This thesis examines what effect the economic discourse in EU migration policy might have on the view of migrants’ human rights in the European public opinion. The study is carried out as a qualitative content analysis of two central EU migration policy documents: The Global Approach to Migration and Mobility (2011), and A European Agenda on Migration (2015). The objective of the analysis is to determine whether the economic discourse have a dominant position in the documents and how this might affect the rights of the most vulnerable migrants. The analysis is based on a deductive approach in which existing theory have been analysed to identify key concepts upon which predetermined discourses have been decided and analysed in the documents. The analysis establishes that the economic discourse has a dominant position in the two documents, and that human rights are conditional. The analysis shows that migrants are stripped of their basic human rights due to the fact that they are not members of a community. The conclusion of the analysis is that human dignity is dependent upon your skills, competences and economic capital. It is expressed through the lack of political will to propose initiatives aimed at the most vulnerable migrants. The EU and is Member States are proposing stronger actions when it comes to attracting third country nationals to the EU that might contribute to economic growth.

The purpose of this essay is to explain the reasoning behind the European unions activation of the mass protection directive in 2022, how well these motivations apply to the migration crisis in 2015, and whether the theories poststructuralism, Marxist critical theory, and postcolonialism believe the differences legitimize the decision not to activate the directive in 2015. The method used is a discourse analysis based on operationalisation of the activation of the directive and the main ideas of each theory. The result indicates that the situation during 2015 did lack a few of the aspects taken into account in 2022. However, all three theories argue that these aspects could be evaluated and seen from different perspectives, and therefore did not necessarily legitimize the inaction of the EU in 2015.

Today, it is a very crucial problem that many European countries are encountering demographic challenges stemming from the population decline and aging and according to many studies and future projections, this demographic trend will reach more critical levels for the next 50 years. The most prominent impact of this demographic situation will be on social security systems that the functioning and sustainability of pension and health care systems will be severely damaged with regard to the rapidly increasing number of elderly and the decline in number of young labor force resulting from the low births rates all over Europe. In this context, labor migration that received significant attention, has risen up to the agenda of Europe to serve as a policy option to mitigate the adverse consequences of demographic challenges. Taking its impetus from the mentioned demographic problem, this thesis aims to analyze the discussions over labor migration as a foreseen policy option to compensate the shortage of labor force in Europe. It also intents to bring relevant data and current debates together to generate a ground in order to open this critical issue to discussion and to elaborate the feasibility of labor migration need for Europe. In this regard, the thesis scrutinizes the reactions of European states regarding their reluctance to open their borders again for &ldquo / mass influx&rdquo / and examines briefly the other preferred and enforced policies that exclude migration option, such as aiming to increase fertility rates, ameliorate social security systems or encourage the native labor force participation. By taking all these into account, this thesis aspires to attract attention to this urgent problem and evaluates the labor migration need in Europe by presenting the relevant reactions and appraisals shaping the migration policies both at the nation state and EU level. Finally, this thesis attempts to contribute to the literature in terms of generating a base for further intensified discussions and studies which constitutes a significant need in the context of interaction between demography and migration in Europe.

L’obiettivo principale di questa tesi è di analizzare l’origine ed evoluzione della dimensione esterna della politica migratoria dell’Unione Europea. Attraverso un framework teorico che coniuga la letteratura sui ‘new modes of governance’ con quella riguardante il ‘rational-choice institutionalism’, questa tesi si propone di analizzare il sistema di governance in tre settori politici che rientrano nell’ambito della dimensione esterna: politica di riammissione, controlli esterni alle frontiere, e cooperazione con Paesi terzi concernente la gestione della migrazione legale. Sulla base delle premesse teoriche sopra indicate, questa tesi avanza due conclusioni principali. In primo luogo, si sostiene che l’evoluzione del sistema di governance nei tre casi presi in considerazione, lungi dal seguire un percorso lineare verso una sempre maggiore comunitarizzazione, ha al contrario dato luogo a sistemi di governance ‘ibridi’, che combinano cioè elementi vincolanti tipici del metodo comunitario con elementi caratteristici dei “new modes of governance”, incentrati sull’uso di soft law. In secondo luogo, si evidenzia il ruolo centrale rivestito dagli Stati Membri nello sviluppare tali sistemi di governance in accordo con due obiettivi prioritari: limitare l’autonomia delle istituzioni sovranazionali all’interno del processo decisionale e plasmare i risultati di tali politiche in accordo con le preferenze degli stessi Stati Membri. / The central aim of this thesis is to provide an account of the origin and evolution of the external dimension of EU migration policy. By means of a theoretical framework that combines new modes of governance and rational-choice institutionalism, this thesis analyses the systems of governance of three policy areas falling within the external dimension: readmission policy, external border controls and cooperation with third countries in the field of legal migration. On the basis of such theoretical premises, two central arguments are advanced. First of all, it is argued that the evolution of the system of governance in the three cases, far from following a linear path towards communitarization, has resulted in the adoption of mixed systems featuring both 'old' modes of governance in line with the traditional Community Method and 'new’ modes based on soft-law and non-binding commitments. Secondly, this thesis underlines the central role played by the Member States in devising those governance mechanisms in order to fulfil two main objectives: limiting the discretion of EU supranational institutions in the decision-making process and shaping policy outcomes according to their preferred policy options.

This master thesis deals with the current issue of immigration within the EU while applying the social constructivist theory. It seems that the humanitarian, human rights and economic dimension of the European immigration policy is disappearing and immigration is increasingly viewed through the lens of security. The aim of this thesis is to apply the constructivist concept of securitization (constructing an object as a threat) to the current phenomenon of immigration to the EU in order to see the ways of securitization of immigration at the European level and identify its impact and related problems. The first theoretical part of the thesis introduces the links between immigration and security and also thoroughly explains the theoretical and methodological concept of securitization which is then used in the context of the current EU migration policy. The final chapter is devoted to the negative impacts of successfully securitized immigration and it suggests some alternative ways for the EU migration policy which should be seen through other (not only security) dimensions.

The UN Migrant Workers Convention (CMW) that provides for fundamental human rights for migrant workers and members of their families has been adopted in 1990. Until today, none of the EU Member States has signed or ratified it. The EU Member States argue that there is no need for them to accede to the CMW, as, inter alia, the rights contained in it are already secured by other international human rights instruments and in the EU legal instruments. Additionally to the claim of the CMW redundancy for the current EU legal framework, the Member States have several times repeated the fear that the ratification of the CMW could give irregular migrants more rights and increase irregular migration to the EU. Inspired by these two in fact contradictory arguments, this research aims to explore the scope of irregular migrants related human rights protection under international and European law and verify the basis of the EU Member states claims by comparing the scope of rights of irregular migrant workers in the EU with the standards embedded in the CMW. The main research questions posed are What human rights are the irregular migrants entitled to in the EU, based on international and European legal instruments? Is the CMW indeed redundant and unnecessary in the legislative framework of the European Union or is it...