REGINE Regularisations in Europe Final Report - European ...

2 Previous comparative studies on regularisations and
their impact
2.1 Introduction
This chapter reviews selected previous comparative studies on regularisation policies in EU Member
States and elsewhere. It considers how existing studies conceptualise regularisation and how they
classify different regularisation measures in comparative perspective. It evaluates existing studies’
findings regarding the characteristics of regularisations and their main rationales, while enquiring into
how regularisation measures fit into the overall migratory framework. Finally, the chapter reviews
existing studies’ findings on the implementation of regularisation measures and their impact.
Although research on regularisation practices of individual countries has now a long tradition – a
growing number of studies began to appear as long ago as the early 1980s, when regularisations
became more common in the context of growing restrictions on immigration 33 – it is only relatively
recently (specifically, since the publication of the seminal study on regularisation practices in selected
European states, carried out by the Odysseus network 34 and published in 2000 35 ) that regularisation
policies have received serious attention from a comparative perspective. That the increased interested
in regularisation policies from a comparative perspective roughly coincided with the
communitarisation of migration policy through the Amsterdam Treaty is not simple coincidence: the
role of the European Community has been a major rationale for the majority of studies. Indeed, the
Odysseus study on regularisation practices was financed by the European Commission and the study
was actually the network’s very first multi-country study on migration legislation of Member States
from a comparative legal perspective. 36 This suggests that regularisation policy, although outside the
actual scope of migration policy-making on the European level, has been a core concern from the very
beginning of the development of a common European migration and asylum policy.
Since then, the literature on regularisation policies has multiplied, and now includes a variety of
comparative mapping exercises of regularisation practices 37 as well as numerous studies investigating
33 See, for an early study on France, Marie, C.V. (1984): ‘De la clandestinité à l'insertion professionnelle
régulière, le devenir des travailleurs régularisés’. In: Travail et Emploi N°22, décembre, pp. 21-32. In Italy, first
studies on regularisation programmes began to appear in the mid-1990s (see for example Massi, E. (1995): La
sanatoria per I cittadini extracommunitari, Diritte e pratica del Lavoro, pp.3033f); In Spain, the first studies
were published from the 1990s onwards (see for example A. Izquierdo Escribano (1990): Immigration en
Espagne et premiers résultats du programme de regularisation, Rapport par l’OECD. Group de Travail sur les
Migrations. Paris: OECD). In the US, numerous studies have been published following the 1986 Immigration
Reform and Control Act (IRCA).
34 See on the Odysseus network http://www.ulb.ac.be/assoc/odysseus/
35 De Bruycker, P. (ed) (2000): Les regularisations des étrangers illégaux dans l’union européenne.
Regularisations of illegal immigrants in the European Union. Brussels: Bruylant; A summary report of the
study was also published as Apap, J., De Bruycker, P., Schmitter,C. (2000): ‘Regularisation of Illegal Aliens in
the European Union. Summary Report of a Comparative Study’, European Journal of Migration and Law, 2, pp.
263–308. Because this summary has been more widely disseminated and is more accessible than the original
French summary contained in the book, we will mainly refer to this version.
36 De Bruycker, P. (2000): ‘Presentation d’ouvrage’. In: De Bruycker, P., op. cit., pp.xxvii-xx1.
37 Blaschke, J. (2008): Trends on Regularisation of Third Country Nationals in Irregular Situation of Stay
Across the European Union. PE 393.282, Brussels: European Parliament, Directorate General Internal Policies
of the Union, Policy Department C, Citizens Rights and Constitutional Affairs; J. Greenway, (2007):
Regularisation programmes for irregular migrants. Report: Council of Europe. Committee on Migration,
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