Summary

The European Union (EU) migration crisis has been part and parcel of a conglomerate of crises that have affected the EU since the late 2000s, as have the financial and sovereign debt crisis, “Brexit,” the Russia–Ukraine conflict, as well as tensions within transatlantic relations. Scholarship on the EU has devoted much attention in assessing what the migration crisis means for EU integration at large. In particular, EU scholars are interested why the migration crisis has led to political gridlock and a renationalization of border controls rather than a deepening of integration. While they differ in their explanations, these explanations shed light on different aspects of the crisis and are far from mutually exclusive.

Scholars who are more interested in the area of EU Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) largely agree with EU theorists that the field suffers from an incomplete governance design, the dominance of EU member states, and weak supranational capacities. Their analysis also focuses on intra-EU dynamics but offers a more nuanced empirical assessment of relevant EU institutions and decision-making in the course of managing the migration crisis. This growing body of research produces valuable insights and largely confirms existing scholarship, including that on the growing securitization and externalization of EU asylum and migration policy. The EU’s understanding as a norm-based power is particularly challenged by the migratory movements in the wake of the crisis. A small but growing scholarship analyses how the EU is balancing its non-entrée policy with its legal obligation, and what kind of governance arrangements result from that.

While this scholarship has enriched our understanding of the EU migration crisis, it has not generated a major refinement of the standard approaches of EU theorists and JHA scholars. To further enrich the literature on the migration crisis, scholars should go beyond studying the dynamics of EU decision-making and the role of EU institutions. Such an approach should engage more systematically with international actors and institutions that have the capacity to influence EU migration policy. At the same time, global phenomena such as war, poverty, or climate change should also be taken into account in assessing the EU’s room for maneuver in handling migratory pressures. Future research on the migration crisis as well as on migration challenges should thus not only connect with other subfields of political science, such as policy analysis or international relations, but also open up to other disciplines such as law, demography, or environmental studies.