Tolerating Irregular Migration: Immigration Non-Enforcement in Western Europe

• In Event: Strategic (Non)Enforcement: State Responses to Migration

Abstract

Between 1960 and 1973, approximately 30 million people migrated to Western Europe in what one scholar has labeled “one of the largest, voluntary, peaceful, economically driven migration movements in modern history.” Many came from former colonies or other parts of the Global South. And the majority arrived outside of formal legal channels and came looking for work, long-term residence, or both. That governments in the receiving countries accepted the spontaneous arrival of what many now label “illegal” or “irregular” immigration is a puzzle. Certainly, the thirst for workers during a period of rapid economic growth and labor shortages provides an immediate explanation for why officials looked the other way as people arrived without authorization (and then provided them with legal status after the fact). Yet the question remains as to why this was possible politically. Why did mass publics not revolt against the arrival of so many newcomers? And why were there so few political elites who exploited the immigration issue for political gain?

This paper investigates these questions through an analysis of immigration policy-making in France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom (UK) in the post-war decades. In France and the Netherlands, a relatively insulated policy-making elite managed immigration policy largely removed from the sphere of public contestation and thus prevented its politicization and demagogic exploitation. In part, the political insulation resulted from governing structures put in place to manage various economic and social challenges. The party systems also limited discussion of the issue, as it highly structured voter behavior and suppressed the development of extremism on the right. Overlaid on these institutional and partisan factors was the commitment of political elites in the post-war years to liberal cosmopolitanism and the construction of a stable democracy. These insulating political structures and ideational orientations truncated potentially polarizing debates over race, ethnicity, and migration in the post-war years. These factors were less present in the UK, where political contention over immigration erupted earlier and generated a crackdown on irregular migration. In probing the conditions for acceptance of large-scale irregular migration, we gain a better understanding of why acceptance of such migration has declined in recent decades.

Author

• Kimberly J. Morgan, George Washington University