Experience

Publications

• “Crisis” and Reality in European Immigration Policy

  Current History

  “[N]ationalism drives public impulses to crack down on immigration, yet the only effective way to increase immigration control is to cooperate with other nations—that is, by pooling resources and sovereignty. . . .”

• “Crisis” and Reality in European Immigration Policy

  Current History

  “[N]ationalism drives public impulses to crack down on immigration, yet the only effective way to increase immigration control is to cooperate with other nations—that is, by pooling resources and sovereignty. . . .”

• Fiscal Federalism and the Politics of Immigration: Centralized and Decentralized Immigration Policies in Canada and the United States

  Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis

  Why would immigration policy be centralized or decentralized in a federal system? What incentives do political actors at the central and sub-central levels of government possess vis-à-vis immigration policy? Taking account of the growing need to make sense of the unique features of immigration policy in a federal system (e.g. the mobility of labor, regional and national identities), and the unique challenges to federalism posed by immigration (e.g. public policy co-ordination, social cohesiveness), this paper advances a general theory of immigration politics in federations. It then illustrates this theory through discussion of two empirical cases: Canada and the United States.

• “Crisis” and Reality in European Immigration Policy

  Current History

  “[N]ationalism drives public impulses to crack down on immigration, yet the only effective way to increase immigration control is to cooperate with other nations—that is, by pooling resources and sovereignty. . . .”

• Fiscal Federalism and the Politics of Immigration: Centralized and Decentralized Immigration Policies in Canada and the United States

  Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis

  Why would immigration policy be centralized or decentralized in a federal system? What incentives do political actors at the central and sub-central levels of government possess vis-à-vis immigration policy? Taking account of the growing need to make sense of the unique features of immigration policy in a federal system (e.g. the mobility of labor, regional and national identities), and the unique challenges to federalism posed by immigration (e.g. public policy co-ordination, social cohesiveness), this paper advances a general theory of immigration politics in federations. It then illustrates this theory through discussion of two empirical cases: Canada and the United States.

• The Politics of European Union Immigration Policy: Institutions, Salience, and Harmonization

  Policy Studies Journal

  This article examines recent attempts to create a common European Union (EU) immigration policy. This “harmonized” policy has faced political blockages, despite being seen by most observers as necessary if the EU is to meet its goal of free movement of labor. Because of this resistance, immigration harmonization has lagged behind other EU policy areas. To explain national resistance to harmonizing immigration policy, our article develops a theoretical and conceptual model of how immigration policy is potentially harmonized at the EU level, but how this harmonization can be blocked or restricted. We explain these political blockages with a model of intergovernmental bargaining that focuses on political salience, political partisanship, and institutions that protect immigrant rights. We argue that these national-level factors have determined the success and the nature of various harmonization proposals, by determining the positions of member states when negotiating in the European Council. Our primary hypothesis is that when the political salience of a given immigration issue is high, any harmonization that results is more likely to be restrictive toward immigrant rights. We also hypothesize that the impact of institutions that protect immigrant rights, and of political partisanship, is variable depending on the issue area and the national context. We use literature on European integration, immigration politics, agenda-setting, venue-shopping, and two-level games to theorize, operationalize, and test these hypotheses. The article helps to advance scholarly work on immigration politics, but our model could also conceivably be applied to other high-salience policy areas in the EU.

• “Crisis” and Reality in European Immigration Policy

  Current History

  “[N]ationalism drives public impulses to crack down on immigration, yet the only effective way to increase immigration control is to cooperate with other nations—that is, by pooling resources and sovereignty. . . .”

• Fiscal Federalism and the Politics of Immigration: Centralized and Decentralized Immigration Policies in Canada and the United States

  Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis

  Why would immigration policy be centralized or decentralized in a federal system? What incentives do political actors at the central and sub-central levels of government possess vis-à-vis immigration policy? Taking account of the growing need to make sense of the unique features of immigration policy in a federal system (e.g. the mobility of labor, regional and national identities), and the unique challenges to federalism posed by immigration (e.g. public policy co-ordination, social cohesiveness), this paper advances a general theory of immigration politics in federations. It then illustrates this theory through discussion of two empirical cases: Canada and the United States.

• The Politics of European Union Immigration Policy: Institutions, Salience, and Harmonization

  Policy Studies Journal

  This article examines recent attempts to create a common European Union (EU) immigration policy. This “harmonized” policy has faced political blockages, despite being seen by most observers as necessary if the EU is to meet its goal of free movement of labor. Because of this resistance, immigration harmonization has lagged behind other EU policy areas. To explain national resistance to harmonizing immigration policy, our article develops a theoretical and conceptual model of how immigration policy is potentially harmonized at the EU level, but how this harmonization can be blocked or restricted. We explain these political blockages with a model of intergovernmental bargaining that focuses on political salience, political partisanship, and institutions that protect immigrant rights. We argue that these national-level factors have determined the success and the nature of various harmonization proposals, by determining the positions of member states when negotiating in the European Council. Our primary hypothesis is that when the political salience of a given immigration issue is high, any harmonization that results is more likely to be restrictive toward immigrant rights. We also hypothesize that the impact of institutions that protect immigrant rights, and of political partisanship, is variable depending on the issue area and the national context. We use literature on European integration, immigration politics, agenda-setting, venue-shopping, and two-level games to theorize, operationalize, and test these hypotheses. The article helps to advance scholarly work on immigration politics, but our model could also conceivably be applied to other high-salience policy areas in the EU.

• Global Migration and Political Regime Type: A Democratic Disadvantage

  British Journal of Political Science

  An indicator of globalization is the growing number of humans crossing national borders. In contrast to explanations for flows of goods and capital, migration research has concentrated on unilateral movements to rich democracies. This focus ignores the bilateral determinants of migration and stymies empirical and theoretical inquiry. The theoretical insights proposed here show how the regime type of both sending and receiving countries influences human migration. Specifically, democratic regimes accommodate fewer immigrants than autocracies and democracies enable emigration while autocracies prevent exit. The mechanisms for this divergence are a function of both micro-level motivations of migrants and institutional constraints on political leaders. Global bilateral migration data and a statistical method that captures the higher-order dependencies in network data are employed in this article.

• “Crisis” and Reality in European Immigration Policy

  Current History

  “[N]ationalism drives public impulses to crack down on immigration, yet the only effective way to increase immigration control is to cooperate with other nations—that is, by pooling resources and sovereignty. . . .”

• Fiscal Federalism and the Politics of Immigration: Centralized and Decentralized Immigration Policies in Canada and the United States

  Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis

  Why would immigration policy be centralized or decentralized in a federal system? What incentives do political actors at the central and sub-central levels of government possess vis-à-vis immigration policy? Taking account of the growing need to make sense of the unique features of immigration policy in a federal system (e.g. the mobility of labor, regional and national identities), and the unique challenges to federalism posed by immigration (e.g. public policy co-ordination, social cohesiveness), this paper advances a general theory of immigration politics in federations. It then illustrates this theory through discussion of two empirical cases: Canada and the United States.

• The Politics of European Union Immigration Policy: Institutions, Salience, and Harmonization

  Policy Studies Journal

  This article examines recent attempts to create a common European Union (EU) immigration policy. This “harmonized” policy has faced political blockages, despite being seen by most observers as necessary if the EU is to meet its goal of free movement of labor. Because of this resistance, immigration harmonization has lagged behind other EU policy areas. To explain national resistance to harmonizing immigration policy, our article develops a theoretical and conceptual model of how immigration policy is potentially harmonized at the EU level, but how this harmonization can be blocked or restricted. We explain these political blockages with a model of intergovernmental bargaining that focuses on political salience, political partisanship, and institutions that protect immigrant rights. We argue that these national-level factors have determined the success and the nature of various harmonization proposals, by determining the positions of member states when negotiating in the European Council. Our primary hypothesis is that when the political salience of a given immigration issue is high, any harmonization that results is more likely to be restrictive toward immigrant rights. We also hypothesize that the impact of institutions that protect immigrant rights, and of political partisanship, is variable depending on the issue area and the national context. We use literature on European integration, immigration politics, agenda-setting, venue-shopping, and two-level games to theorize, operationalize, and test these hypotheses. The article helps to advance scholarly work on immigration politics, but our model could also conceivably be applied to other high-salience policy areas in the EU.

• Global Migration and Political Regime Type: A Democratic Disadvantage

  British Journal of Political Science

  An indicator of globalization is the growing number of humans crossing national borders. In contrast to explanations for flows of goods and capital, migration research has concentrated on unilateral movements to rich democracies. This focus ignores the bilateral determinants of migration and stymies empirical and theoretical inquiry. The theoretical insights proposed here show how the regime type of both sending and receiving countries influences human migration. Specifically, democratic regimes accommodate fewer immigrants than autocracies and democracies enable emigration while autocracies prevent exit. The mechanisms for this divergence are a function of both micro-level motivations of migrants and institutional constraints on political leaders. Global bilateral migration data and a statistical method that captures the higher-order dependencies in network data are employed in this article.

• The Politics of Visas

  Journal of Diplomacy

  In an age of increasing migration, the political significance of cross-border human flows increases accordingly. Since control of borders is a core feature of sovereignty, states retain the right to control these flows through granting (or refusing) visas to nationals of various countries. However, increasing globalization and economic gains from migration (both tourism and long-term), as well as the heavy transaction costs of regulating migration, lead states to grant visa-free travel rights to nationals of certain countries. There is wide variation, however, in the level of visa-free travel enjoyed by nationals of various countries. As of 2006 Denmark, Finland and the United States led the pack, with 130 countries granting visa-free travel to their citizens. At the bottom was Afghanistan, with its nationals enjoying visa-free travel to only 12 countries. Our analysis seeks to pinpoint the strongest causal factors explaining this variation. Obviously variables like population size, wealth or colonial ties could account for some of the variance, but what about more subjective perceptions, such as the level of freedom or civil conflict in a country? Do Muslim countries face more discrimination, ceterus paribus? Does the number of terrorist attacks in a country have an effect? What about the amount of trade? In short, when one state decides that the citizens of another state can enter without needing to apply for a visa and undergoing scrutiny, what logic is driving this calculation? To answer this question we construct a 2006 data set spanning 156 countries, measuring the exact number of countries granting visa-free travel rights to each. We test 19 independent variables, finding that colonial heritage (British or Spanish), terrorism, democracy and wealth are the most important predictors. Surprisingly, health, trade, population size, geographic location and Islam do not appear to play a causal role.

• “Crisis” and Reality in European Immigration Policy

  Current History

  “[N]ationalism drives public impulses to crack down on immigration, yet the only effective way to increase immigration control is to cooperate with other nations—that is, by pooling resources and sovereignty. . . .”

• Fiscal Federalism and the Politics of Immigration: Centralized and Decentralized Immigration Policies in Canada and the United States

  Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis

  Why would immigration policy be centralized or decentralized in a federal system? What incentives do political actors at the central and sub-central levels of government possess vis-à-vis immigration policy? Taking account of the growing need to make sense of the unique features of immigration policy in a federal system (e.g. the mobility of labor, regional and national identities), and the unique challenges to federalism posed by immigration (e.g. public policy co-ordination, social cohesiveness), this paper advances a general theory of immigration politics in federations. It then illustrates this theory through discussion of two empirical cases: Canada and the United States.

• The Politics of European Union Immigration Policy: Institutions, Salience, and Harmonization

  Policy Studies Journal

  This article examines recent attempts to create a common European Union (EU) immigration policy. This “harmonized” policy has faced political blockages, despite being seen by most observers as necessary if the EU is to meet its goal of free movement of labor. Because of this resistance, immigration harmonization has lagged behind other EU policy areas. To explain national resistance to harmonizing immigration policy, our article develops a theoretical and conceptual model of how immigration policy is potentially harmonized at the EU level, but how this harmonization can be blocked or restricted. We explain these political blockages with a model of intergovernmental bargaining that focuses on political salience, political partisanship, and institutions that protect immigrant rights. We argue that these national-level factors have determined the success and the nature of various harmonization proposals, by determining the positions of member states when negotiating in the European Council. Our primary hypothesis is that when the political salience of a given immigration issue is high, any harmonization that results is more likely to be restrictive toward immigrant rights. We also hypothesize that the impact of institutions that protect immigrant rights, and of political partisanship, is variable depending on the issue area and the national context. We use literature on European integration, immigration politics, agenda-setting, venue-shopping, and two-level games to theorize, operationalize, and test these hypotheses. The article helps to advance scholarly work on immigration politics, but our model could also conceivably be applied to other high-salience policy areas in the EU.

• Global Migration and Political Regime Type: A Democratic Disadvantage

  British Journal of Political Science

  An indicator of globalization is the growing number of humans crossing national borders. In contrast to explanations for flows of goods and capital, migration research has concentrated on unilateral movements to rich democracies. This focus ignores the bilateral determinants of migration and stymies empirical and theoretical inquiry. The theoretical insights proposed here show how the regime type of both sending and receiving countries influences human migration. Specifically, democratic regimes accommodate fewer immigrants than autocracies and democracies enable emigration while autocracies prevent exit. The mechanisms for this divergence are a function of both micro-level motivations of migrants and institutional constraints on political leaders. Global bilateral migration data and a statistical method that captures the higher-order dependencies in network data are employed in this article.

• The Politics of Visas

  Journal of Diplomacy

  In an age of increasing migration, the political significance of cross-border human flows increases accordingly. Since control of borders is a core feature of sovereignty, states retain the right to control these flows through granting (or refusing) visas to nationals of various countries. However, increasing globalization and economic gains from migration (both tourism and long-term), as well as the heavy transaction costs of regulating migration, lead states to grant visa-free travel rights to nationals of certain countries. There is wide variation, however, in the level of visa-free travel enjoyed by nationals of various countries. As of 2006 Denmark, Finland and the United States led the pack, with 130 countries granting visa-free travel to their citizens. At the bottom was Afghanistan, with its nationals enjoying visa-free travel to only 12 countries. Our analysis seeks to pinpoint the strongest causal factors explaining this variation. Obviously variables like population size, wealth or colonial ties could account for some of the variance, but what about more subjective perceptions, such as the level of freedom or civil conflict in a country? Do Muslim countries face more discrimination, ceterus paribus? Does the number of terrorist attacks in a country have an effect? What about the amount of trade? In short, when one state decides that the citizens of another state can enter without needing to apply for a visa and undergoing scrutiny, what logic is driving this calculation? To answer this question we construct a 2006 data set spanning 156 countries, measuring the exact number of countries granting visa-free travel rights to each. We test 19 independent variables, finding that colonial heritage (British or Spanish), terrorism, democracy and wealth are the most important predictors. Surprisingly, health, trade, population size, geographic location and Islam do not appear to play a causal role.

• European Immigration Policies in Comparative Perspective: Issue Salience, Partisanship and Immigrant Rights

  Comparative European Politics

  This article examines the impact of issue salience and political partisanship on the restrictiveness of immigration laws in France, Germany, and the UK, from 1990 to 2002. Our first hypothesis is that immigration policymaking in liberal states is normally dominated by client politics, which minimizes restrictiveness towards immigrant rights, but under conditions of high issue salience and prominent media coverage, policy becomes more restrictive. Our second hypothesis is that Left and Right parties are equally restrictive vis-à-vis policies to control immigration, but Right parties are more restrictive vis-à-vis policies to integrate already-resident immigrants into society. We statistically test both of these hypotheses in Western Europe, while controlling for the impact of unemployment, GDP growth, and numbers of immigrants and refugees. Our analysis confirms that issue salience is a predictor of the restrictiveness of national immigration laws and that partisanship plays a role in policies towards the integration of already-resident immigrants, but not towards controlling the inflow of new immigrants.

