Friday, July 10, 2015
J211 (13 rue de l'Université)
Over the past 15 years, certain aspects of immigration regulation have undergone profound liberalisation in Europe. Labour migrants in particular are not just welcomed, but actively solicited, which marks a dramatic shift from the predominant policy paradigm of earlier decades. This paper explores the politics of immigration regulation liberalisation in two countries long regarded as stalwarts of a restrictive stance towards labour migration, Austria and Sweden. It focuses on the period between 2000-2014, during which both countries enacted sweeping and very liberal reform measures. While much scholarly attention has focused on the role of the Far Right in shaping migration policy, much less attention has focused on the ideological stance and the internal politics of centre-right parties. This paper contributes to the nascent literature that focuses on these parties (Bale 2008), exploring the shifting ideological grounds internally and the nexus with organized business through careful process tracing, analysis of internal party documents, and elite interviews in both countries. The centre-right, it is argued, has re-engaged with the notion of immigration as a human resource strategy; this is due to active policy entrepreneurship by business associations and electoral considerations amongst senior party leaders regarding a differentiated regulatory approach towards different groups of immigrants. A final section of the paper explores the contingency of such coalition and defines factors that might lead to a partial reversal of this shift towards liberalisation.
