Claudia Finotelli

Through the Gates of the Fortress: European Visa Policies and the Limits of Immigration Control

Clandestine migration, particularly along the Southern sea borders, dominates the debate on migration control in Europe. On the contrary, even if most irregular migrants are visa over-stayers, remarkably little is known about the management of the EU visa supply. This paper analyzes the role played by visa policy in the European immigration control system. It shows that visa policy has never been exclusively a tool of irregular migration prevention and that the overall trend of short-term visa supply highlights an asymmetric visa regime, increasingly open to Eastern European countries while remarkably rigid across the Mediterranean.

The Heuristic Potential of Models of Citizenship and Immigrant Integration Reviewed

This special issue of the Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies reviews the use of models for international comparisons of citizenship and immigrant integration. The introduction explores criticism and works to reevaluate the use of models in terms of both conceptual clarity (i.e., distinguishing between different empirical fields where models come into play, such as political and public discourses, policies and institutions, and processes of social integration) and methodological discipline (distinguishing between models used as dependent or independent variables). In sum, this issue suggests that models can help to explain political debates and processes, and the formulation of public policies but that their explanatory power for social processes is limited.

Integration in times of economic decline. Migrant inclusion in Southern European societies: trends and theoretical implications

ABSTRACT Despite the large amount of literature on migrants’ integration, little is known about integration in times of economic decline. The aim of this Special Issue is to contribute to filling this research gap by exploring the nexus between the Great Recession that began in 2008 and integration processes. To this end, we regard Southern European countries as an observatory of crucial relevance because of their harsh experience of the crisis and common social and policy patterns that make their comparative analysis empirically sound and theoretically significant. In order to offer some general views on this Issue’s contributions and to highlight some of the explanatory potential of this collective work, we frame the collected articles by referring to different dimensions of integration: (i) residence status and political rights; (ii) socio-economic conditions; and (iii) perceptions of migrants and the receiving society. Contributions show that in Southern Europe the legal-political and cultural dimensions of integration, i.e. legal status and perceptions towards migrants, have apparently been more resilient to the crisis than the economic dimension, such as the socio-economic conditions of migrants.

Change of Paradigms? A Comparison of Canadian and Spanish Labour Migration Models

Abstract In the international immigration debate, the predominance of the temporary migration of low-skilled migrants in Europe has often been contrasted with generous entry avenues for high-skilled migrants in North America and Australia. Recently, however, “classic” admission countries overseas have weakened their admission channels for high-skilled workers, whereas this category of migrants has acquired a new prominence in Europe. The goal of this article is to analyse the impact of these policy changes on the Canadian and Spanish migration regimes, which represent two paradigmatic examples of different labour migration models on the spectrum of international migration policies.

Beyond instrumental citizenship: the Spanish and Italian citizenship regimes in times of crisis

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to contribute to the current debate on integration during economic downturn by analysing to what extent citizenship regimes may offer opportunities for instrumental uses of naturalisation in times of economic crisis. Its main goal is to provide a more nuanced view of citizenship acquisition, its implications and its alleged instrumental uses to stabilise legal status and improve mobility chances. For this purpose, our analysis focuses on the nexus between citizenship regimes and naturalisations trends in Italy and Spain as two major Southern European immigration countries that have similar migration histories, but rather different citizenship regimes. The first part of the article provides an overview of the scholarly debate on the concept of instrumental citizenship and elaborates a typology of the possible instrumental uses by states and migrants. The second part examines the citizenship regimes and analyses the opportunity structures opened up by citizenship acquisition channels in Italy and Spain. Finally, the article analyses naturalisation trends to show that instrumental uses of citizenship acquisition are closely connected to the different opportunity structures offered by the Italian and Spanish citizenship regimes.

“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” Reconsidered: A Comparison of German, Canadian and Spanish Labour Migration Policies

Abstract This article compares three immigration countries that are perceived, both publicly and politically, as being fundamentally different: Canada, which is allegedly one of the most attractive destination countries for labour migrants worldwide; Germany, which is still thought to be sceptical towards immigration; and finally Spain, which is considered institutionally incapable of implementing efficient labour migration policies. Against the backdrop of various political reforms that have been adopted in these countries, however, the article argues that such a distinction is becoming increasingly inaccurate. This observation is backed empirically by analysing the technique of screening labour migrants and the temporal design of labour migration policy.

In the Name of Human Capital

The international migration of physicians is considered an effective response to ageing societies. However, the international recruitment of physicians may be challenged by the protectionist rationale of the medical profession in many countries. How is the potential contradiction between open recruitment policies and exclusive professional regulations managed in Europe? What is the role played by foreign credential recognition or language knowledge in the recruitment process? Are there differences among countries? These questions are analysed by comparing Germany and Spain, which possess not only two divergent migration regimes but also two completely different health care systems. The main goal of the article is to explore how the capacity of national health care sectors to attract and integrate foreign physicians may affect Europe’s quest for highly skilled health professionals in the long term.