Anthony M. Messina

The Limits of a European Immigration Policy: Elite Opinion and Agendas within the European Parliament

Utilizing data from our surveys of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in 1992-93 and 2003-04, this article samples MEP opinion on immigration-related questions. Its central purpose is to discover if the positions of MEPs on immigration issues have evolved substantially over time and, if so, whether the direction of change supports the supposition that national and partisan orientations are gradually yielding to a consensual and European orientation on immigration-related issues. Our comparative and longitudinal analysis partially confirms that MEP opinion is becoming more consensual. Yet, despite the robust interest of MEPs in forging a common immigration policy, their support for communitarization continues to lag. Specifically, we find that, even as immigration-related issues have become more salient, a preference for having national governments regulate immigration policy has increased, particularly among MEPs from the traditional immigration-receiving countries. Copyright 2005 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Political impediments to the resumption of labour migration to Western Europe

This article argues that traditional, labour migration flows to Western Europe are unlikely to resume in the near future and the commitment of the European Community to the free movement of labour is likely to erode as a consequence of anti‐immigrant illiberalism in Western Europe. Anti‐immigrant illiberalism in several, major labour‐importing states is evident in: the semipermanent politicisation of state immigration policy; increasing popular support for xenophobic political forces; the appropriation of anti‐immigrant votes by established political parties of the right; and the abandonment by left‐wing parties of liberal immigration and immigrant‐welfare policies.

Securitizing Immigration in the Age of Terror

In the context of the evidence presented in both the collected scholarship under review and other select works, this article asks if and to what extent migration-related issues have been securitized in Europe and the United States. In addressing these questions it executes three tasks. First, it critically assesses the four major dimensions across which contemporary immigration purportedly is securitized: on one side, rhetorically addressing immigration-related issues through political elite discourse, public opinion, and the mass media; and on the other, the policy processes through which immigration is securitized. Second, this article identifies the strengths and weaknesses of securitization theory as it has been applied to immigration. Finally, it draws mostly negative conclusions about the veracity of the central claims of the securitization of immigration literature and, specifically, its causal story.

The Impacts of Post-WWII Migration to Britain: Policy Constraints, Political Opportunism and the Alteration of Representational Politics

The article identifies and analyzes the most important consequences of non-white post-World War Two immigration for contemporary British politics. The central argument is that postwar immigration has gradually altered the course of British politics along three major dimensions. First, the demographic pattern of postwar immigration during its earliest phase or “first wave” severely and indefinitely constrained the ability of British policymakers to utilize foreign labor to rectify periodic manpower shortages and other structural impediments to economic growth. Second, the permanent settlement of a significant number of non-white immigrants facilitated the success of a political project that redefined the role of the British state in the economy and society. And finally, postwar immigration and its social aftermath altered the representational foundations of Britains political party system by engendering greater ideological competition between political parties and creating policy distance between them with regard to issues that are especially pertinent to Britains growing ethnic minority population.

The Politics of Migration to Western Europe: Ireland in Comparative Perspective

This article locates Irelands relatively recent experience with mass immigration within a comparative West European context. It poses two questions: To what degree has Ireland become a ‘normal’ country of immigration? What does the Irish case reveal about the contemporary politics of migration to Western Europe? The articles main finding is that Irelands experience with mass immigration since the 1990s appears to be following a political trajectory similar to that of the traditional immigration-receiving states, despite being separated from the latter by as many as four decades. This said, the evidence suggests that some of the policy challenges precipitated by mass immigrant settlement may be currently arriving earlier in time than previously.

Anti‐immigrant illiberalism and the ‘new’ ethnic and racial minorities in Western Europe

Fuelled by unemployment and economic recession, antagonistic policies and ideas regarding ethnic and racial minorities in Western Europe have advanced significantly since the mid‐1970s on both the right and left, officially and extra‐parliamentarily. The effects of these forces, argues Professor Messina, have been to give an acceptability to anti‐immigrant ideas which will take a long time to wane.

Postwar Protest Movements in Britain: A Challenge to Parties

This article asks why new protest movements have recently emerged in Western Europe by focusing on the British postwar race and anti-nuclear movements. Contrary to subjective propositions which have attributed their emergence to intergenerational value change, this article instead proposes a structural explanation. It is argued that the failure of the major British political parties to articulate citizen concerns on a number of salient issues has generated extra-party initiatives whose willingness to voice citizen anxieties primarily explains their popular support. Once in existence, these groups further politicize the conflict over public policy through various unconventional activities.

The political and policy impacts of extreme right parties in time and context

Impact of Extreme Right Parties makes a welcome contribution to the growing scholarship that assesses the impacts of extreme right parties (ERPs) on inter-party competition, public opinion and public policy. Although it commendably avoids the pitfall of overestimating the political significance of ERPs, several criticisms of the book nevertheless can be raised. First, it is disquieting that its analysis of the impacts of ERPs within its chosen three countries covers less than a decade. Second, the reader may come away questioning its ultimate contribution to our understanding of the staying power of ERPs. Third, it is reasonable to ask if in investigating the impacts of ERPs on inter-party competition and public opinion the book is simply accumulating evidence for the much more important question of their impact on public policy. Finally, it is unfortunate that the possible effects of ERPs on partisan and party system dealignment are not considered.