• “Crisis” and Reality in European Immigration Policy

  Current History

  “[N]ationalism drives public impulses to crack down on immigration, yet the only effective way to increase immigration control is to cooperate with other nations—that is, by pooling resources and sovereignty. . . .”

• Fiscal Federalism and the Politics of Immigration: Centralized and Decentralized Immigration Policies in Canada and the United States

  Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis

  Why would immigration policy be centralized or decentralized in a federal system? What incentives do political actors at the central and sub-central levels of government possess vis-à-vis immigration policy? Taking account of the growing need to make sense of the unique features of immigration policy in a federal system (e.g. the mobility of labor, regional and national identities), and the unique challenges to federalism posed by immigration (e.g. public policy co-ordination, social cohesiveness), this paper advances a general theory of immigration politics in federations. It then illustrates this theory through discussion of two empirical cases: Canada and the United States.

• The Politics of European Union Immigration Policy: Institutions, Salience, and Harmonization

  Policy Studies Journal

  This article examines recent attempts to create a common European Union (EU) immigration policy. This “harmonized” policy has faced political blockages, despite being seen by most observers as necessary if the EU is to meet its goal of free movement of labor. Because of this resistance, immigration harmonization has lagged behind other EU policy areas. To explain national resistance to harmonizing immigration policy, our article develops a theoretical and conceptual model of how immigration policy is potentially harmonized at the EU level, but how this harmonization can be blocked or restricted. We explain these political blockages with a model of intergovernmental bargaining that focuses on political salience, political partisanship, and institutions that protect immigrant rights. We argue that these national-level factors have determined the success and the nature of various harmonization proposals, by determining the positions of member states when negotiating in the European Council. Our primary hypothesis is that when the political salience of a given immigration issue is high, any harmonization that results is more likely to be restrictive toward immigrant rights. We also hypothesize that the impact of institutions that protect immigrant rights, and of political partisanship, is variable depending on the issue area and the national context. We use literature on European integration, immigration politics, agenda-setting, venue-shopping, and two-level games to theorize, operationalize, and test these hypotheses. The article helps to advance scholarly work on immigration politics, but our model could also conceivably be applied to other high-salience policy areas in the EU.

• Global Migration and Political Regime Type: A Democratic Disadvantage

  British Journal of Political Science

  An indicator of globalization is the growing number of humans crossing national borders. In contrast to explanations for flows of goods and capital, migration research has concentrated on unilateral movements to rich democracies. This focus ignores the bilateral determinants of migration and stymies empirical and theoretical inquiry. The theoretical insights proposed here show how the regime type of both sending and receiving countries influences human migration. Specifically, democratic regimes accommodate fewer immigrants than autocracies and democracies enable emigration while autocracies prevent exit. The mechanisms for this divergence are a function of both micro-level motivations of migrants and institutional constraints on political leaders. Global bilateral migration data and a statistical method that captures the higher-order dependencies in network data are employed in this article.

• The Politics of Visas

  Journal of Diplomacy

  In an age of increasing migration, the political significance of cross-border human flows increases accordingly. Since control of borders is a core feature of sovereignty, states retain the right to control these flows through granting (or refusing) visas to nationals of various countries. However, increasing globalization and economic gains from migration (both tourism and long-term), as well as the heavy transaction costs of regulating migration, lead states to grant visa-free travel rights to nationals of certain countries. There is wide variation, however, in the level of visa-free travel enjoyed by nationals of various countries. As of 2006 Denmark, Finland and the United States led the pack, with 130 countries granting visa-free travel to their citizens. At the bottom was Afghanistan, with its nationals enjoying visa-free travel to only 12 countries. Our analysis seeks to pinpoint the strongest causal factors explaining this variation. Obviously variables like population size, wealth or colonial ties could account for some of the variance, but what about more subjective perceptions, such as the level of freedom or civil conflict in a country? Do Muslim countries face more discrimination, ceterus paribus? Does the number of terrorist attacks in a country have an effect? What about the amount of trade? In short, when one state decides that the citizens of another state can enter without needing to apply for a visa and undergoing scrutiny, what logic is driving this calculation? To answer this question we construct a 2006 data set spanning 156 countries, measuring the exact number of countries granting visa-free travel rights to each. We test 19 independent variables, finding that colonial heritage (British or Spanish), terrorism, democracy and wealth are the most important predictors. Surprisingly, health, trade, population size, geographic location and Islam do not appear to play a causal role.

• European Immigration Policies in Comparative Perspective: Issue Salience, Partisanship and Immigrant Rights

  Comparative European Politics

  This article examines the impact of issue salience and political partisanship on the restrictiveness of immigration laws in France, Germany, and the UK, from 1990 to 2002. Our first hypothesis is that immigration policymaking in liberal states is normally dominated by client politics, which minimizes restrictiveness towards immigrant rights, but under conditions of high issue salience and prominent media coverage, policy becomes more restrictive. Our second hypothesis is that Left and Right parties are equally restrictive vis-à-vis policies to control immigration, but Right parties are more restrictive vis-à-vis policies to integrate already-resident immigrants into society. We statistically test both of these hypotheses in Western Europe, while controlling for the impact of unemployment, GDP growth, and numbers of immigrants and refugees. Our analysis confirms that issue salience is a predictor of the restrictiveness of national immigration laws and that partisanship plays a role in policies towards the integration of already-resident immigrants, but not towards controlling the inflow of new immigrants.

• Migrants and Minorities: The European Response

  Cambridge Scholars Publishing

  Europe stands on the brink of a new era of diversity and immigration. Although many Europeans would prefer to ignore this fact, the signs are everywhere. Societies and politics are being irrevocably changed by their encounters with migrants, both recent and settled. This book pinpoints the specific trends and emerging patterns that allow us to understand what these changes mean for the future of Europe. On the ground level, institutions like schools and local governments have charted unique courses for dealing with diversity. And from above, the institutions of Brussels become ever more important for regulating the big picture. The passage of the Lisbon Treaty means that common EU rules on immigration will now be easier to achieve (and more likely). But what exact role is played by the institutions of the EU in Brussels, and how does this vary across policy areas? How are Europeans on all levels dealing with the sensitive questions raised by Islam, and how are migrants and minorities dealing with the hostility and xenophobia they routinely encounter? And finally, how have the experiences of different European countries in integrating their immigrants and minorities changed our comparative understanding of race, ethnicity and citizenship? These three sets of issues - EU-level regulations, Islam and Xenophobia, and comparative integration policy - are the topics that motivate and structure this book. Noted experts on each topic offer the latest research findings, which collectively advance our understanding of how Europe will deal with diversity in the 21st Century.

• “Crisis” and Reality in European Immigration Policy

  Current History

  “[N]ationalism drives public impulses to crack down on immigration, yet the only effective way to increase immigration control is to cooperate with other nations—that is, by pooling resources and sovereignty. . . .”

• Fiscal Federalism and the Politics of Immigration: Centralized and Decentralized Immigration Policies in Canada and the United States

  Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis

  Why would immigration policy be centralized or decentralized in a federal system? What incentives do political actors at the central and sub-central levels of government possess vis-à-vis immigration policy? Taking account of the growing need to make sense of the unique features of immigration policy in a federal system (e.g. the mobility of labor, regional and national identities), and the unique challenges to federalism posed by immigration (e.g. public policy co-ordination, social cohesiveness), this paper advances a general theory of immigration politics in federations. It then illustrates this theory through discussion of two empirical cases: Canada and the United States.

• The Politics of European Union Immigration Policy: Institutions, Salience, and Harmonization

  Policy Studies Journal

  This article examines recent attempts to create a common European Union (EU) immigration policy. This “harmonized” policy has faced political blockages, despite being seen by most observers as necessary if the EU is to meet its goal of free movement of labor. Because of this resistance, immigration harmonization has lagged behind other EU policy areas. To explain national resistance to harmonizing immigration policy, our article develops a theoretical and conceptual model of how immigration policy is potentially harmonized at the EU level, but how this harmonization can be blocked or restricted. We explain these political blockages with a model of intergovernmental bargaining that focuses on political salience, political partisanship, and institutions that protect immigrant rights. We argue that these national-level factors have determined the success and the nature of various harmonization proposals, by determining the positions of member states when negotiating in the European Council. Our primary hypothesis is that when the political salience of a given immigration issue is high, any harmonization that results is more likely to be restrictive toward immigrant rights. We also hypothesize that the impact of institutions that protect immigrant rights, and of political partisanship, is variable depending on the issue area and the national context. We use literature on European integration, immigration politics, agenda-setting, venue-shopping, and two-level games to theorize, operationalize, and test these hypotheses. The article helps to advance scholarly work on immigration politics, but our model could also conceivably be applied to other high-salience policy areas in the EU.

• Global Migration and Political Regime Type: A Democratic Disadvantage

  British Journal of Political Science

  An indicator of globalization is the growing number of humans crossing national borders. In contrast to explanations for flows of goods and capital, migration research has concentrated on unilateral movements to rich democracies. This focus ignores the bilateral determinants of migration and stymies empirical and theoretical inquiry. The theoretical insights proposed here show how the regime type of both sending and receiving countries influences human migration. Specifically, democratic regimes accommodate fewer immigrants than autocracies and democracies enable emigration while autocracies prevent exit. The mechanisms for this divergence are a function of both micro-level motivations of migrants and institutional constraints on political leaders. Global bilateral migration data and a statistical method that captures the higher-order dependencies in network data are employed in this article.

• The Politics of Visas

  Journal of Diplomacy

  In an age of increasing migration, the political significance of cross-border human flows increases accordingly. Since control of borders is a core feature of sovereignty, states retain the right to control these flows through granting (or refusing) visas to nationals of various countries. However, increasing globalization and economic gains from migration (both tourism and long-term), as well as the heavy transaction costs of regulating migration, lead states to grant visa-free travel rights to nationals of certain countries. There is wide variation, however, in the level of visa-free travel enjoyed by nationals of various countries. As of 2006 Denmark, Finland and the United States led the pack, with 130 countries granting visa-free travel to their citizens. At the bottom was Afghanistan, with its nationals enjoying visa-free travel to only 12 countries. Our analysis seeks to pinpoint the strongest causal factors explaining this variation. Obviously variables like population size, wealth or colonial ties could account for some of the variance, but what about more subjective perceptions, such as the level of freedom or civil conflict in a country? Do Muslim countries face more discrimination, ceterus paribus? Does the number of terrorist attacks in a country have an effect? What about the amount of trade? In short, when one state decides that the citizens of another state can enter without needing to apply for a visa and undergoing scrutiny, what logic is driving this calculation? To answer this question we construct a 2006 data set spanning 156 countries, measuring the exact number of countries granting visa-free travel rights to each. We test 19 independent variables, finding that colonial heritage (British or Spanish), terrorism, democracy and wealth are the most important predictors. Surprisingly, health, trade, population size, geographic location and Islam do not appear to play a causal role.

• European Immigration Policies in Comparative Perspective: Issue Salience, Partisanship and Immigrant Rights

  Comparative European Politics

  This article examines the impact of issue salience and political partisanship on the restrictiveness of immigration laws in France, Germany, and the UK, from 1990 to 2002. Our first hypothesis is that immigration policymaking in liberal states is normally dominated by client politics, which minimizes restrictiveness towards immigrant rights, but under conditions of high issue salience and prominent media coverage, policy becomes more restrictive. Our second hypothesis is that Left and Right parties are equally restrictive vis-à-vis policies to control immigration, but Right parties are more restrictive vis-à-vis policies to integrate already-resident immigrants into society. We statistically test both of these hypotheses in Western Europe, while controlling for the impact of unemployment, GDP growth, and numbers of immigrants and refugees. Our analysis confirms that issue salience is a predictor of the restrictiveness of national immigration laws and that partisanship plays a role in policies towards the integration of already-resident immigrants, but not towards controlling the inflow of new immigrants.

• Migrants and Minorities: The European Response

  Cambridge Scholars Publishing

  Europe stands on the brink of a new era of diversity and immigration. Although many Europeans would prefer to ignore this fact, the signs are everywhere. Societies and politics are being irrevocably changed by their encounters with migrants, both recent and settled. This book pinpoints the specific trends and emerging patterns that allow us to understand what these changes mean for the future of Europe. On the ground level, institutions like schools and local governments have charted unique courses for dealing with diversity. And from above, the institutions of Brussels become ever more important for regulating the big picture. The passage of the Lisbon Treaty means that common EU rules on immigration will now be easier to achieve (and more likely). But what exact role is played by the institutions of the EU in Brussels, and how does this vary across policy areas? How are Europeans on all levels dealing with the sensitive questions raised by Islam, and how are migrants and minorities dealing with the hostility and xenophobia they routinely encounter? And finally, how have the experiences of different European countries in integrating their immigrants and minorities changed our comparative understanding of race, ethnicity and citizenship? These three sets of issues - EU-level regulations, Islam and Xenophobia, and comparative integration policy - are the topics that motivate and structure this book. Noted experts on each topic offer the latest research findings, which collectively advance our understanding of how Europe will deal with diversity in the 21st Century.

• Uncovering European Union Immigration Legislation: Policy Dynamics and Outcomes

  International Migration

  The member states of the European Union (EU) have recently experimented with constructing a common immigration policy. This gives rise to an important and fascinating question: what happens to immigration policy once it is no longer made in national capitals? Have national governments been able to retain ultimate control over the field of EU immigration policy? Or do we see slippage towards supranational power, with the Commission, Parliament, and Court of Justice expanding their influence? If EU institutions have gained power, do they use this power to defend the rights and freedoms of immigrants against restrictionist national governments? Using participant interviews (listed in Appendix I) and documentary analysis, I analyse negotiations over three EU immigration laws: the directives on family reunification, long-term residence, and economic migration. I assess whether national preferences are implemented in these directives, or whether supranational institutions have moved policy away from national preferences, potentially expanding immigrant rights and freedoms.

• “Crisis” and Reality in European Immigration Policy

  Current History

  “[N]ationalism drives public impulses to crack down on immigration, yet the only effective way to increase immigration control is to cooperate with other nations—that is, by pooling resources and sovereignty. . . .”

• Fiscal Federalism and the Politics of Immigration: Centralized and Decentralized Immigration Policies in Canada and the United States

  Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis

  Why would immigration policy be centralized or decentralized in a federal system? What incentives do political actors at the central and sub-central levels of government possess vis-à-vis immigration policy? Taking account of the growing need to make sense of the unique features of immigration policy in a federal system (e.g. the mobility of labor, regional and national identities), and the unique challenges to federalism posed by immigration (e.g. public policy co-ordination, social cohesiveness), this paper advances a general theory of immigration politics in federations. It then illustrates this theory through discussion of two empirical cases: Canada and the United States.

