REGINE Regularisations in Europe Final Report - European ...

Sunderhaus identifies several rationales for carrying out regularisations, including the economic
benefits (formalisation of employment), humanitarian considerations as well as regaining control of
migration through regularisation programmes. In addition, he suggests that regularisation programmes
are usually implemented in want of other policy options. In a way, Sunderhaus argues, regularisation
policies thus can be seen as an attempt to redress the negative outcomes of previous migration policies
and thus are generally of a corrective nature. Apart from the limitations the study by Sunderhaus
shares with the Odysseus study, Sunderhaus’ survey is problematic on two additional grounds.
Methodologically, the inclusion of developing countries without consideration of the implications of
different histories and unfamiliar systems of migration management, as well as the more limited
capacity of some of these countries to control migration (or the wider population), is problematic.
Secondly, and more important for this study, the focus on large-scale programmes in selected
countries leads Sunderhaus to ignore the role of smaller scale programmes as well as that of
regularisation mechanisms, which, as this study shows, can involve substantial numbers of people.
Crucially, his focus on selected large-scale regularisation programmes leads him to a rather negative
assessment of regularisation programmes in general, although he concedes that they may be useful
policy tools if their design and implementation are improved.
Of these three studies, only Levinson pays much attention to wider questions linked to regularisation
policies, including the role and position of regularisation policy in the context of the wider policy
framework. For Levinson, regularisation is an indicator of wider policy failures, notably the failure of
internal and external controls; unfortunately, she does not go into further detail of what exactly these
failures consist of. In particular, she pays little attention to broader patterns of deficient practices,
including deficiencies in the administration of legal migration and asylum which, as we show, can be
identified as one of the sources of the need for regularisation programmes, or deficiencies in the
design of both asylum and migration regulations.
In addition, Levinson discusses several issues neglected by the Odysseus study in more depth, notably
the rationale for regularisation programmes, issues relating to the implementation of regularisation
programmes and mechanisms and the impact of regularisations. Referring to a previous IOM study 81 ,
she identifies four major reasons why states engage in regularisations, namely (1) to regain control
over migration and to reduce the size of the irregular migrant population; (2) to improve the social
situation of migrants, a goal often embraced in response to immigrant advocacy coalitions and public
pressure to undertake regularisations; (3) to increase the transparency of the labour market and
combat illegal employment; and (4) foreign policy goals. 82 Neither humanitarian considerations nor
legal obligations (notably, protection obligations held by states regarding certain categories of
immigrants) are considered by Levinson. Levinson observes several limitations and problems of
regularisation programmes – namely, lack of publicity, overly strict requirements, application fraud,
corruption of public officials, lack of administrative capacity to process applications, massive
backlogs and delays, and ineffectiveness of employer sanctions. 83
81 Mármora, L. (1999): International Migration Policies and Programmes. Geneva: IOM.
82 This is essentially limited to Portugal’s programme for Brazilian undocumented workers.
83 Levinson, A. (2005): op. cit. pp. 5-6.
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