The Transformation of EU Migration Policy:Towards a New Model of Differentiated Governance

During the crisis, the structure of European migration policy was transformed. Differentiation emerged as the main characteristic of EU management of the current migration crisis. The extended politicization of the migration influx resulted to the engagement of differentiated measures and policies for containing migration crisis on the interconnected EU policy fields, particularly, the Schengen area and borders controls, the Dublin regulation and asylum procedures, the EU External action specifically cooperation with third countries, and militarized missions in cooperation with NATO. These policy areas respond to different levels of both horizontal and sectoral integration (Leuffen,  Rittberger, Schimmelfennig, 2013). This study will focus on vertical differentiation, which refers to divergence of integration of the various policy areas regarding levels of centralization and, consequently, to diverse EU’s governing systems. For instance, the Common European Asylum System, as a Home Affairs issue, is incorporated in the “community method” governing system while a great part of EU external actions are mostly under a coordinated intergovernmental system. As a result, a new de facto model of European governance on specific policy areas, in this case the migration policy, is emerged. This, this paper will explore the parameters of the transformation of European governance of migration policy after the crisis and the resulted differentiated governance mode as a new expanding management  model in selected policy fields like migration. The study seeks to identify new research questions and unexplored areas in the field of European governance studies raised after the transformation of EU migration policy.