• The Politics of European Union Immigration Policy: Institutions, Salience, and Harmonization

  Policy Studies Journal

  This article examines recent attempts to create a common European Union (EU) immigration policy. This “harmonized” policy has faced political blockages, despite being seen by most observers as necessary if the EU is to meet its goal of free movement of labor. Because of this resistance, immigration harmonization has lagged behind other EU policy areas. To explain national resistance to harmonizing immigration policy, our article develops a theoretical and conceptual model of how immigration policy is potentially harmonized at the EU level, but how this harmonization can be blocked or restricted. We explain these political blockages with a model of intergovernmental bargaining that focuses on political salience, political partisanship, and institutions that protect immigrant rights. We argue that these national-level factors have determined the success and the nature of various harmonization proposals, by determining the positions of member states when negotiating in the European Council. Our primary hypothesis is that when the political salience of a given immigration issue is high, any harmonization that results is more likely to be restrictive toward immigrant rights. We also hypothesize that the impact of institutions that protect immigrant rights, and of political partisanship, is variable depending on the issue area and the national context. We use literature on European integration, immigration politics, agenda-setting, venue-shopping, and two-level games to theorize, operationalize, and test these hypotheses. The article helps to advance scholarly work on immigration politics, but our model could also conceivably be applied to other high-salience policy areas in the EU.

• Global Migration and Political Regime Type: A Democratic Disadvantage

  British Journal of Political Science

  An indicator of globalization is the growing number of humans crossing national borders. In contrast to explanations for flows of goods and capital, migration research has concentrated on unilateral movements to rich democracies. This focus ignores the bilateral determinants of migration and stymies empirical and theoretical inquiry. The theoretical insights proposed here show how the regime type of both sending and receiving countries influences human migration. Specifically, democratic regimes accommodate fewer immigrants than autocracies and democracies enable emigration while autocracies prevent exit. The mechanisms for this divergence are a function of both micro-level motivations of migrants and institutional constraints on political leaders. Global bilateral migration data and a statistical method that captures the higher-order dependencies in network data are employed in this article.

• The Politics of Visas

  Journal of Diplomacy

  In an age of increasing migration, the political significance of cross-border human flows increases accordingly. Since control of borders is a core feature of sovereignty, states retain the right to control these flows through granting (or refusing) visas to nationals of various countries. However, increasing globalization and economic gains from migration (both tourism and long-term), as well as the heavy transaction costs of regulating migration, lead states to grant visa-free travel rights to nationals of certain countries. There is wide variation, however, in the level of visa-free travel enjoyed by nationals of various countries. As of 2006 Denmark, Finland and the United States led the pack, with 130 countries granting visa-free travel to their citizens. At the bottom was Afghanistan, with its nationals enjoying visa-free travel to only 12 countries. Our analysis seeks to pinpoint the strongest causal factors explaining this variation. Obviously variables like population size, wealth or colonial ties could account for some of the variance, but what about more subjective perceptions, such as the level of freedom or civil conflict in a country? Do Muslim countries face more discrimination, ceterus paribus? Does the number of terrorist attacks in a country have an effect? What about the amount of trade? In short, when one state decides that the citizens of another state can enter without needing to apply for a visa and undergoing scrutiny, what logic is driving this calculation? To answer this question we construct a 2006 data set spanning 156 countries, measuring the exact number of countries granting visa-free travel rights to each. We test 19 independent variables, finding that colonial heritage (British or Spanish), terrorism, democracy and wealth are the most important predictors. Surprisingly, health, trade, population size, geographic location and Islam do not appear to play a causal role.

• European Immigration Policies in Comparative Perspective: Issue Salience, Partisanship and Immigrant Rights

  Comparative European Politics

  This article examines the impact of issue salience and political partisanship on the restrictiveness of immigration laws in France, Germany, and the UK, from 1990 to 2002. Our first hypothesis is that immigration policymaking in liberal states is normally dominated by client politics, which minimizes restrictiveness towards immigrant rights, but under conditions of high issue salience and prominent media coverage, policy becomes more restrictive. Our second hypothesis is that Left and Right parties are equally restrictive vis-à-vis policies to control immigration, but Right parties are more restrictive vis-à-vis policies to integrate already-resident immigrants into society. We statistically test both of these hypotheses in Western Europe, while controlling for the impact of unemployment, GDP growth, and numbers of immigrants and refugees. Our analysis confirms that issue salience is a predictor of the restrictiveness of national immigration laws and that partisanship plays a role in policies towards the integration of already-resident immigrants, but not towards controlling the inflow of new immigrants.

• Migrants and Minorities: The European Response

  Cambridge Scholars Publishing

  Europe stands on the brink of a new era of diversity and immigration. Although many Europeans would prefer to ignore this fact, the signs are everywhere. Societies and politics are being irrevocably changed by their encounters with migrants, both recent and settled. This book pinpoints the specific trends and emerging patterns that allow us to understand what these changes mean for the future of Europe. On the ground level, institutions like schools and local governments have charted unique courses for dealing with diversity. And from above, the institutions of Brussels become ever more important for regulating the big picture. The passage of the Lisbon Treaty means that common EU rules on immigration will now be easier to achieve (and more likely). But what exact role is played by the institutions of the EU in Brussels, and how does this vary across policy areas? How are Europeans on all levels dealing with the sensitive questions raised by Islam, and how are migrants and minorities dealing with the hostility and xenophobia they routinely encounter? And finally, how have the experiences of different European countries in integrating their immigrants and minorities changed our comparative understanding of race, ethnicity and citizenship? These three sets of issues - EU-level regulations, Islam and Xenophobia, and comparative integration policy - are the topics that motivate and structure this book. Noted experts on each topic offer the latest research findings, which collectively advance our understanding of how Europe will deal with diversity in the 21st Century.

• Uncovering European Union Immigration Legislation: Policy Dynamics and Outcomes

  International Migration

  The member states of the European Union (EU) have recently experimented with constructing a common immigration policy. This gives rise to an important and fascinating question: what happens to immigration policy once it is no longer made in national capitals? Have national governments been able to retain ultimate control over the field of EU immigration policy? Or do we see slippage towards supranational power, with the Commission, Parliament, and Court of Justice expanding their influence? If EU institutions have gained power, do they use this power to defend the rights and freedoms of immigrants against restrictionist national governments? Using participant interviews (listed in Appendix I) and documentary analysis, I analyse negotiations over three EU immigration laws: the directives on family reunification, long-term residence, and economic migration. I assess whether national preferences are implemented in these directives, or whether supranational institutions have moved policy away from national preferences, potentially expanding immigrant rights and freedoms.

• Fortifying Fortress Europe?: The Effect of September 11 on EU Immigration Policy

  Immigration Policy and Security: US, European, and Commonwealth Perspectives

  Chapter 7 in G. Freeman, T. Givens, and D. Leal, eds. New York: Routledge, pp. 130-147.

• “Crisis” and Reality in European Immigration Policy

  Current History

  “[N]ationalism drives public impulses to crack down on immigration, yet the only effective way to increase immigration control is to cooperate with other nations—that is, by pooling resources and sovereignty. . . .”

• Fiscal Federalism and the Politics of Immigration: Centralized and Decentralized Immigration Policies in Canada and the United States

  Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis

  Why would immigration policy be centralized or decentralized in a federal system? What incentives do political actors at the central and sub-central levels of government possess vis-à-vis immigration policy? Taking account of the growing need to make sense of the unique features of immigration policy in a federal system (e.g. the mobility of labor, regional and national identities), and the unique challenges to federalism posed by immigration (e.g. public policy co-ordination, social cohesiveness), this paper advances a general theory of immigration politics in federations. It then illustrates this theory through discussion of two empirical cases: Canada and the United States.

• The Politics of European Union Immigration Policy: Institutions, Salience, and Harmonization

  Policy Studies Journal

  This article examines recent attempts to create a common European Union (EU) immigration policy. This “harmonized” policy has faced political blockages, despite being seen by most observers as necessary if the EU is to meet its goal of free movement of labor. Because of this resistance, immigration harmonization has lagged behind other EU policy areas. To explain national resistance to harmonizing immigration policy, our article develops a theoretical and conceptual model of how immigration policy is potentially harmonized at the EU level, but how this harmonization can be blocked or restricted. We explain these political blockages with a model of intergovernmental bargaining that focuses on political salience, political partisanship, and institutions that protect immigrant rights. We argue that these national-level factors have determined the success and the nature of various harmonization proposals, by determining the positions of member states when negotiating in the European Council. Our primary hypothesis is that when the political salience of a given immigration issue is high, any harmonization that results is more likely to be restrictive toward immigrant rights. We also hypothesize that the impact of institutions that protect immigrant rights, and of political partisanship, is variable depending on the issue area and the national context. We use literature on European integration, immigration politics, agenda-setting, venue-shopping, and two-level games to theorize, operationalize, and test these hypotheses. The article helps to advance scholarly work on immigration politics, but our model could also conceivably be applied to other high-salience policy areas in the EU.

• Global Migration and Political Regime Type: A Democratic Disadvantage

  British Journal of Political Science

  An indicator of globalization is the growing number of humans crossing national borders. In contrast to explanations for flows of goods and capital, migration research has concentrated on unilateral movements to rich democracies. This focus ignores the bilateral determinants of migration and stymies empirical and theoretical inquiry. The theoretical insights proposed here show how the regime type of both sending and receiving countries influences human migration. Specifically, democratic regimes accommodate fewer immigrants than autocracies and democracies enable emigration while autocracies prevent exit. The mechanisms for this divergence are a function of both micro-level motivations of migrants and institutional constraints on political leaders. Global bilateral migration data and a statistical method that captures the higher-order dependencies in network data are employed in this article.

• The Politics of Visas

  Journal of Diplomacy

  In an age of increasing migration, the political significance of cross-border human flows increases accordingly. Since control of borders is a core feature of sovereignty, states retain the right to control these flows through granting (or refusing) visas to nationals of various countries. However, increasing globalization and economic gains from migration (both tourism and long-term), as well as the heavy transaction costs of regulating migration, lead states to grant visa-free travel rights to nationals of certain countries. There is wide variation, however, in the level of visa-free travel enjoyed by nationals of various countries. As of 2006 Denmark, Finland and the United States led the pack, with 130 countries granting visa-free travel to their citizens. At the bottom was Afghanistan, with its nationals enjoying visa-free travel to only 12 countries. Our analysis seeks to pinpoint the strongest causal factors explaining this variation. Obviously variables like population size, wealth or colonial ties could account for some of the variance, but what about more subjective perceptions, such as the level of freedom or civil conflict in a country? Do Muslim countries face more discrimination, ceterus paribus? Does the number of terrorist attacks in a country have an effect? What about the amount of trade? In short, when one state decides that the citizens of another state can enter without needing to apply for a visa and undergoing scrutiny, what logic is driving this calculation? To answer this question we construct a 2006 data set spanning 156 countries, measuring the exact number of countries granting visa-free travel rights to each. We test 19 independent variables, finding that colonial heritage (British or Spanish), terrorism, democracy and wealth are the most important predictors. Surprisingly, health, trade, population size, geographic location and Islam do not appear to play a causal role.

• European Immigration Policies in Comparative Perspective: Issue Salience, Partisanship and Immigrant Rights

  Comparative European Politics

  This article examines the impact of issue salience and political partisanship on the restrictiveness of immigration laws in France, Germany, and the UK, from 1990 to 2002. Our first hypothesis is that immigration policymaking in liberal states is normally dominated by client politics, which minimizes restrictiveness towards immigrant rights, but under conditions of high issue salience and prominent media coverage, policy becomes more restrictive. Our second hypothesis is that Left and Right parties are equally restrictive vis-à-vis policies to control immigration, but Right parties are more restrictive vis-à-vis policies to integrate already-resident immigrants into society. We statistically test both of these hypotheses in Western Europe, while controlling for the impact of unemployment, GDP growth, and numbers of immigrants and refugees. Our analysis confirms that issue salience is a predictor of the restrictiveness of national immigration laws and that partisanship plays a role in policies towards the integration of already-resident immigrants, but not towards controlling the inflow of new immigrants.

• Migrants and Minorities: The European Response

  Cambridge Scholars Publishing

  Europe stands on the brink of a new era of diversity and immigration. Although many Europeans would prefer to ignore this fact, the signs are everywhere. Societies and politics are being irrevocably changed by their encounters with migrants, both recent and settled. This book pinpoints the specific trends and emerging patterns that allow us to understand what these changes mean for the future of Europe. On the ground level, institutions like schools and local governments have charted unique courses for dealing with diversity. And from above, the institutions of Brussels become ever more important for regulating the big picture. The passage of the Lisbon Treaty means that common EU rules on immigration will now be easier to achieve (and more likely). But what exact role is played by the institutions of the EU in Brussels, and how does this vary across policy areas? How are Europeans on all levels dealing with the sensitive questions raised by Islam, and how are migrants and minorities dealing with the hostility and xenophobia they routinely encounter? And finally, how have the experiences of different European countries in integrating their immigrants and minorities changed our comparative understanding of race, ethnicity and citizenship? These three sets of issues - EU-level regulations, Islam and Xenophobia, and comparative integration policy - are the topics that motivate and structure this book. Noted experts on each topic offer the latest research findings, which collectively advance our understanding of how Europe will deal with diversity in the 21st Century.

• Uncovering European Union Immigration Legislation: Policy Dynamics and Outcomes

  International Migration

  The member states of the European Union (EU) have recently experimented with constructing a common immigration policy. This gives rise to an important and fascinating question: what happens to immigration policy once it is no longer made in national capitals? Have national governments been able to retain ultimate control over the field of EU immigration policy? Or do we see slippage towards supranational power, with the Commission, Parliament, and Court of Justice expanding their influence? If EU institutions have gained power, do they use this power to defend the rights and freedoms of immigrants against restrictionist national governments? Using participant interviews (listed in Appendix I) and documentary analysis, I analyse negotiations over three EU immigration laws: the directives on family reunification, long-term residence, and economic migration. I assess whether national preferences are implemented in these directives, or whether supranational institutions have moved policy away from national preferences, potentially expanding immigrant rights and freedoms.

• Fortifying Fortress Europe?: The Effect of September 11 on EU Immigration Policy

  Immigration Policy and Security: US, European, and Commonwealth Perspectives

  Chapter 7 in G. Freeman, T. Givens, and D. Leal, eds. New York: Routledge, pp. 130-147.

• European Integration, Public Opinion and Immigration Policy: Testing the Impact of National Identity

  European Union Politics

  This article empirically investigates the effect of national identity on public opinion towards European Union (EU) control over immigration policy. The EU has recently gained some control over immigration policy, but has faced strong opposition from reluctant national politicians. This study argues that public opinion is an important factor in explaining such reluctance. I propose a hypothesis of national identity to explain public opinion, positing that those who identify with their nation-states (vis-à-vis Europe) are less likely to support EU control over immigration policy than are those who identify with ‘Europe’. Using logistic regression, this factor is shown to be stronger than support for European integration, opinions about immigrants themselves, and other variables such as economic calculation, political ideology, age and gender.

