Andrea Spehar

The missing factor: why social democracy can lead to restrictive immigration policy

It is puzzling that social democratic parties are rarely the main focus of attention in the migration policy making literature, despite their crucial role in most European party systems and their frequent tenure in government. In this article, we seek to address this shortcoming by examining key immigration policies advocated by the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) over the past 40 years. This article shows that the SAP believes there are distinct limits to the ability of ‘the peoples home’ to make room for immigrants. Given social democracys clear adherence to notions of solidarity, inclusiveness and internationalism, the empirical findings of this article are counter-intuitive. Specifically, the Swedish Social Democrats have, since the late 1960s, continuously backed, and indeed initiated, strict immigration policies. Party ideology has been the missing factor in understanding these concrete immigration policies.

Swimming against the tide: why Sweden supports increased labour mobility within and from outside the EU

While the free movement of labour in the EU is generally depicted as a positive feature of the single market, it was also controversial in the debate on EU enlargement. Actors opposing enlargement argued that large waves of migrants from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) would ‘swamp’ Western labour markets, leading to so-called social tourism and increasing xenophobia. Contrary to the developments in other countries, Sweden was one of the only three Member States to immediately open its doors to citizens from the EU accession countries of 2004 and 2007. Sweden has also been one of the few EU countries to actively promote greater liberalisation of labour migration policy for third-country nationals (TCNs) within the EU, and the new Swedish Immigration Law of 2008 dramatically liberalised the TCN labour migration policy and made it more employer-driven. We argue that in order to understand why Sweden has supported increased labour mobility within and from outside of the EU, we need to complement existing explanations by analysing the preferences of the political parties. A two-dimensional analysis focusing on economy and culture provides an understanding of why so-called unholy coalitions of parties in support of liberal labour policies have emerged in Sweden during the 2000s. The article ends with a discussion of lessons learned from the Swedish case and wider implications for rights-based mobility in the EU.

This Far, but No Further?: Benefits and Limitations of EU Gender Equality Policy Making in the Western Balkans

The European Union (EU) is one of the world’s most important policy promoters for gender equality. This article examines the benefits and limitations of EU gender equality policy making in two Western Balkan countries, Croatia and FYR Macedonia. Besides analyzing specific gender policy developments that can be attributed to the EU, particular focus is put on the women’s movement activists’ perceptions of the impact that accession may have on women and gender equality. The study demonstrates that while the Croatian and Macedonian EU accession processes have been beneficial to the introduction of new gender legislation and institutional mechanisms for the advancement of gender equality, the EU gender strategy has also shown serious limitations. Among these—and perhaps the most fundamental—is the strong contrast between stated goals and their actual implementation. I argue that unless profound institutional changes as well as changes in political culture take place in Croatia and Macedonia, the poor compliance with EU gender equality norms and policies will be hard to overcome.

Women's Movements as Agents of Change: The Politics of Policymaking and the Reform of Domestic Violence Laws in Croatia and Slovenia, 1991–2004

This article examines womens movements as agents of change in postcommunist Croatia and Slovenia: whether, and in what ways, they may have succeeded in politicizing and institutionalizing the issue of domestic violence in the two countries. Theoretically, this article aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion of the effectiveness of different forms of womens policy agency. Using a policy process analysis, the study demonstrates the key role womens movements have played in putting the issue of domestic violence on the political agenda and pressuring governments to enact new legislation. The findings challenge the common assumption that Central and Eastern European womens movements have remained weak, antifeminist, and apolitical, exerting only marginal influence on the gender policy processes in the region.

