. Secondly, the cooperation of foreign officials is an essential condition for policy implementation. To the extent that they disregard these basic conditions, then, migration control policies are bound to fail. By examining the implementation of deportation policy, the article illustrates the limited efficacy of control measures that are dominated by the interests of advanced industrialized states to the exclusion of the concerns of foreign governments.