• “Crisis” and Reality in European Immigration Policy

  Current History

  “[N]ationalism drives public impulses to crack down on immigration, yet the only effective way to increase immigration control is to cooperate with other nations—that is, by pooling resources and sovereignty. . . .”

• Fiscal Federalism and the Politics of Immigration: Centralized and Decentralized Immigration Policies in Canada and the United States

  Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis

  Why would immigration policy be centralized or decentralized in a federal system? What incentives do political actors at the central and sub-central levels of government possess vis-à-vis immigration policy? Taking account of the growing need to make sense of the unique features of immigration policy in a federal system (e.g. the mobility of labor, regional and national identities), and the unique challenges to federalism posed by immigration (e.g. public policy co-ordination, social cohesiveness), this paper advances a general theory of immigration politics in federations. It then illustrates this theory through discussion of two empirical cases: Canada and the United States.

• The Politics of European Union Immigration Policy: Institutions, Salience, and Harmonization

  Policy Studies Journal

  This article examines recent attempts to create a common European Union (EU) immigration policy. This “harmonized” policy has faced political blockages, despite being seen by most observers as necessary if the EU is to meet its goal of free movement of labor. Because of this resistance, immigration harmonization has lagged behind other EU policy areas. To explain national resistance to harmonizing immigration policy, our article develops a theoretical and conceptual model of how immigration policy is potentially harmonized at the EU level, but how this harmonization can be blocked or restricted. We explain these political blockages with a model of intergovernmental bargaining that focuses on political salience, political partisanship, and institutions that protect immigrant rights. We argue that these national-level factors have determined the success and the nature of various harmonization proposals, by determining the positions of member states when negotiating in the European Council. Our primary hypothesis is that when the political salience of a given immigration issue is high, any harmonization that results is more likely to be restrictive toward immigrant rights. We also hypothesize that the impact of institutions that protect immigrant rights, and of political partisanship, is variable depending on the issue area and the national context. We use literature on European integration, immigration politics, agenda-setting, venue-shopping, and two-level games to theorize, operationalize, and test these hypotheses. The article helps to advance scholarly work on immigration politics, but our model could also conceivably be applied to other high-salience policy areas in the EU.

• Global Migration and Political Regime Type: A Democratic Disadvantage

  British Journal of Political Science

  An indicator of globalization is the growing number of humans crossing national borders. In contrast to explanations for flows of goods and capital, migration research has concentrated on unilateral movements to rich democracies. This focus ignores the bilateral determinants of migration and stymies empirical and theoretical inquiry. The theoretical insights proposed here show how the regime type of both sending and receiving countries influences human migration. Specifically, democratic regimes accommodate fewer immigrants than autocracies and democracies enable emigration while autocracies prevent exit. The mechanisms for this divergence are a function of both micro-level motivations of migrants and institutional constraints on political leaders. Global bilateral migration data and a statistical method that captures the higher-order dependencies in network data are employed in this article.

• The Politics of Visas

  Journal of Diplomacy

  In an age of increasing migration, the political significance of cross-border human flows increases accordingly. Since control of borders is a core feature of sovereignty, states retain the right to control these flows through granting (or refusing) visas to nationals of various countries. However, increasing globalization and economic gains from migration (both tourism and long-term), as well as the heavy transaction costs of regulating migration, lead states to grant visa-free travel rights to nationals of certain countries. There is wide variation, however, in the level of visa-free travel enjoyed by nationals of various countries. As of 2006 Denmark, Finland and the United States led the pack, with 130 countries granting visa-free travel to their citizens. At the bottom was Afghanistan, with its nationals enjoying visa-free travel to only 12 countries. Our analysis seeks to pinpoint the strongest causal factors explaining this variation. Obviously variables like population size, wealth or colonial ties could account for some of the variance, but what about more subjective perceptions, such as the level of freedom or civil conflict in a country? Do Muslim countries face more discrimination, ceterus paribus? Does the number of terrorist attacks in a country have an effect? What about the amount of trade? In short, when one state decides that the citizens of another state can enter without needing to apply for a visa and undergoing scrutiny, what logic is driving this calculation? To answer this question we construct a 2006 data set spanning 156 countries, measuring the exact number of countries granting visa-free travel rights to each. We test 19 independent variables, finding that colonial heritage (British or Spanish), terrorism, democracy and wealth are the most important predictors. Surprisingly, health, trade, population size, geographic location and Islam do not appear to play a causal role.

• European Immigration Policies in Comparative Perspective: Issue Salience, Partisanship and Immigrant Rights

  Comparative European Politics

  This article examines the impact of issue salience and political partisanship on the restrictiveness of immigration laws in France, Germany, and the UK, from 1990 to 2002. Our first hypothesis is that immigration policymaking in liberal states is normally dominated by client politics, which minimizes restrictiveness towards immigrant rights, but under conditions of high issue salience and prominent media coverage, policy becomes more restrictive. Our second hypothesis is that Left and Right parties are equally restrictive vis-à-vis policies to control immigration, but Right parties are more restrictive vis-à-vis policies to integrate already-resident immigrants into society. We statistically test both of these hypotheses in Western Europe, while controlling for the impact of unemployment, GDP growth, and numbers of immigrants and refugees. Our analysis confirms that issue salience is a predictor of the restrictiveness of national immigration laws and that partisanship plays a role in policies towards the integration of already-resident immigrants, but not towards controlling the inflow of new immigrants.

• Migrants and Minorities: The European Response

  Cambridge Scholars Publishing

  Europe stands on the brink of a new era of diversity and immigration. Although many Europeans would prefer to ignore this fact, the signs are everywhere. Societies and politics are being irrevocably changed by their encounters with migrants, both recent and settled. This book pinpoints the specific trends and emerging patterns that allow us to understand what these changes mean for the future of Europe. On the ground level, institutions like schools and local governments have charted unique courses for dealing with diversity. And from above, the institutions of Brussels become ever more important for regulating the big picture. The passage of the Lisbon Treaty means that common EU rules on immigration will now be easier to achieve (and more likely). But what exact role is played by the institutions of the EU in Brussels, and how does this vary across policy areas? How are Europeans on all levels dealing with the sensitive questions raised by Islam, and how are migrants and minorities dealing with the hostility and xenophobia they routinely encounter? And finally, how have the experiences of different European countries in integrating their immigrants and minorities changed our comparative understanding of race, ethnicity and citizenship? These three sets of issues - EU-level regulations, Islam and Xenophobia, and comparative integration policy - are the topics that motivate and structure this book. Noted experts on each topic offer the latest research findings, which collectively advance our understanding of how Europe will deal with diversity in the 21st Century.

• Uncovering European Union Immigration Legislation: Policy Dynamics and Outcomes

  International Migration

  The member states of the European Union (EU) have recently experimented with constructing a common immigration policy. This gives rise to an important and fascinating question: what happens to immigration policy once it is no longer made in national capitals? Have national governments been able to retain ultimate control over the field of EU immigration policy? Or do we see slippage towards supranational power, with the Commission, Parliament, and Court of Justice expanding their influence? If EU institutions have gained power, do they use this power to defend the rights and freedoms of immigrants against restrictionist national governments? Using participant interviews (listed in Appendix I) and documentary analysis, I analyse negotiations over three EU immigration laws: the directives on family reunification, long-term residence, and economic migration. I assess whether national preferences are implemented in these directives, or whether supranational institutions have moved policy away from national preferences, potentially expanding immigrant rights and freedoms.

• Fortifying Fortress Europe?: The Effect of September 11 on EU Immigration Policy

  Immigration Policy and Security: US, European, and Commonwealth Perspectives

  Chapter 7 in G. Freeman, T. Givens, and D. Leal, eds. New York: Routledge, pp. 130-147.

• European Integration, Public Opinion and Immigration Policy: Testing the Impact of National Identity

  European Union Politics

  This article empirically investigates the effect of national identity on public opinion towards European Union (EU) control over immigration policy. The EU has recently gained some control over immigration policy, but has faced strong opposition from reluctant national politicians. This study argues that public opinion is an important factor in explaining such reluctance. I propose a hypothesis of national identity to explain public opinion, positing that those who identify with their nation-states (vis-à-vis Europe) are less likely to support EU control over immigration policy than are those who identify with ‘Europe’. Using logistic regression, this factor is shown to be stronger than support for European integration, opinions about immigrants themselves, and other variables such as economic calculation, political ideology, age and gender.

• EU Immigration Policy: From Intergovernmentalism to Reluctant Harmonization

  State of the European Union, Volume 6: Law, Politics and Society.

  Chapter 14 in Cichowski, R. and T. Borzel, eds. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, pp. 291-312.

• “Crisis” and Reality in European Immigration Policy

  Current History

  “[N]ationalism drives public impulses to crack down on immigration, yet the only effective way to increase immigration control is to cooperate with other nations—that is, by pooling resources and sovereignty. . . .”

• Fiscal Federalism and the Politics of Immigration: Centralized and Decentralized Immigration Policies in Canada and the United States

  Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis

  Why would immigration policy be centralized or decentralized in a federal system? What incentives do political actors at the central and sub-central levels of government possess vis-à-vis immigration policy? Taking account of the growing need to make sense of the unique features of immigration policy in a federal system (e.g. the mobility of labor, regional and national identities), and the unique challenges to federalism posed by immigration (e.g. public policy co-ordination, social cohesiveness), this paper advances a general theory of immigration politics in federations. It then illustrates this theory through discussion of two empirical cases: Canada and the United States.

• The Politics of European Union Immigration Policy: Institutions, Salience, and Harmonization

  Policy Studies Journal

  This article examines recent attempts to create a common European Union (EU) immigration policy. This “harmonized” policy has faced political blockages, despite being seen by most observers as necessary if the EU is to meet its goal of free movement of labor. Because of this resistance, immigration harmonization has lagged behind other EU policy areas. To explain national resistance to harmonizing immigration policy, our article develops a theoretical and conceptual model of how immigration policy is potentially harmonized at the EU level, but how this harmonization can be blocked or restricted. We explain these political blockages with a model of intergovernmental bargaining that focuses on political salience, political partisanship, and institutions that protect immigrant rights. We argue that these national-level factors have determined the success and the nature of various harmonization proposals, by determining the positions of member states when negotiating in the European Council. Our primary hypothesis is that when the political salience of a given immigration issue is high, any harmonization that results is more likely to be restrictive toward immigrant rights. We also hypothesize that the impact of institutions that protect immigrant rights, and of political partisanship, is variable depending on the issue area and the national context. We use literature on European integration, immigration politics, agenda-setting, venue-shopping, and two-level games to theorize, operationalize, and test these hypotheses. The article helps to advance scholarly work on immigration politics, but our model could also conceivably be applied to other high-salience policy areas in the EU.

• Global Migration and Political Regime Type: A Democratic Disadvantage

  British Journal of Political Science

  An indicator of globalization is the growing number of humans crossing national borders. In contrast to explanations for flows of goods and capital, migration research has concentrated on unilateral movements to rich democracies. This focus ignores the bilateral determinants of migration and stymies empirical and theoretical inquiry. The theoretical insights proposed here show how the regime type of both sending and receiving countries influences human migration. Specifically, democratic regimes accommodate fewer immigrants than autocracies and democracies enable emigration while autocracies prevent exit. The mechanisms for this divergence are a function of both micro-level motivations of migrants and institutional constraints on political leaders. Global bilateral migration data and a statistical method that captures the higher-order dependencies in network data are employed in this article.

• The Politics of Visas

  Journal of Diplomacy

  In an age of increasing migration, the political significance of cross-border human flows increases accordingly. Since control of borders is a core feature of sovereignty, states retain the right to control these flows through granting (or refusing) visas to nationals of various countries. However, increasing globalization and economic gains from migration (both tourism and long-term), as well as the heavy transaction costs of regulating migration, lead states to grant visa-free travel rights to nationals of certain countries. There is wide variation, however, in the level of visa-free travel enjoyed by nationals of various countries. As of 2006 Denmark, Finland and the United States led the pack, with 130 countries granting visa-free travel to their citizens. At the bottom was Afghanistan, with its nationals enjoying visa-free travel to only 12 countries. Our analysis seeks to pinpoint the strongest causal factors explaining this variation. Obviously variables like population size, wealth or colonial ties could account for some of the variance, but what about more subjective perceptions, such as the level of freedom or civil conflict in a country? Do Muslim countries face more discrimination, ceterus paribus? Does the number of terrorist attacks in a country have an effect? What about the amount of trade? In short, when one state decides that the citizens of another state can enter without needing to apply for a visa and undergoing scrutiny, what logic is driving this calculation? To answer this question we construct a 2006 data set spanning 156 countries, measuring the exact number of countries granting visa-free travel rights to each. We test 19 independent variables, finding that colonial heritage (British or Spanish), terrorism, democracy and wealth are the most important predictors. Surprisingly, health, trade, population size, geographic location and Islam do not appear to play a causal role.

• European Immigration Policies in Comparative Perspective: Issue Salience, Partisanship and Immigrant Rights

  Comparative European Politics

  This article examines the impact of issue salience and political partisanship on the restrictiveness of immigration laws in France, Germany, and the UK, from 1990 to 2002. Our first hypothesis is that immigration policymaking in liberal states is normally dominated by client politics, which minimizes restrictiveness towards immigrant rights, but under conditions of high issue salience and prominent media coverage, policy becomes more restrictive. Our second hypothesis is that Left and Right parties are equally restrictive vis-à-vis policies to control immigration, but Right parties are more restrictive vis-à-vis policies to integrate already-resident immigrants into society. We statistically test both of these hypotheses in Western Europe, while controlling for the impact of unemployment, GDP growth, and numbers of immigrants and refugees. Our analysis confirms that issue salience is a predictor of the restrictiveness of national immigration laws and that partisanship plays a role in policies towards the integration of already-resident immigrants, but not towards controlling the inflow of new immigrants.

• Migrants and Minorities: The European Response

  Cambridge Scholars Publishing

  Europe stands on the brink of a new era of diversity and immigration. Although many Europeans would prefer to ignore this fact, the signs are everywhere. Societies and politics are being irrevocably changed by their encounters with migrants, both recent and settled. This book pinpoints the specific trends and emerging patterns that allow us to understand what these changes mean for the future of Europe. On the ground level, institutions like schools and local governments have charted unique courses for dealing with diversity. And from above, the institutions of Brussels become ever more important for regulating the big picture. The passage of the Lisbon Treaty means that common EU rules on immigration will now be easier to achieve (and more likely). But what exact role is played by the institutions of the EU in Brussels, and how does this vary across policy areas? How are Europeans on all levels dealing with the sensitive questions raised by Islam, and how are migrants and minorities dealing with the hostility and xenophobia they routinely encounter? And finally, how have the experiences of different European countries in integrating their immigrants and minorities changed our comparative understanding of race, ethnicity and citizenship? These three sets of issues - EU-level regulations, Islam and Xenophobia, and comparative integration policy - are the topics that motivate and structure this book. Noted experts on each topic offer the latest research findings, which collectively advance our understanding of how Europe will deal with diversity in the 21st Century.