Pathways from September 11: Politics, Policy, and State Sovereignty in an Age of Terror

My nascent book project seeks to identify and assess the effectiveness of European state strategies since September 11, 2001, to navigate the policy contradictions raised by the securitization of immigration. Framing my research is a nearly universal dilemma for politics and policy in a post-September 11 international and domestic security environment: Is the liberal state’s traditional role as the guarantor of the physical safety of its citizens reconcilable with its pursuit of expansive immigration policies and inclusive immigrant incorporation policies? While I cannot answer this question definitively, I hope to illuminate the broad parameters of states policy making freedom under the unfavorable domestic and transnational security conditions within Europe and, by extension, other advanced industrial democracies including the United States. Although not an entirely new phenomenon, the conflation of immigration with international terrorism and the framing of immigrants as societal “enemies” (Faist 2002; Tsoukala 2005) in political discourse across post-September 11 Europe have brought the challenge of reconciling the contradictions embedded within what had been a fairly stable immigration policy equilibrium. During most of the post-WWII period, this policy equilibrium was comprised of three discreet dimensions: economic—securing an adequate and appropriate supply of foreign workers; societal— successfully incorporating immigrants into the host societies and facilitating good social relations with native populations; and physical safety—safeguarding Europe’s external borders and deterring transnational crime. Indeed, until September 11, European political elites were more or less secure in assuming that each of the dimensions of contemporary immigration policy—labor immigration policy, immigrant incorporation policy, and border control policy—could be formulated and implemented in relative isolation; that is, decisions on one policy dimension did not much intersect or circumscribe decisions made along others. With the inclusion of immigration-related issues in a new European “security continuum” (Aradau 2001), however, the veracity of this premise has been challenged. Specifically, terrorism now suggests that the liberal state’s commitment to expansive immigration and generous immigrant incorporation policies possibly conflict with its core responsibility to safeguard the physical safety of its citizens. Against this backdrop my project poses a central research question: What are the broad implications of the securitization of immigration for the capacity of individual states to pursue coherent and self-interested immigration and immigrant policies (Messina 2007)? Embedded within this question are five interrelated puzzles: (1) Why has the securitization of immigration affected the three dimensions of the immigration policy equilibrium unevenly? (2) Why has the securitization of immigration influenced the course of domestic politics more profoundly in some major countries than others? (3) Why have the major immigration-receiving states responded differently to the challenges posed by securitization of immigration? (4) Why has the degree to which immigration has been securitized fluctuated within some countries? (5) Why have immigration issues become securitized at the EU level? One of my working hypotheses is that the capacity of European states to pursue coherent and self-interested policies, while challenged by September 11 and its aftershocks, has not been severely compromised. This said, depending upon national historical experiences and domestically-based political assets and factors, they appear to retain different capacities to reconcile the contradictions posed by the three dimensions of immigration in a post-September 11 environment. Among the aforementioned historical experiences, I hypothesize, is a state’s pre-September 11 experience with, and policy responses to, domestic terrorism (Macleod 2006; Schain 2007). As currently conceived, the book will include chapters on the major and direct impacts that post-September 11 security-related events have had on national and EU immigration and immigrant policy regimes; the political (as opposed to the policy) responses of a select number of European governments to the securitization of immigration; the pre and post-September 11 patterns (i.e., liberal/ illiberal, inclusive/exclusive, etc.) of European political elite opinion; the post-September 11 trajectory of European public opinion on key issues pertaining to immigration and immigrant incorporation; and the influence of extra-governmental actors, and especially extreme right political parties, on domestic politics and policy before and after September 11. The project departs from previous scholarship on the securitization of immigration and its public policy implications in at least three respects. First, it is not centrally concerned with the motives driving contemporary state immigration policies (Rudolph 2006) or the effects of the securitization of immigration on settled immigrant groups. Second, it will juxtapose the respective trajectories of elite and public opinion on immigration-related issues over time. A few works excepted, previous scholarship has focused on trends in either elite or public opinion or, alternatively, it has been limited to only a couple of points in recent time. Finally, it will carefully scrutinize the validity of the widely-disseminated, but hitherto empirically unsubstantiated, supposition that immigration politics and policies in Europe have been fundamentally altered by the “focusing event” of September 11 (Levy 2005).

João Carvalho's Impact of Extreme Right Parties on Immigration Policy

The appearance of João Carvalho’s Impact of Extreme Right Parties on Immigration Policy could hardly be timelier. Although the surge of popular and electoral support for extreme right parties (ERPs) originated more than a quarter of a century ago, it was only until fairly recently, and even then only sporadically, that their impacts on politics and public policy have been systematically investigated by scholars. Although the issue as yet remains unsettled, a scholarly consensus seems to be emerging that the political and policy influence of ERPs hitherto has been ‘contained’, a perspective for which Carvalho’s book provides extensive empirical support. This said, as the following commentaries in this symposium by David Art, Ted Perlmutter, Michelle Hale Williams and Anthony Messina collectively underscore, conspicuously less agreement on several key, related questions within the pertinent literature persists. First, with regard to their ideological proclivities and policy prescriptions, how well do ERPs actually hang together as a party family? Second, how good are our existing tools for measuring the indirect impacts of ERPs? Third, once exercised, does the political and/ or policy influence of ERPs tend to endure? Finally, why has the contemporary European far right enjoyed much less political and policy influence than the American populist right? As these questions imply, the contributors to this symposium seize the opportunity in their respective commentaries to reflect upon the state and quality of the wider scholarship that informs the book. In doing so, we hope to better illuminate the ERP phenomenon and offer some modest suggestions on the future directions that the study of ERPs might fruitfully take.