Passing the Buck: The case of failing multilevel governance and vulnerable EU migrants in Sweden

Abstract Sweden represents an intriguing paradox regarding EU migrant integration. Its welfare state institutions are highly developed; its integration policies have a solid record. Still, a substantial proportion of EU migrants are facing poor working conditions, unemployment and homelessness. This article highlights the ongoing difficulties, both for EU migrants to Sweden, as well as for a broad range of Swedish public actors seeking to devise governance solutions in a frequently ad hoc manner. We argue that while EU migrant integration is a policy challenge reflecting a multilevel setting, there is little evidence that multilevel governance has emerged thus. Rather, actors at all levels seek instead to shift the responsibilities associated with EU migrant integration to other levels, maintaining that EU migrant integration is beyond their competencies and resource levels. The analysis draws upon public documents and interviews with the key national and local stakeholders.

The Multi-Level Governance of Intra EU Movement

Free movement management is a challenge that emerged in a multi-level context, with policies developed at one level having unclear implications for actors working at other levels, and with questions of authority and competencies remaining highly uncertain. Broader issues of national and local contexts, as well as traditional institutional practices, all lay the groundwork for the need of clearly articulated governance solutions. As is clear from previous chapters, the flows of CEE migrants, as well as the social consequences of their presence in urban regions that are often unequipped in both policy and administrative terms, has led to substantial challenges for actors at all levels of government, both public and private, when it comes to free movement management.

The pursuit of political will: decision makers’ incentives and gender policy implementation in the Western Balkans

ABSTRACT In the Western Balkans, just as in newly democratized countries in other regions, failures in gender policy implementation are often attributed to lack of “political will.” There is however a surprising lack of specificity concerning what is meant by it and how to measure its influence on the observed implementation gaps. To help to begin filling this research gap this article examines the extent to which Western Balkans countries might be failing in the implementation of their adopted gender policies and the reasons why decision makers seem to lack the political will to implement them. To allow for a more in-depth perspective, the analysis will concentrate on the case of the implementation of Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) on the municipal level in the three countries in its focus: Bosnia and Hercegovina; Macedonia; and Serbia. The empirical material used for it consists of primary data from telephone surveys, in-depth interviews with actors involved in GRB policy processes and official documents.

The Eye of the Beholder: Narrating Crisis in the Ongoing Swedish Labor Migration Policy Debate

In 2008, the four party center-right Swedish government, with the support of the Green Party, enacted legislation making it substantially easier for non- European Union citizens (so-called third-country nationals (TCN) to live and work in Sweden. Casting aside a decades-old policy in which trade unions and labor market authorities played a crucial role in regulating the foreign labor tap, the reformed policy has made employment offers the key criterion in determining whether a work permit is granted. The resulting policy is now considered to be among the most open for OECD countries (OECD 2011). However, such a policy shift was far from uncontroversial. Indeed, the five parties in support of liberal labor migration faced substantial opposition from Social Democrats (SAP), the Left Party, and trade unions (Berg and Spehar 2013; Bucken-Knapp 2009; Hinnfors, Spehar, and Bucken-Knapp 2012; Spehar, Bucken-Knapp, and Hinnfors 2013), all of whom expressed fears that a permit-granting system based largely on employment offers would undermine core features of the Swedish labor market. Five years on, nearly 60,000 TCNs have been granted work permits for employment across sectors of the Swedish labor market (Swedish Migration Board 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012). While the initial numbers of new labor migrants were lower than forecast by the Swedish Migration Board (Goteborgs-Posten 2009), this has not resulted in the issue fading from public debate. Indeed, largely reflecting persistent media coverage of instances where TCN labor migrants have suffered at the hands of unscrupulous employers, the ongoing debate over Sweden’s liberal labor migration policy has only continued to gather steam and remains a regular feature on the op-ed pages of the leading national and regional daily newspapers.

Gender equality for whom? A critical frame analysis of the 2007 Swedish domestic services tax reform

This article considers the motivations behind a 2007 reform in Sweden to implement a tax deduction on domestic services for households, and how the reform could be passed despite extensive political opposition to it. Critical framing analysis is used to argue that at least a partial explanation for the policy reform is to be found in the inherent limitations of the gender equality policy as hitherto pursued in the country, and in the way these limitations were framed in the political debates to push for the reform. The analysis draws upon public documents and records of parliamentary and media debates.