• Uncovering European Union Immigration Legislation: Policy Dynamics and Outcomes

  International Migration

  The member states of the European Union (EU) have recently experimented with constructing a common immigration policy. This gives rise to an important and fascinating question: what happens to immigration policy once it is no longer made in national capitals? Have national governments been able to retain ultimate control over the field of EU immigration policy? Or do we see slippage towards supranational power, with the Commission, Parliament, and Court of Justice expanding their influence? If EU institutions have gained power, do they use this power to defend the rights and freedoms of immigrants against restrictionist national governments? Using participant interviews (listed in Appendix I) and documentary analysis, I analyse negotiations over three EU immigration laws: the directives on family reunification, long-term residence, and economic migration. I assess whether national preferences are implemented in these directives, or whether supranational institutions have moved policy away from national preferences, potentially expanding immigrant rights and freedoms.

• Fortifying Fortress Europe?: The Effect of September 11 on EU Immigration Policy

  Immigration Policy and Security: US, European, and Commonwealth Perspectives

  Chapter 7 in G. Freeman, T. Givens, and D. Leal, eds. New York: Routledge, pp. 130-147.

• European Integration, Public Opinion and Immigration Policy: Testing the Impact of National Identity

  European Union Politics

  This article empirically investigates the effect of national identity on public opinion towards European Union (EU) control over immigration policy. The EU has recently gained some control over immigration policy, but has faced strong opposition from reluctant national politicians. This study argues that public opinion is an important factor in explaining such reluctance. I propose a hypothesis of national identity to explain public opinion, positing that those who identify with their nation-states (vis-à-vis Europe) are less likely to support EU control over immigration policy than are those who identify with ‘Europe’. Using logistic regression, this factor is shown to be stronger than support for European integration, opinions about immigrants themselves, and other variables such as economic calculation, political ideology, age and gender.

• EU Immigration Policy: From Intergovernmentalism to Reluctant Harmonization

  State of the European Union, Volume 6: Law, Politics and Society.

  Chapter 14 in Cichowski, R. and T. Borzel, eds. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, pp. 291-312.

• Immigrants across the U.S. Federal Laboratory: Explaining State-Level Innovation in Immigration Policy

  State Politics and Policy Quarterly

  The passage of a restrictive immigration law in Arizona in 2010 rekindled an old debate in the United States on immigration policy and the role of federalism. Despite periodic constitutional controversies, scholars of federalism and U.S. state politics have not adequately explained variation in state-level policy making on immigration. The authors explore pressures leading to state immigration policy innovation and adoption in the United States. The article evaluates factors leading to the introduction and adoption of two types of policies: those dictating the cultural and economic incorporation of immigrants and those attempting to control their flow and settlement. Factors such as fiscal federalism, ethnic contact, and ethnic threat generate incentives for states to pass such laws. The authors compiled a comprehensive data set of state immigration laws from the past decade to explain how factors commonly associated with national immigration policy development—economic conditions, rates of immigration, demographics, party control, and political institutions—influence state-level immigration policy activity.

• “Crisis” and Reality in European Immigration Policy

  Current History

  “[N]ationalism drives public impulses to crack down on immigration, yet the only effective way to increase immigration control is to cooperate with other nations—that is, by pooling resources and sovereignty. . . .”

• Fiscal Federalism and the Politics of Immigration: Centralized and Decentralized Immigration Policies in Canada and the United States

  Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis

  Why would immigration policy be centralized or decentralized in a federal system? What incentives do political actors at the central and sub-central levels of government possess vis-à-vis immigration policy? Taking account of the growing need to make sense of the unique features of immigration policy in a federal system (e.g. the mobility of labor, regional and national identities), and the unique challenges to federalism posed by immigration (e.g. public policy co-ordination, social cohesiveness), this paper advances a general theory of immigration politics in federations. It then illustrates this theory through discussion of two empirical cases: Canada and the United States.

• The Politics of European Union Immigration Policy: Institutions, Salience, and Harmonization

  Policy Studies Journal

  This article examines recent attempts to create a common European Union (EU) immigration policy. This “harmonized” policy has faced political blockages, despite being seen by most observers as necessary if the EU is to meet its goal of free movement of labor. Because of this resistance, immigration harmonization has lagged behind other EU policy areas. To explain national resistance to harmonizing immigration policy, our article develops a theoretical and conceptual model of how immigration policy is potentially harmonized at the EU level, but how this harmonization can be blocked or restricted. We explain these political blockages with a model of intergovernmental bargaining that focuses on political salience, political partisanship, and institutions that protect immigrant rights. We argue that these national-level factors have determined the success and the nature of various harmonization proposals, by determining the positions of member states when negotiating in the European Council. Our primary hypothesis is that when the political salience of a given immigration issue is high, any harmonization that results is more likely to be restrictive toward immigrant rights. We also hypothesize that the impact of institutions that protect immigrant rights, and of political partisanship, is variable depending on the issue area and the national context. We use literature on European integration, immigration politics, agenda-setting, venue-shopping, and two-level games to theorize, operationalize, and test these hypotheses. The article helps to advance scholarly work on immigration politics, but our model could also conceivably be applied to other high-salience policy areas in the EU.

• Global Migration and Political Regime Type: A Democratic Disadvantage

  British Journal of Political Science

  An indicator of globalization is the growing number of humans crossing national borders. In contrast to explanations for flows of goods and capital, migration research has concentrated on unilateral movements to rich democracies. This focus ignores the bilateral determinants of migration and stymies empirical and theoretical inquiry. The theoretical insights proposed here show how the regime type of both sending and receiving countries influences human migration. Specifically, democratic regimes accommodate fewer immigrants than autocracies and democracies enable emigration while autocracies prevent exit. The mechanisms for this divergence are a function of both micro-level motivations of migrants and institutional constraints on political leaders. Global bilateral migration data and a statistical method that captures the higher-order dependencies in network data are employed in this article.

• The Politics of Visas

  Journal of Diplomacy

  In an age of increasing migration, the political significance of cross-border human flows increases accordingly. Since control of borders is a core feature of sovereignty, states retain the right to control these flows through granting (or refusing) visas to nationals of various countries. However, increasing globalization and economic gains from migration (both tourism and long-term), as well as the heavy transaction costs of regulating migration, lead states to grant visa-free travel rights to nationals of certain countries. There is wide variation, however, in the level of visa-free travel enjoyed by nationals of various countries. As of 2006 Denmark, Finland and the United States led the pack, with 130 countries granting visa-free travel to their citizens. At the bottom was Afghanistan, with its nationals enjoying visa-free travel to only 12 countries. Our analysis seeks to pinpoint the strongest causal factors explaining this variation. Obviously variables like population size, wealth or colonial ties could account for some of the variance, but what about more subjective perceptions, such as the level of freedom or civil conflict in a country? Do Muslim countries face more discrimination, ceterus paribus? Does the number of terrorist attacks in a country have an effect? What about the amount of trade? In short, when one state decides that the citizens of another state can enter without needing to apply for a visa and undergoing scrutiny, what logic is driving this calculation? To answer this question we construct a 2006 data set spanning 156 countries, measuring the exact number of countries granting visa-free travel rights to each. We test 19 independent variables, finding that colonial heritage (British or Spanish), terrorism, democracy and wealth are the most important predictors. Surprisingly, health, trade, population size, geographic location and Islam do not appear to play a causal role.

• European Immigration Policies in Comparative Perspective: Issue Salience, Partisanship and Immigrant Rights

  Comparative European Politics

  This article examines the impact of issue salience and political partisanship on the restrictiveness of immigration laws in France, Germany, and the UK, from 1990 to 2002. Our first hypothesis is that immigration policymaking in liberal states is normally dominated by client politics, which minimizes restrictiveness towards immigrant rights, but under conditions of high issue salience and prominent media coverage, policy becomes more restrictive. Our second hypothesis is that Left and Right parties are equally restrictive vis-à-vis policies to control immigration, but Right parties are more restrictive vis-à-vis policies to integrate already-resident immigrants into society. We statistically test both of these hypotheses in Western Europe, while controlling for the impact of unemployment, GDP growth, and numbers of immigrants and refugees. Our analysis confirms that issue salience is a predictor of the restrictiveness of national immigration laws and that partisanship plays a role in policies towards the integration of already-resident immigrants, but not towards controlling the inflow of new immigrants.

• Migrants and Minorities: The European Response

  Cambridge Scholars Publishing

  Europe stands on the brink of a new era of diversity and immigration. Although many Europeans would prefer to ignore this fact, the signs are everywhere. Societies and politics are being irrevocably changed by their encounters with migrants, both recent and settled. This book pinpoints the specific trends and emerging patterns that allow us to understand what these changes mean for the future of Europe. On the ground level, institutions like schools and local governments have charted unique courses for dealing with diversity. And from above, the institutions of Brussels become ever more important for regulating the big picture. The passage of the Lisbon Treaty means that common EU rules on immigration will now be easier to achieve (and more likely). But what exact role is played by the institutions of the EU in Brussels, and how does this vary across policy areas? How are Europeans on all levels dealing with the sensitive questions raised by Islam, and how are migrants and minorities dealing with the hostility and xenophobia they routinely encounter? And finally, how have the experiences of different European countries in integrating their immigrants and minorities changed our comparative understanding of race, ethnicity and citizenship? These three sets of issues - EU-level regulations, Islam and Xenophobia, and comparative integration policy - are the topics that motivate and structure this book. Noted experts on each topic offer the latest research findings, which collectively advance our understanding of how Europe will deal with diversity in the 21st Century.

• Uncovering European Union Immigration Legislation: Policy Dynamics and Outcomes

  International Migration

  The member states of the European Union (EU) have recently experimented with constructing a common immigration policy. This gives rise to an important and fascinating question: what happens to immigration policy once it is no longer made in national capitals? Have national governments been able to retain ultimate control over the field of EU immigration policy? Or do we see slippage towards supranational power, with the Commission, Parliament, and Court of Justice expanding their influence? If EU institutions have gained power, do they use this power to defend the rights and freedoms of immigrants against restrictionist national governments? Using participant interviews (listed in Appendix I) and documentary analysis, I analyse negotiations over three EU immigration laws: the directives on family reunification, long-term residence, and economic migration. I assess whether national preferences are implemented in these directives, or whether supranational institutions have moved policy away from national preferences, potentially expanding immigrant rights and freedoms.

• Fortifying Fortress Europe?: The Effect of September 11 on EU Immigration Policy

  Immigration Policy and Security: US, European, and Commonwealth Perspectives

  Chapter 7 in G. Freeman, T. Givens, and D. Leal, eds. New York: Routledge, pp. 130-147.

• European Integration, Public Opinion and Immigration Policy: Testing the Impact of National Identity

  European Union Politics

  This article empirically investigates the effect of national identity on public opinion towards European Union (EU) control over immigration policy. The EU has recently gained some control over immigration policy, but has faced strong opposition from reluctant national politicians. This study argues that public opinion is an important factor in explaining such reluctance. I propose a hypothesis of national identity to explain public opinion, positing that those who identify with their nation-states (vis-à-vis Europe) are less likely to support EU control over immigration policy than are those who identify with ‘Europe’. Using logistic regression, this factor is shown to be stronger than support for European integration, opinions about immigrants themselves, and other variables such as economic calculation, political ideology, age and gender.

• EU Immigration Policy: From Intergovernmentalism to Reluctant Harmonization

  State of the European Union, Volume 6: Law, Politics and Society.

  Chapter 14 in Cichowski, R. and T. Borzel, eds. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, pp. 291-312.

• Immigrants across the U.S. Federal Laboratory: Explaining State-Level Innovation in Immigration Policy

  State Politics and Policy Quarterly

  The passage of a restrictive immigration law in Arizona in 2010 rekindled an old debate in the United States on immigration policy and the role of federalism. Despite periodic constitutional controversies, scholars of federalism and U.S. state politics have not adequately explained variation in state-level policy making on immigration. The authors explore pressures leading to state immigration policy innovation and adoption in the United States. The article evaluates factors leading to the introduction and adoption of two types of policies: those dictating the cultural and economic incorporation of immigrants and those attempting to control their flow and settlement. Factors such as fiscal federalism, ethnic contact, and ethnic threat generate incentives for states to pass such laws. The authors compiled a comprehensive data set of state immigration laws from the past decade to explain how factors commonly associated with national immigration policy development—economic conditions, rates of immigration, demographics, party control, and political institutions—influence state-level immigration policy activity.

• Risk Regulation in the European Union and the United States: Controlling Chaos

  Palgrave MacMillan

  Globalization and technology have altered public fears and changed expectations of how government should make people safer. This book analyzes how Europeans and Americans perceive and regulate risk. The authors show how public fears about risk are filtered through political systems and subjective lenses of perception to pressure governments to insure against risk. Globalization and federalism are two forces that promote convergence between Europe and America, while culture and politics often push governments down different roads. This tension is explored in case studies dealing with four cutting-edge risk frontiers: immigration, flood control, food safety and voting technology.

• Risk Regulation in the European Union and the United States: Controlling Chaos

  Palgrave MacMillan

  Globalization and technology have altered public fears and changed expectations of how government should make people safer. This book analyzes how Europeans and Americans perceive and regulate risk. The authors show how public fears about risk are filtered through political systems and subjective lenses of perception to pressure governments to insure against risk. Globalization and federalism are two forces that promote convergence between Europe and America, while culture and politics often push governments down different roads. This tension is explored in case studies dealing with four cutting-edge risk frontiers: immigration, flood control, food safety and voting technology.

• “Crisis” and Reality in European Immigration Policy

  Current History

  “[N]ationalism drives public impulses to crack down on immigration, yet the only effective way to increase immigration control is to cooperate with other nations—that is, by pooling resources and sovereignty. . . .”

• Fiscal Federalism and the Politics of Immigration: Centralized and Decentralized Immigration Policies in Canada and the United States

  Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis

  Why would immigration policy be centralized or decentralized in a federal system? What incentives do political actors at the central and sub-central levels of government possess vis-à-vis immigration policy? Taking account of the growing need to make sense of the unique features of immigration policy in a federal system (e.g. the mobility of labor, regional and national identities), and the unique challenges to federalism posed by immigration (e.g. public policy co-ordination, social cohesiveness), this paper advances a general theory of immigration politics in federations. It then illustrates this theory through discussion of two empirical cases: Canada and the United States.

• The Politics of European Union Immigration Policy: Institutions, Salience, and Harmonization

  Policy Studies Journal

  This article examines recent attempts to create a common European Union (EU) immigration policy. This “harmonized” policy has faced political blockages, despite being seen by most observers as necessary if the EU is to meet its goal of free movement of labor. Because of this resistance, immigration harmonization has lagged behind other EU policy areas. To explain national resistance to harmonizing immigration policy, our article develops a theoretical and conceptual model of how immigration policy is potentially harmonized at the EU level, but how this harmonization can be blocked or restricted. We explain these political blockages with a model of intergovernmental bargaining that focuses on political salience, political partisanship, and institutions that protect immigrant rights. We argue that these national-level factors have determined the success and the nature of various harmonization proposals, by determining the positions of member states when negotiating in the European Council. Our primary hypothesis is that when the political salience of a given immigration issue is high, any harmonization that results is more likely to be restrictive toward immigrant rights. We also hypothesize that the impact of institutions that protect immigrant rights, and of political partisanship, is variable depending on the issue area and the national context. We use literature on European integration, immigration politics, agenda-setting, venue-shopping, and two-level games to theorize, operationalize, and test these hypotheses. The article helps to advance scholarly work on immigration politics, but our model could also conceivably be applied to other high-salience policy areas in the EU.

