Abstract
Intense pressure for international solutions and weak support for multilateral cooperation have led the EU to increasingly rely on its strongest foreign policy tool in the pursuit of migration policy goals: preferential trade agreements (PTAs). Starting from the fragmentary architecture of the migration regime complex we examine how the relevant content of the EU PTAs relates to multilateral institutions. Depending on the constellation of policy objectives, EU competence, and international interdependence, we propose a set of hypotheses regarding the conditions under which EU bilateral outreach via PTAs expands, complements, or substitutes international norms. Based on an original dataset of migration provisions in all EU PTAs signed between 1960 and 2020, we find that the migration policy content in EU PTAs expands or complements the objectives of multilateral institutions only to a very limited extent. Instead, the predominant constellation is one of substitution in which the EU uses its PTAs to promote migration policy objectives that depart from those of existing multilateral institutions.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 49-61 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | Politics and Governance |
Volume | 11 |
Issue number | 2 |
Early online date | 26 Apr 2023 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2023 |
Funding
This research was supported by the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) “On the Move” (www.nccr‐onthemove.ch) and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. We are very grateful to Julia Gubler and Laura Mauricio for their excellent research assistance, to the anonymous reviewers, to Oliver Westerwinter, and to the editors of this thematic issue for their constructive comments on previous ver‐ sions of the manuscript.
Funders | Funder number |
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nccr – on the move | |
Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung |