Katharina Natter

Growing Restrictiveness or Changing Selection? The Nature and Evolution of Migration Policies1

This paper demonstrates that, since 1945, migration policies have overall become less restrictive. Challenging common assumptions, this long-term trend is robust across most of the 45 countries included in the DEMIG POLICY database. While the period after 1989 is characterized by a slowing down of the rapid post-WWII liberalization of migration policies, liberal policy changes have continued to outnumber restrictive policy changes until today. Yet policy developments differ across policy types and migrant categories: Entry and integration policies have become less restrictive, while border control and exit policies have become more restrictive. Also, while policies towards irregular migrants and family migrants have been tightened in recent years, less restrictive changes have dominated policies targeting high- and low-skilled workers, students, and refugees. The essence of modern migration policies is thus not their growing restriction, but their focus on migrant selection.

Rethinking immigration policy theory beyond ‘Western liberal democracies’

How do political systems shape immigration policy-making? Explicitly or implicitly, comparative politics and migration policy theories suggest a ‘regime effect’ that links specific dynamics of immigration policy to liberal democracy. The literature’s dominant focus on so-called ‘Western liberal democracies’, however, has left the ‘regime effect’ largely untested and research on variations and similarities in immigration policymaking across political systems strikingly undertheorized. This paper challenges the theoretical usefulness of essentialist, dichotomous categories such as Western/non-Western or democratic/autocratic and calls for a more nuanced theorizing of immigration policy-making. It proposes a two-dimensional classification of immigration policy theories, distinguishing between ‘issue-specific’ theories that capture immigration policy processes regardless of the political system in place and ‘regime-specific’ theories whose insights are tied to the characteristics of a political system. The paper also advances the ‘illiberal paradox’ hypothesis to explain why illiberal, autocratic states may enact liberal immigration policies. This theoretical expansion beyond the ‘Western’ and ‘liberal’ bubble is illustrated by an analysis of immigration policy-making in 21st century Morocco and Tunisia. Showing how domestic and international institutions, interests, and ideas shape immigration policy-making in Morocco’s monarchy and Tunisia’s democratic transition, the paper investigates the broader role of political systems in immigration politics and herewith seeks to contribute to a more general and global theorization of immigration policies.

Revisiting Moroccan Migrations

Over the 20th century, Morocco has become one of the world’s major emigration countries. But since 2000, growing immigration and settlement of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Europe confronts Morocco with an entirely new set of social, cultural, political and legal issues. This book explores how continued emigration and increasing immigration is transforming contemporary Moroccan society, with a particular emphasis on the way the Moroccan state is dealing with shifting migratory realities. The authors of this collective volume embark on a dialogue between theory and empirical research, showcasing how contemporary migration theories help understanding recent trends in Moroccan migration, and, vice-versa, how the specific Moroccan case enriches migration theory. This perspective helps to overcome the still predominant Western-centric research view that artificially divide the world into ‘receiving’ and ‘sending’ countries and largely disregards the dynamics of and experiences with migration in countries in the Global South. This book was previously published as a special issue of The Journal of North African Studies.

Salient issues on international migration: Buoni e cattivi segnali. Reporting from the 2014 International Metropolis Conference

Eighteen years ago, in 1996, a series of interdisciplinary migration dialogs were launched in Italy, bringing together policy makers, public representatives, members of the international civil society, as well as community researchers and academics. The birthplace of these discussions was the city of Milan. Since then, yearly transnational conferences have been unfolding under the umbrella of the International Metropolis research cluster. In 2014, the conference was hosted once again in Milan, between 3 and 7 November 2014. William Lacy Swing, Director General (DG) of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) welcomed the timing of the conference as appropriately fitting between the 2013 United Nations (UN) High-Level Dialog on International Migration and Development and the ongoing discussions around the UN Post-2015 Development Agenda. The conference was sponsored by one of its original founding associates and current International Committee members – the Foundation for Initiatives and Studies on MultiEthnicities (ISMU). Titled “Migration: Energy for the Planet – Feeding Cultures,” the 2014 International Metropolis served as a preamble to the 2015 Expo Milano which is a global non-commercial exposition on the historical and cultural production of food and new technologies. The International Metropolis juxtaposed its thematic focus to that of the Expo, in order to better emphasize the intrinsic value of migration for world societies. With Milan being one of the most multi-ethnic cities in Italy, and the Lombardy province counting about half of its population as “foreigners” – an estimated 1.5 million out of the 3 million inhabitants (Metropolis Press Release, 2014) – the city was deemed the ideal fit for fostering fruitful debates on international migration. Driven by policy-relevant research and best practices exchanges, the conference brought together over 700 participants set to discuss up-to-date developments vis-à-vis transnational migration. With 80 workshops and 8 plenaries, no reporting efforts could comprehensively and thoroughly capture the variety and complexity of the topics addressed. Within such context, this brief reporting piece focuses on three main themes that emerged from the conference: (1) the implications of current geopolitical shifts for international migration and migration management; (2) the development of a multi-level migration governance across international, national, as well as regional and local