• Global Migration and Political Regime Type: A Democratic Disadvantage

  British Journal of Political Science

  An indicator of globalization is the growing number of humans crossing national borders. In contrast to explanations for flows of goods and capital, migration research has concentrated on unilateral movements to rich democracies. This focus ignores the bilateral determinants of migration and stymies empirical and theoretical inquiry. The theoretical insights proposed here show how the regime type of both sending and receiving countries influences human migration. Specifically, democratic regimes accommodate fewer immigrants than autocracies and democracies enable emigration while autocracies prevent exit. The mechanisms for this divergence are a function of both micro-level motivations of migrants and institutional constraints on political leaders. Global bilateral migration data and a statistical method that captures the higher-order dependencies in network data are employed in this article.

• The Politics of Visas

  Journal of Diplomacy

  In an age of increasing migration, the political significance of cross-border human flows increases accordingly. Since control of borders is a core feature of sovereignty, states retain the right to control these flows through granting (or refusing) visas to nationals of various countries. However, increasing globalization and economic gains from migration (both tourism and long-term), as well as the heavy transaction costs of regulating migration, lead states to grant visa-free travel rights to nationals of certain countries. There is wide variation, however, in the level of visa-free travel enjoyed by nationals of various countries. As of 2006 Denmark, Finland and the United States led the pack, with 130 countries granting visa-free travel to their citizens. At the bottom was Afghanistan, with its nationals enjoying visa-free travel to only 12 countries. Our analysis seeks to pinpoint the strongest causal factors explaining this variation. Obviously variables like population size, wealth or colonial ties could account for some of the variance, but what about more subjective perceptions, such as the level of freedom or civil conflict in a country? Do Muslim countries face more discrimination, ceterus paribus? Does the number of terrorist attacks in a country have an effect? What about the amount of trade? In short, when one state decides that the citizens of another state can enter without needing to apply for a visa and undergoing scrutiny, what logic is driving this calculation? To answer this question we construct a 2006 data set spanning 156 countries, measuring the exact number of countries granting visa-free travel rights to each. We test 19 independent variables, finding that colonial heritage (British or Spanish), terrorism, democracy and wealth are the most important predictors. Surprisingly, health, trade, population size, geographic location and Islam do not appear to play a causal role.

• European Immigration Policies in Comparative Perspective: Issue Salience, Partisanship and Immigrant Rights

  Comparative European Politics

  This article examines the impact of issue salience and political partisanship on the restrictiveness of immigration laws in France, Germany, and the UK, from 1990 to 2002. Our first hypothesis is that immigration policymaking in liberal states is normally dominated by client politics, which minimizes restrictiveness towards immigrant rights, but under conditions of high issue salience and prominent media coverage, policy becomes more restrictive. Our second hypothesis is that Left and Right parties are equally restrictive vis-à-vis policies to control immigration, but Right parties are more restrictive vis-à-vis policies to integrate already-resident immigrants into society. We statistically test both of these hypotheses in Western Europe, while controlling for the impact of unemployment, GDP growth, and numbers of immigrants and refugees. Our analysis confirms that issue salience is a predictor of the restrictiveness of national immigration laws and that partisanship plays a role in policies towards the integration of already-resident immigrants, but not towards controlling the inflow of new immigrants.

• Migrants and Minorities: The European Response

  Cambridge Scholars Publishing

  Europe stands on the brink of a new era of diversity and immigration. Although many Europeans would prefer to ignore this fact, the signs are everywhere. Societies and politics are being irrevocably changed by their encounters with migrants, both recent and settled. This book pinpoints the specific trends and emerging patterns that allow us to understand what these changes mean for the future of Europe. On the ground level, institutions like schools and local governments have charted unique courses for dealing with diversity. And from above, the institutions of Brussels become ever more important for regulating the big picture. The passage of the Lisbon Treaty means that common EU rules on immigration will now be easier to achieve (and more likely). But what exact role is played by the institutions of the EU in Brussels, and how does this vary across policy areas? How are Europeans on all levels dealing with the sensitive questions raised by Islam, and how are migrants and minorities dealing with the hostility and xenophobia they routinely encounter? And finally, how have the experiences of different European countries in integrating their immigrants and minorities changed our comparative understanding of race, ethnicity and citizenship? These three sets of issues - EU-level regulations, Islam and Xenophobia, and comparative integration policy - are the topics that motivate and structure this book. Noted experts on each topic offer the latest research findings, which collectively advance our understanding of how Europe will deal with diversity in the 21st Century.

• Uncovering European Union Immigration Legislation: Policy Dynamics and Outcomes

  International Migration

  The member states of the European Union (EU) have recently experimented with constructing a common immigration policy. This gives rise to an important and fascinating question: what happens to immigration policy once it is no longer made in national capitals? Have national governments been able to retain ultimate control over the field of EU immigration policy? Or do we see slippage towards supranational power, with the Commission, Parliament, and Court of Justice expanding their influence? If EU institutions have gained power, do they use this power to defend the rights and freedoms of immigrants against restrictionist national governments? Using participant interviews (listed in Appendix I) and documentary analysis, I analyse negotiations over three EU immigration laws: the directives on family reunification, long-term residence, and economic migration. I assess whether national preferences are implemented in these directives, or whether supranational institutions have moved policy away from national preferences, potentially expanding immigrant rights and freedoms.

• Fortifying Fortress Europe?: The Effect of September 11 on EU Immigration Policy

  Immigration Policy and Security: US, European, and Commonwealth Perspectives

  Chapter 7 in G. Freeman, T. Givens, and D. Leal, eds. New York: Routledge, pp. 130-147.

• European Integration, Public Opinion and Immigration Policy: Testing the Impact of National Identity

  European Union Politics

  This article empirically investigates the effect of national identity on public opinion towards European Union (EU) control over immigration policy. The EU has recently gained some control over immigration policy, but has faced strong opposition from reluctant national politicians. This study argues that public opinion is an important factor in explaining such reluctance. I propose a hypothesis of national identity to explain public opinion, positing that those who identify with their nation-states (vis-à-vis Europe) are less likely to support EU control over immigration policy than are those who identify with ‘Europe’. Using logistic regression, this factor is shown to be stronger than support for European integration, opinions about immigrants themselves, and other variables such as economic calculation, political ideology, age and gender.

• EU Immigration Policy: From Intergovernmentalism to Reluctant Harmonization

  State of the European Union, Volume 6: Law, Politics and Society.

  Chapter 14 in Cichowski, R. and T. Borzel, eds. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, pp. 291-312.

• Immigrants across the U.S. Federal Laboratory: Explaining State-Level Innovation in Immigration Policy

  State Politics and Policy Quarterly

  The passage of a restrictive immigration law in Arizona in 2010 rekindled an old debate in the United States on immigration policy and the role of federalism. Despite periodic constitutional controversies, scholars of federalism and U.S. state politics have not adequately explained variation in state-level policy making on immigration. The authors explore pressures leading to state immigration policy innovation and adoption in the United States. The article evaluates factors leading to the introduction and adoption of two types of policies: those dictating the cultural and economic incorporation of immigrants and those attempting to control their flow and settlement. Factors such as fiscal federalism, ethnic contact, and ethnic threat generate incentives for states to pass such laws. The authors compiled a comprehensive data set of state immigration laws from the past decade to explain how factors commonly associated with national immigration policy development—economic conditions, rates of immigration, demographics, party control, and political institutions—influence state-level immigration policy activity.

• Risk Regulation in the European Union and the United States: Controlling Chaos

  Palgrave MacMillan

  Globalization and technology have altered public fears and changed expectations of how government should make people safer. This book analyzes how Europeans and Americans perceive and regulate risk. The authors show how public fears about risk are filtered through political systems and subjective lenses of perception to pressure governments to insure against risk. Globalization and federalism are two forces that promote convergence between Europe and America, while culture and politics often push governments down different roads. This tension is explored in case studies dealing with four cutting-edge risk frontiers: immigration, flood control, food safety and voting technology.

• Risk Regulation in the European Union and the United States: Controlling Chaos

  Palgrave MacMillan

  Globalization and technology have altered public fears and changed expectations of how government should make people safer. This book analyzes how Europeans and Americans perceive and regulate risk. The authors show how public fears about risk are filtered through political systems and subjective lenses of perception to pressure governments to insure against risk. Globalization and federalism are two forces that promote convergence between Europe and America, while culture and politics often push governments down different roads. This tension is explored in case studies dealing with four cutting-edge risk frontiers: immigration, flood control, food safety and voting technology.

• The European Union Dimension: Supranational Integration, Free Movement of Workers and Immigration Politics

  Immigration and the Transformation of Europe

  Chapter 16 in Parsons, C. and T. Smeeding, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 419-41.

• “Crisis” and Reality in European Immigration Policy

  Current History

  “[N]ationalism drives public impulses to crack down on immigration, yet the only effective way to increase immigration control is to cooperate with other nations—that is, by pooling resources and sovereignty. . . .”

• Fiscal Federalism and the Politics of Immigration: Centralized and Decentralized Immigration Policies in Canada and the United States

  Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis

  Why would immigration policy be centralized or decentralized in a federal system? What incentives do political actors at the central and sub-central levels of government possess vis-à-vis immigration policy? Taking account of the growing need to make sense of the unique features of immigration policy in a federal system (e.g. the mobility of labor, regional and national identities), and the unique challenges to federalism posed by immigration (e.g. public policy co-ordination, social cohesiveness), this paper advances a general theory of immigration politics in federations. It then illustrates this theory through discussion of two empirical cases: Canada and the United States.

• The Politics of European Union Immigration Policy: Institutions, Salience, and Harmonization

  Policy Studies Journal

  This article examines recent attempts to create a common European Union (EU) immigration policy. This “harmonized” policy has faced political blockages, despite being seen by most observers as necessary if the EU is to meet its goal of free movement of labor. Because of this resistance, immigration harmonization has lagged behind other EU policy areas. To explain national resistance to harmonizing immigration policy, our article develops a theoretical and conceptual model of how immigration policy is potentially harmonized at the EU level, but how this harmonization can be blocked or restricted. We explain these political blockages with a model of intergovernmental bargaining that focuses on political salience, political partisanship, and institutions that protect immigrant rights. We argue that these national-level factors have determined the success and the nature of various harmonization proposals, by determining the positions of member states when negotiating in the European Council. Our primary hypothesis is that when the political salience of a given immigration issue is high, any harmonization that results is more likely to be restrictive toward immigrant rights. We also hypothesize that the impact of institutions that protect immigrant rights, and of political partisanship, is variable depending on the issue area and the national context. We use literature on European integration, immigration politics, agenda-setting, venue-shopping, and two-level games to theorize, operationalize, and test these hypotheses. The article helps to advance scholarly work on immigration politics, but our model could also conceivably be applied to other high-salience policy areas in the EU.

• Global Migration and Political Regime Type: A Democratic Disadvantage

  British Journal of Political Science

  An indicator of globalization is the growing number of humans crossing national borders. In contrast to explanations for flows of goods and capital, migration research has concentrated on unilateral movements to rich democracies. This focus ignores the bilateral determinants of migration and stymies empirical and theoretical inquiry. The theoretical insights proposed here show how the regime type of both sending and receiving countries influences human migration. Specifically, democratic regimes accommodate fewer immigrants than autocracies and democracies enable emigration while autocracies prevent exit. The mechanisms for this divergence are a function of both micro-level motivations of migrants and institutional constraints on political leaders. Global bilateral migration data and a statistical method that captures the higher-order dependencies in network data are employed in this article.

• The Politics of Visas

  Journal of Diplomacy

  In an age of increasing migration, the political significance of cross-border human flows increases accordingly. Since control of borders is a core feature of sovereignty, states retain the right to control these flows through granting (or refusing) visas to nationals of various countries. However, increasing globalization and economic gains from migration (both tourism and long-term), as well as the heavy transaction costs of regulating migration, lead states to grant visa-free travel rights to nationals of certain countries. There is wide variation, however, in the level of visa-free travel enjoyed by nationals of various countries. As of 2006 Denmark, Finland and the United States led the pack, with 130 countries granting visa-free travel to their citizens. At the bottom was Afghanistan, with its nationals enjoying visa-free travel to only 12 countries. Our analysis seeks to pinpoint the strongest causal factors explaining this variation. Obviously variables like population size, wealth or colonial ties could account for some of the variance, but what about more subjective perceptions, such as the level of freedom or civil conflict in a country? Do Muslim countries face more discrimination, ceterus paribus? Does the number of terrorist attacks in a country have an effect? What about the amount of trade? In short, when one state decides that the citizens of another state can enter without needing to apply for a visa and undergoing scrutiny, what logic is driving this calculation? To answer this question we construct a 2006 data set spanning 156 countries, measuring the exact number of countries granting visa-free travel rights to each. We test 19 independent variables, finding that colonial heritage (British or Spanish), terrorism, democracy and wealth are the most important predictors. Surprisingly, health, trade, population size, geographic location and Islam do not appear to play a causal role.

• European Immigration Policies in Comparative Perspective: Issue Salience, Partisanship and Immigrant Rights

  Comparative European Politics

  This article examines the impact of issue salience and political partisanship on the restrictiveness of immigration laws in France, Germany, and the UK, from 1990 to 2002. Our first hypothesis is that immigration policymaking in liberal states is normally dominated by client politics, which minimizes restrictiveness towards immigrant rights, but under conditions of high issue salience and prominent media coverage, policy becomes more restrictive. Our second hypothesis is that Left and Right parties are equally restrictive vis-à-vis policies to control immigration, but Right parties are more restrictive vis-à-vis policies to integrate already-resident immigrants into society. We statistically test both of these hypotheses in Western Europe, while controlling for the impact of unemployment, GDP growth, and numbers of immigrants and refugees. Our analysis confirms that issue salience is a predictor of the restrictiveness of national immigration laws and that partisanship plays a role in policies towards the integration of already-resident immigrants, but not towards controlling the inflow of new immigrants.

• Migrants and Minorities: The European Response

  Cambridge Scholars Publishing

  Europe stands on the brink of a new era of diversity and immigration. Although many Europeans would prefer to ignore this fact, the signs are everywhere. Societies and politics are being irrevocably changed by their encounters with migrants, both recent and settled. This book pinpoints the specific trends and emerging patterns that allow us to understand what these changes mean for the future of Europe. On the ground level, institutions like schools and local governments have charted unique courses for dealing with diversity. And from above, the institutions of Brussels become ever more important for regulating the big picture. The passage of the Lisbon Treaty means that common EU rules on immigration will now be easier to achieve (and more likely). But what exact role is played by the institutions of the EU in Brussels, and how does this vary across policy areas? How are Europeans on all levels dealing with the sensitive questions raised by Islam, and how are migrants and minorities dealing with the hostility and xenophobia they routinely encounter? And finally, how have the experiences of different European countries in integrating their immigrants and minorities changed our comparative understanding of race, ethnicity and citizenship? These three sets of issues - EU-level regulations, Islam and Xenophobia, and comparative integration policy - are the topics that motivate and structure this book. Noted experts on each topic offer the latest research findings, which collectively advance our understanding of how Europe will deal with diversity in the 21st Century.

