REGINE Regularisations in Europe Final Report - European ...

9 Conclusions and preferred policy options
9.1 Regularisation practices in the EU(27)
As has been demonstrated throughout this study, there is a wide range of specific causes of ‘illegal
stay’ across the EU: Table 1 (§1) shows that there is a complex constellation of legal/illegal entry,
legal/illegal residence, legal/illegal employment and whether a person is registered (and known to
public authorities) or not. A recent Commission memo estimates that about half of the overall stock of
illegal migrants results from illegal entry into the territory of a Member State, while another half is
due to overstaying of visas and residence permits. 364 Our study, by contrast, suggests that withdrawal
and loss of legal status – that is, illegality as a consequence of administrative procedures – is a third
and important, albeit difficult to quantify, source of illegal resident populations. 365 Thus, irregular
migration is not driven by a single logic, nor can there be simple responses to irregular migration.
Most importantly, irregular migration is inextricably intertwined with the overall migration policy
framework.
There is also a variety of opinions across EU Member States regarding what actually constitutes
regularisation of third country nationals who are illegally staying. This diversity of approaches
toward, and understanding of, regularisation to some degree reflects the considerable complexity of
irregular migration as a social phenomenon: unsurprisingly, there is also a wide range of policies
designed to address the problem. Table 5 (§3) summarises the policy positions of Member States, and
§3.2.1 hypothesises six clusters or policy groupings – some of which are in ideological competition
with others. Nevertheless, few Member States (five out of 27) have absolutely no policies or practices
of regularisation – and of these five, three have recently acceded to the EU. Over the last decade, three
southern Member States have engaged in large-scale regularisation programmes, all of which seem
strongly related to deficits of formal labour immigration channels, although this view is challenged by
those Member States. Other (mostly northern) countries have engaged heavily in case-by-case
regularisations – usually in order to address a different set of problems, such as rejected asylumseekers
or non-deportable aliens. Yet others have attempted to normalise a transition situation,
moving from state socialism within the Soviet bloc to western liberal democracies. In total, our
conservative estimate for the EU(27) of the number of persons involved in regularisation of one sort
or another over the period 1996-2007 is between 5 and 6 million. 366 The sheer magnitude of this
figure indicates the importance of regularisation policy for the EU.
364 European Commission (2008): New Tools for an Integrated European Border Management Strategy. Memo
08/85. 13 February 2008. Brussels
365 It is safe to assume that the largest share is made up of rejected asylum seekers. However, as our report
shows, there are numerous other cases in which third country nationals lose their previous status and lapse into
illegality. Although relatively unimportant in quantitative terms (as compared to rejected asylum seekers), some
of these cases highlight important gaps of legislation and deficiencies of administrative procedures regarding
issuing and renewing residence permits.
366 See §3.1 et seq.
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