• Uncovering European Union Immigration Legislation: Policy Dynamics and Outcomes

  International Migration

  The member states of the European Union (EU) have recently experimented with constructing a common immigration policy. This gives rise to an important and fascinating question: what happens to immigration policy once it is no longer made in national capitals? Have national governments been able to retain ultimate control over the field of EU immigration policy? Or do we see slippage towards supranational power, with the Commission, Parliament, and Court of Justice expanding their influence? If EU institutions have gained power, do they use this power to defend the rights and freedoms of immigrants against restrictionist national governments? Using participant interviews (listed in Appendix I) and documentary analysis, I analyse negotiations over three EU immigration laws: the directives on family reunification, long-term residence, and economic migration. I assess whether national preferences are implemented in these directives, or whether supranational institutions have moved policy away from national preferences, potentially expanding immigrant rights and freedoms.

• Fortifying Fortress Europe?: The Effect of September 11 on EU Immigration Policy

  Immigration Policy and Security: US, European, and Commonwealth Perspectives

  Chapter 7 in G. Freeman, T. Givens, and D. Leal, eds. New York: Routledge, pp. 130-147.

• European Integration, Public Opinion and Immigration Policy: Testing the Impact of National Identity

  European Union Politics

  This article empirically investigates the effect of national identity on public opinion towards European Union (EU) control over immigration policy. The EU has recently gained some control over immigration policy, but has faced strong opposition from reluctant national politicians. This study argues that public opinion is an important factor in explaining such reluctance. I propose a hypothesis of national identity to explain public opinion, positing that those who identify with their nation-states (vis-à-vis Europe) are less likely to support EU control over immigration policy than are those who identify with ‘Europe’. Using logistic regression, this factor is shown to be stronger than support for European integration, opinions about immigrants themselves, and other variables such as economic calculation, political ideology, age and gender.

• EU Immigration Policy: From Intergovernmentalism to Reluctant Harmonization

  State of the European Union, Volume 6: Law, Politics and Society.

  Chapter 14 in Cichowski, R. and T. Borzel, eds. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, pp. 291-312.

• Immigrants across the U.S. Federal Laboratory: Explaining State-Level Innovation in Immigration Policy

  State Politics and Policy Quarterly

  The passage of a restrictive immigration law in Arizona in 2010 rekindled an old debate in the United States on immigration policy and the role of federalism. Despite periodic constitutional controversies, scholars of federalism and U.S. state politics have not adequately explained variation in state-level policy making on immigration. The authors explore pressures leading to state immigration policy innovation and adoption in the United States. The article evaluates factors leading to the introduction and adoption of two types of policies: those dictating the cultural and economic incorporation of immigrants and those attempting to control their flow and settlement. Factors such as fiscal federalism, ethnic contact, and ethnic threat generate incentives for states to pass such laws. The authors compiled a comprehensive data set of state immigration laws from the past decade to explain how factors commonly associated with national immigration policy development—economic conditions, rates of immigration, demographics, party control, and political institutions—influence state-level immigration policy activity.

• Risk Regulation in the European Union and the United States: Controlling Chaos

  Palgrave MacMillan

  Globalization and technology have altered public fears and changed expectations of how government should make people safer. This book analyzes how Europeans and Americans perceive and regulate risk. The authors show how public fears about risk are filtered through political systems and subjective lenses of perception to pressure governments to insure against risk. Globalization and federalism are two forces that promote convergence between Europe and America, while culture and politics often push governments down different roads. This tension is explored in case studies dealing with four cutting-edge risk frontiers: immigration, flood control, food safety and voting technology.

• Risk Regulation in the European Union and the United States: Controlling Chaos

  Palgrave MacMillan

  Globalization and technology have altered public fears and changed expectations of how government should make people safer. This book analyzes how Europeans and Americans perceive and regulate risk. The authors show how public fears about risk are filtered through political systems and subjective lenses of perception to pressure governments to insure against risk. Globalization and federalism are two forces that promote convergence between Europe and America, while culture and politics often push governments down different roads. This tension is explored in case studies dealing with four cutting-edge risk frontiers: immigration, flood control, food safety and voting technology.

• The European Union Dimension: Supranational Integration, Free Movement of Workers and Immigration Politics

  Immigration and the Transformation of Europe

  Chapter 16 in Parsons, C. and T. Smeeding, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 419-41.

• Risk Regulation in the United States and European Union: Controlling Chaos

  Palgrave Macmillan

  Globalization and technology have altered public fears and changed expectations of how government should make people safer. This book analyzes how Europeans and Americans perceive and regulate risk. The authors show how public fears about risk are filtered through political systems and subjective lenses of perception to pressure governments to insure against risk. Globalization and federalism are two forces that promote convergence between Europe and America, while culture and politics often push governments down different roads. This tension is explored in case studies dealing with four cutting-edge risk frontiers: immigration, flood control, food safety and voting technology.

• “Crisis” and Reality in European Immigration Policy

  Current History

  “[N]ationalism drives public impulses to crack down on immigration, yet the only effective way to increase immigration control is to cooperate with other nations—that is, by pooling resources and sovereignty. . . .”

• Fiscal Federalism and the Politics of Immigration: Centralized and Decentralized Immigration Policies in Canada and the United States

  Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis

  Why would immigration policy be centralized or decentralized in a federal system? What incentives do political actors at the central and sub-central levels of government possess vis-à-vis immigration policy? Taking account of the growing need to make sense of the unique features of immigration policy in a federal system (e.g. the mobility of labor, regional and national identities), and the unique challenges to federalism posed by immigration (e.g. public policy co-ordination, social cohesiveness), this paper advances a general theory of immigration politics in federations. It then illustrates this theory through discussion of two empirical cases: Canada and the United States.

• The Politics of European Union Immigration Policy: Institutions, Salience, and Harmonization

  Policy Studies Journal

  This article examines recent attempts to create a common European Union (EU) immigration policy. This “harmonized” policy has faced political blockages, despite being seen by most observers as necessary if the EU is to meet its goal of free movement of labor. Because of this resistance, immigration harmonization has lagged behind other EU policy areas. To explain national resistance to harmonizing immigration policy, our article develops a theoretical and conceptual model of how immigration policy is potentially harmonized at the EU level, but how this harmonization can be blocked or restricted. We explain these political blockages with a model of intergovernmental bargaining that focuses on political salience, political partisanship, and institutions that protect immigrant rights. We argue that these national-level factors have determined the success and the nature of various harmonization proposals, by determining the positions of member states when negotiating in the European Council. Our primary hypothesis is that when the political salience of a given immigration issue is high, any harmonization that results is more likely to be restrictive toward immigrant rights. We also hypothesize that the impact of institutions that protect immigrant rights, and of political partisanship, is variable depending on the issue area and the national context. We use literature on European integration, immigration politics, agenda-setting, venue-shopping, and two-level games to theorize, operationalize, and test these hypotheses. The article helps to advance scholarly work on immigration politics, but our model could also conceivably be applied to other high-salience policy areas in the EU.

• Global Migration and Political Regime Type: A Democratic Disadvantage

  British Journal of Political Science

  An indicator of globalization is the growing number of humans crossing national borders. In contrast to explanations for flows of goods and capital, migration research has concentrated on unilateral movements to rich democracies. This focus ignores the bilateral determinants of migration and stymies empirical and theoretical inquiry. The theoretical insights proposed here show how the regime type of both sending and receiving countries influences human migration. Specifically, democratic regimes accommodate fewer immigrants than autocracies and democracies enable emigration while autocracies prevent exit. The mechanisms for this divergence are a function of both micro-level motivations of migrants and institutional constraints on political leaders. Global bilateral migration data and a statistical method that captures the higher-order dependencies in network data are employed in this article.

• The Politics of Visas

  Journal of Diplomacy

  In an age of increasing migration, the political significance of cross-border human flows increases accordingly. Since control of borders is a core feature of sovereignty, states retain the right to control these flows through granting (or refusing) visas to nationals of various countries. However, increasing globalization and economic gains from migration (both tourism and long-term), as well as the heavy transaction costs of regulating migration, lead states to grant visa-free travel rights to nationals of certain countries. There is wide variation, however, in the level of visa-free travel enjoyed by nationals of various countries. As of 2006 Denmark, Finland and the United States led the pack, with 130 countries granting visa-free travel to their citizens. At the bottom was Afghanistan, with its nationals enjoying visa-free travel to only 12 countries. Our analysis seeks to pinpoint the strongest causal factors explaining this variation. Obviously variables like population size, wealth or colonial ties could account for some of the variance, but what about more subjective perceptions, such as the level of freedom or civil conflict in a country? Do Muslim countries face more discrimination, ceterus paribus? Does the number of terrorist attacks in a country have an effect? What about the amount of trade? In short, when one state decides that the citizens of another state can enter without needing to apply for a visa and undergoing scrutiny, what logic is driving this calculation? To answer this question we construct a 2006 data set spanning 156 countries, measuring the exact number of countries granting visa-free travel rights to each. We test 19 independent variables, finding that colonial heritage (British or Spanish), terrorism, democracy and wealth are the most important predictors. Surprisingly, health, trade, population size, geographic location and Islam do not appear to play a causal role.

• European Immigration Policies in Comparative Perspective: Issue Salience, Partisanship and Immigrant Rights

  Comparative European Politics

  This article examines the impact of issue salience and political partisanship on the restrictiveness of immigration laws in France, Germany, and the UK, from 1990 to 2002. Our first hypothesis is that immigration policymaking in liberal states is normally dominated by client politics, which minimizes restrictiveness towards immigrant rights, but under conditions of high issue salience and prominent media coverage, policy becomes more restrictive. Our second hypothesis is that Left and Right parties are equally restrictive vis-à-vis policies to control immigration, but Right parties are more restrictive vis-à-vis policies to integrate already-resident immigrants into society. We statistically test both of these hypotheses in Western Europe, while controlling for the impact of unemployment, GDP growth, and numbers of immigrants and refugees. Our analysis confirms that issue salience is a predictor of the restrictiveness of national immigration laws and that partisanship plays a role in policies towards the integration of already-resident immigrants, but not towards controlling the inflow of new immigrants.

• Migrants and Minorities: The European Response

  Cambridge Scholars Publishing

  Europe stands on the brink of a new era of diversity and immigration. Although many Europeans would prefer to ignore this fact, the signs are everywhere. Societies and politics are being irrevocably changed by their encounters with migrants, both recent and settled. This book pinpoints the specific trends and emerging patterns that allow us to understand what these changes mean for the future of Europe. On the ground level, institutions like schools and local governments have charted unique courses for dealing with diversity. And from above, the institutions of Brussels become ever more important for regulating the big picture. The passage of the Lisbon Treaty means that common EU rules on immigration will now be easier to achieve (and more likely). But what exact role is played by the institutions of the EU in Brussels, and how does this vary across policy areas? How are Europeans on all levels dealing with the sensitive questions raised by Islam, and how are migrants and minorities dealing with the hostility and xenophobia they routinely encounter? And finally, how have the experiences of different European countries in integrating their immigrants and minorities changed our comparative understanding of race, ethnicity and citizenship? These three sets of issues - EU-level regulations, Islam and Xenophobia, and comparative integration policy - are the topics that motivate and structure this book. Noted experts on each topic offer the latest research findings, which collectively advance our understanding of how Europe will deal with diversity in the 21st Century.

• Uncovering European Union Immigration Legislation: Policy Dynamics and Outcomes

  International Migration

  The member states of the European Union (EU) have recently experimented with constructing a common immigration policy. This gives rise to an important and fascinating question: what happens to immigration policy once it is no longer made in national capitals? Have national governments been able to retain ultimate control over the field of EU immigration policy? Or do we see slippage towards supranational power, with the Commission, Parliament, and Court of Justice expanding their influence? If EU institutions have gained power, do they use this power to defend the rights and freedoms of immigrants against restrictionist national governments? Using participant interviews (listed in Appendix I) and documentary analysis, I analyse negotiations over three EU immigration laws: the directives on family reunification, long-term residence, and economic migration. I assess whether national preferences are implemented in these directives, or whether supranational institutions have moved policy away from national preferences, potentially expanding immigrant rights and freedoms.

• Fortifying Fortress Europe?: The Effect of September 11 on EU Immigration Policy

  Immigration Policy and Security: US, European, and Commonwealth Perspectives

  Chapter 7 in G. Freeman, T. Givens, and D. Leal, eds. New York: Routledge, pp. 130-147.

• European Integration, Public Opinion and Immigration Policy: Testing the Impact of National Identity

  European Union Politics

  This article empirically investigates the effect of national identity on public opinion towards European Union (EU) control over immigration policy. The EU has recently gained some control over immigration policy, but has faced strong opposition from reluctant national politicians. This study argues that public opinion is an important factor in explaining such reluctance. I propose a hypothesis of national identity to explain public opinion, positing that those who identify with their nation-states (vis-à-vis Europe) are less likely to support EU control over immigration policy than are those who identify with ‘Europe’. Using logistic regression, this factor is shown to be stronger than support for European integration, opinions about immigrants themselves, and other variables such as economic calculation, political ideology, age and gender.

• EU Immigration Policy: From Intergovernmentalism to Reluctant Harmonization

  State of the European Union, Volume 6: Law, Politics and Society.

  Chapter 14 in Cichowski, R. and T. Borzel, eds. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, pp. 291-312.

• Immigrants across the U.S. Federal Laboratory: Explaining State-Level Innovation in Immigration Policy

  State Politics and Policy Quarterly

  The passage of a restrictive immigration law in Arizona in 2010 rekindled an old debate in the United States on immigration policy and the role of federalism. Despite periodic constitutional controversies, scholars of federalism and U.S. state politics have not adequately explained variation in state-level policy making on immigration. The authors explore pressures leading to state immigration policy innovation and adoption in the United States. The article evaluates factors leading to the introduction and adoption of two types of policies: those dictating the cultural and economic incorporation of immigrants and those attempting to control their flow and settlement. Factors such as fiscal federalism, ethnic contact, and ethnic threat generate incentives for states to pass such laws. The authors compiled a comprehensive data set of state immigration laws from the past decade to explain how factors commonly associated with national immigration policy development—economic conditions, rates of immigration, demographics, party control, and political institutions—influence state-level immigration policy activity.

• Risk Regulation in the European Union and the United States: Controlling Chaos

  Palgrave MacMillan

  Globalization and technology have altered public fears and changed expectations of how government should make people safer. This book analyzes how Europeans and Americans perceive and regulate risk. The authors show how public fears about risk are filtered through political systems and subjective lenses of perception to pressure governments to insure against risk. Globalization and federalism are two forces that promote convergence between Europe and America, while culture and politics often push governments down different roads. This tension is explored in case studies dealing with four cutting-edge risk frontiers: immigration, flood control, food safety and voting technology.

• Risk Regulation in the European Union and the United States: Controlling Chaos

  Palgrave MacMillan

  Globalization and technology have altered public fears and changed expectations of how government should make people safer. This book analyzes how Europeans and Americans perceive and regulate risk. The authors show how public fears about risk are filtered through political systems and subjective lenses of perception to pressure governments to insure against risk. Globalization and federalism are two forces that promote convergence between Europe and America, while culture and politics often push governments down different roads. This tension is explored in case studies dealing with four cutting-edge risk frontiers: immigration, flood control, food safety and voting technology.

• The European Union Dimension: Supranational Integration, Free Movement of Workers and Immigration Politics

  Immigration and the Transformation of Europe

  Chapter 16 in Parsons, C. and T. Smeeding, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 419-41.

• Risk Regulation in the United States and European Union: Controlling Chaos

  Palgrave Macmillan

  Globalization and technology have altered public fears and changed expectations of how government should make people safer. This book analyzes how Europeans and Americans perceive and regulate risk. The authors show how public fears about risk are filtered through political systems and subjective lenses of perception to pressure governments to insure against risk. Globalization and federalism are two forces that promote convergence between Europe and America, while culture and politics often push governments down different roads. This tension is explored in case studies dealing with four cutting-edge risk frontiers: immigration, flood control, food safety and voting technology.

• What Motivates the Gatekeepers? Explaining Governing Party Preferences on Immigration

  Governance

  Most scholarship on immigration politics is made up of isolated case studies or cross-disciplinary work that does not build on existing political science theory. This study attempts to remedy this shortcoming in three ways: (1) we derive theories from the growing body of immigration literature, to hypothesize about why political parties would be more or less open to immigration; (2) we link these theories to the broader political science literature on parties and institutions; and (3) we construct a data set on the determinants of immigration politics, covering 18 developed countries from 1987 to 1999. Our primary hypothesis is that political institutions shape immigration politics by facilitating or constraining majoritarian sentiment (which is generally opposed to liberalizing immigration). Our analysis finds that in political systems where majoritarianism is constrained by institutional “checks,” governing parties support immigration more strongly, even when controlling for a broad range of alternative explanations.

• “Crisis” and Reality in European Immigration Policy

  Current History

  “[N]ationalism drives public impulses to crack down on immigration, yet the only effective way to increase immigration control is to cooperate with other nations—that is, by pooling resources and sovereignty. . . .”

• Fiscal Federalism and the Politics of Immigration: Centralized and Decentralized Immigration Policies in Canada and the United States

  Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis

  Why would immigration policy be centralized or decentralized in a federal system? What incentives do political actors at the central and sub-central levels of government possess vis-à-vis immigration policy? Taking account of the growing need to make sense of the unique features of immigration policy in a federal system (e.g. the mobility of labor, regional and national identities), and the unique challenges to federalism posed by immigration (e.g. public policy co-ordination, social cohesiveness), this paper advances a general theory of immigration politics in federations. It then illustrates this theory through discussion of two empirical cases: Canada and the United States.

• The Politics of European Union Immigration Policy: Institutions, Salience, and Harmonization

  Policy Studies Journal

  This article examines recent attempts to create a common European Union (EU) immigration policy. This “harmonized” policy has faced political blockages, despite being seen by most observers as necessary if the EU is to meet its goal of free movement of labor. Because of this resistance, immigration harmonization has lagged behind other EU policy areas. To explain national resistance to harmonizing immigration policy, our article develops a theoretical and conceptual model of how immigration policy is potentially harmonized at the EU level, but how this harmonization can be blocked or restricted. We explain these political blockages with a model of intergovernmental bargaining that focuses on political salience, political partisanship, and institutions that protect immigrant rights. We argue that these national-level factors have determined the success and the nature of various harmonization proposals, by determining the positions of member states when negotiating in the European Council. Our primary hypothesis is that when the political salience of a given immigration issue is high, any harmonization that results is more likely to be restrictive toward immigrant rights. We also hypothesize that the impact of institutions that protect immigrant rights, and of political partisanship, is variable depending on the issue area and the national context. We use literature on European integration, immigration politics, agenda-setting, venue-shopping, and two-level games to theorize, operationalize, and test these hypotheses. The article helps to advance scholarly work on immigration politics, but our model could also conceivably be applied to other high-salience policy areas in the EU.

• Global Migration and Political Regime Type: A Democratic Disadvantage

  British Journal of Political Science

  An indicator of globalization is the growing number of humans crossing national borders. In contrast to explanations for flows of goods and capital, migration research has concentrated on unilateral movements to rich democracies. This focus ignores the bilateral determinants of migration and stymies empirical and theoretical inquiry. The theoretical insights proposed here show how the regime type of both sending and receiving countries influences human migration. Specifically, democratic regimes accommodate fewer immigrants than autocracies and democracies enable emigration while autocracies prevent exit. The mechanisms for this divergence are a function of both micro-level motivations of migrants and institutional constraints on political leaders. Global bilateral migration data and a statistical method that captures the higher-order dependencies in network data are employed in this article.

• The Politics of Visas

  Journal of Diplomacy

  In an age of increasing migration, the political significance of cross-border human flows increases accordingly. Since control of borders is a core feature of sovereignty, states retain the right to control these flows through granting (or refusing) visas to nationals of various countries. However, increasing globalization and economic gains from migration (both tourism and long-term), as well as the heavy transaction costs of regulating migration, lead states to grant visa-free travel rights to nationals of certain countries. There is wide variation, however, in the level of visa-free travel enjoyed by nationals of various countries. As of 2006 Denmark, Finland and the United States led the pack, with 130 countries granting visa-free travel to their citizens. At the bottom was Afghanistan, with its nationals enjoying visa-free travel to only 12 countries. Our analysis seeks to pinpoint the strongest causal factors explaining this variation. Obviously variables like population size, wealth or colonial ties could account for some of the variance, but what about more subjective perceptions, such as the level of freedom or civil conflict in a country? Do Muslim countries face more discrimination, ceterus paribus? Does the number of terrorist attacks in a country have an effect? What about the amount of trade? In short, when one state decides that the citizens of another state can enter without needing to apply for a visa and undergoing scrutiny, what logic is driving this calculation? To answer this question we construct a 2006 data set spanning 156 countries, measuring the exact number of countries granting visa-free travel rights to each. We test 19 independent variables, finding that colonial heritage (British or Spanish), terrorism, democracy and wealth are the most important predictors. Surprisingly, health, trade, population size, geographic location and Islam do not appear to play a causal role.

• European Immigration Policies in Comparative Perspective: Issue Salience, Partisanship and Immigrant Rights

  Comparative European Politics

  This article examines the impact of issue salience and political partisanship on the restrictiveness of immigration laws in France, Germany, and the UK, from 1990 to 2002. Our first hypothesis is that immigration policymaking in liberal states is normally dominated by client politics, which minimizes restrictiveness towards immigrant rights, but under conditions of high issue salience and prominent media coverage, policy becomes more restrictive. Our second hypothesis is that Left and Right parties are equally restrictive vis-à-vis policies to control immigration, but Right parties are more restrictive vis-à-vis policies to integrate already-resident immigrants into society. We statistically test both of these hypotheses in Western Europe, while controlling for the impact of unemployment, GDP growth, and numbers of immigrants and refugees. Our analysis confirms that issue salience is a predictor of the restrictiveness of national immigration laws and that partisanship plays a role in policies towards the integration of already-resident immigrants, but not towards controlling the inflow of new immigrants.

• Migrants and Minorities: The European Response

  Cambridge Scholars Publishing

  Europe stands on the brink of a new era of diversity and immigration. Although many Europeans would prefer to ignore this fact, the signs are everywhere. Societies and politics are being irrevocably changed by their encounters with migrants, both recent and settled. This book pinpoints the specific trends and emerging patterns that allow us to understand what these changes mean for the future of Europe. On the ground level, institutions like schools and local governments have charted unique courses for dealing with diversity. And from above, the institutions of Brussels become ever more important for regulating the big picture. The passage of the Lisbon Treaty means that common EU rules on immigration will now be easier to achieve (and more likely). But what exact role is played by the institutions of the EU in Brussels, and how does this vary across policy areas? How are Europeans on all levels dealing with the sensitive questions raised by Islam, and how are migrants and minorities dealing with the hostility and xenophobia they routinely encounter? And finally, how have the experiences of different European countries in integrating their immigrants and minorities changed our comparative understanding of race, ethnicity and citizenship? These three sets of issues - EU-level regulations, Islam and Xenophobia, and comparative integration policy - are the topics that motivate and structure this book. Noted experts on each topic offer the latest research findings, which collectively advance our understanding of how Europe will deal with diversity in the 21st Century.

• Uncovering European Union Immigration Legislation: Policy Dynamics and Outcomes

  International Migration

  The member states of the European Union (EU) have recently experimented with constructing a common immigration policy. This gives rise to an important and fascinating question: what happens to immigration policy once it is no longer made in national capitals? Have national governments been able to retain ultimate control over the field of EU immigration policy? Or do we see slippage towards supranational power, with the Commission, Parliament, and Court of Justice expanding their influence? If EU institutions have gained power, do they use this power to defend the rights and freedoms of immigrants against restrictionist national governments? Using participant interviews (listed in Appendix I) and documentary analysis, I analyse negotiations over three EU immigration laws: the directives on family reunification, long-term residence, and economic migration. I assess whether national preferences are implemented in these directives, or whether supranational institutions have moved policy away from national preferences, potentially expanding immigrant rights and freedoms.

• Fortifying Fortress Europe?: The Effect of September 11 on EU Immigration Policy

  Immigration Policy and Security: US, European, and Commonwealth Perspectives

  Chapter 7 in G. Freeman, T. Givens, and D. Leal, eds. New York: Routledge, pp. 130-147.

• European Integration, Public Opinion and Immigration Policy: Testing the Impact of National Identity

  European Union Politics

  This article empirically investigates the effect of national identity on public opinion towards European Union (EU) control over immigration policy. The EU has recently gained some control over immigration policy, but has faced strong opposition from reluctant national politicians. This study argues that public opinion is an important factor in explaining such reluctance. I propose a hypothesis of national identity to explain public opinion, positing that those who identify with their nation-states (vis-à-vis Europe) are less likely to support EU control over immigration policy than are those who identify with ‘Europe’. Using logistic regression, this factor is shown to be stronger than support for European integration, opinions about immigrants themselves, and other variables such as economic calculation, political ideology, age and gender.

• EU Immigration Policy: From Intergovernmentalism to Reluctant Harmonization

  State of the European Union, Volume 6: Law, Politics and Society.

  Chapter 14 in Cichowski, R. and T. Borzel, eds. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, pp. 291-312.

• Immigrants across the U.S. Federal Laboratory: Explaining State-Level Innovation in Immigration Policy

  State Politics and Policy Quarterly

  The passage of a restrictive immigration law in Arizona in 2010 rekindled an old debate in the United States on immigration policy and the role of federalism. Despite periodic constitutional controversies, scholars of federalism and U.S. state politics have not adequately explained variation in state-level policy making on immigration. The authors explore pressures leading to state immigration policy innovation and adoption in the United States. The article evaluates factors leading to the introduction and adoption of two types of policies: those dictating the cultural and economic incorporation of immigrants and those attempting to control their flow and settlement. Factors such as fiscal federalism, ethnic contact, and ethnic threat generate incentives for states to pass such laws. The authors compiled a comprehensive data set of state immigration laws from the past decade to explain how factors commonly associated with national immigration policy development—economic conditions, rates of immigration, demographics, party control, and political institutions—influence state-level immigration policy activity.

• Risk Regulation in the European Union and the United States: Controlling Chaos

  Palgrave MacMillan

  Globalization and technology have altered public fears and changed expectations of how government should make people safer. This book analyzes how Europeans and Americans perceive and regulate risk. The authors show how public fears about risk are filtered through political systems and subjective lenses of perception to pressure governments to insure against risk. Globalization and federalism are two forces that promote convergence between Europe and America, while culture and politics often push governments down different roads. This tension is explored in case studies dealing with four cutting-edge risk frontiers: immigration, flood control, food safety and voting technology.

• Risk Regulation in the European Union and the United States: Controlling Chaos

  Palgrave MacMillan

  Globalization and technology have altered public fears and changed expectations of how government should make people safer. This book analyzes how Europeans and Americans perceive and regulate risk. The authors show how public fears about risk are filtered through political systems and subjective lenses of perception to pressure governments to insure against risk. Globalization and federalism are two forces that promote convergence between Europe and America, while culture and politics often push governments down different roads. This tension is explored in case studies dealing with four cutting-edge risk frontiers: immigration, flood control, food safety and voting technology.

• The European Union Dimension: Supranational Integration, Free Movement of Workers and Immigration Politics

  Immigration and the Transformation of Europe

  Chapter 16 in Parsons, C. and T. Smeeding, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 419-41.

• Risk Regulation in the United States and European Union: Controlling Chaos

  Palgrave Macmillan

  Globalization and technology have altered public fears and changed expectations of how government should make people safer. This book analyzes how Europeans and Americans perceive and regulate risk. The authors show how public fears about risk are filtered through political systems and subjective lenses of perception to pressure governments to insure against risk. Globalization and federalism are two forces that promote convergence between Europe and America, while culture and politics often push governments down different roads. This tension is explored in case studies dealing with four cutting-edge risk frontiers: immigration, flood control, food safety and voting technology.

• What Motivates the Gatekeepers? Explaining Governing Party Preferences on Immigration

  Governance

  Most scholarship on immigration politics is made up of isolated case studies or cross-disciplinary work that does not build on existing political science theory. This study attempts to remedy this shortcoming in three ways: (1) we derive theories from the growing body of immigration literature, to hypothesize about why political parties would be more or less open to immigration; (2) we link these theories to the broader political science literature on parties and institutions; and (3) we construct a data set on the determinants of immigration politics, covering 18 developed countries from 1987 to 1999. Our primary hypothesis is that political institutions shape immigration politics by facilitating or constraining majoritarian sentiment (which is generally opposed to liberalizing immigration). Our analysis finds that in political systems where majoritarianism is constrained by institutional “checks,” governing parties support immigration more strongly, even when controlling for a broad range of alternative explanations.

• “Introduction: Regulating the New Face of Europe” in Migrants and Minorities: The European Response

  Cambridge Scholars Publishing

  Europe stands on the brink of a new era of diversity and immigration. Although many Europeans would prefer to ignore this fact, the signs are everywhere. Societies and politics are being irrevocably changed by their encounters with migrants, both recent and settled. This book pinpoints the specific trends and emerging patterns that allow us to understand what these changes mean for the future of Europe. On the ground level, institutions like schools and local governments have charted unique courses for dealing with diversity. And from above, the institutions of Brussels become ever more important for regulating the big picture. The passage of the Lisbon Treaty means that common EU rules on immigration will now be easier to achieve (and more likely). But what exact role is played by the institutions of the EU in Brussels, and how does this vary across policy areas? How are Europeans on all levels dealing with the sensitive questions raised by Islam, and how are migrants and minorities dealing with the hostility and xenophobia they routinely encounter? And finally, how have the experiences of different European countries in integrating their immigrants and minorities changed our comparative understanding of race, ethnicity and citizenship? These three sets of issues - EU-level regulations, Islam and Xenophobia, and comparative integration policy - are the topics that motivate and structure this book. Noted experts on each topic offer the latest research findings, which collectively advance our understanding of how Europe will deal with diversity in the 21st Century.