REGINE Regularisations in Europe Final Report - European ...

deal with current and possibly future flows of migrants, not the control mechanisms that prevent them
from entering.” 91
In addition, the report recommends co-operation with countries of origin on facilitating the orderly
return of failed migrants and developing development-return schemes that would make return a more
viable and attractive option for failed migrants themselves. The Council of Europe report, however,
also recognises that overly strict immigration policies may be a cause of illegality and recommends to
expand the scope for legal immigration, including labour immigration for lower skilled categories of
immigrants. Furthermore, the report stresses human rights considerations, notably in terms of the
respect for private and family life. The report thus notes that ‘spontaneous’ family reunification seems
to be an important source of irregular migration, but family considerations are a rare criterion in most
large-scale regularisation programmes. Finally, the report also sees a need for a common position on
regularisation of both the Council of Europe and the European Union that would incorporate its
recommendation.
Aspasia Papadopoulou’s review of regularisation practices written for the Global Commission on
Migration 92 essentially covers much of the same ground as the Odysseus study and in particular, as
Levinson’s review and the Council of Europe report. However, she places more emphasis on the
relationship between regularisation policies and asylum and stresses that regularisation has in the past
often been granted as a form of complementary protection. As the Council of Europe, she emphasises
the general need to undertake regularisations in agreement with existing human right norms under
international law, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN 1990 Convention on
the Rights of Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, the European Convention on Human
Rights, the European Social Charter, the ILO Migration for Employment Convention 1949 (C97), and
the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
In contrast to the Council of Europe report, Papadopoulou does not endorse ‘earned regularisation’
schemes. The main problem, she argues, is that regularisation would then be treated as an award,
rather than as a right, and would undermine equal-opportunity and equal-rights-based understandings
of integration. In addition, an earned regularisation scheme would favour more highly skilled,
resourceful and well-connected migrants and thus would have a clear bias against more vulnerable
and less resourceful groups.
2.5 Conclusion
This survey of the literature suggests that there are two broad strands of research on regularisation
practices. One major strand of research, including most studies written on regularisation practices in
the European Union which – in one way or another – build on the seminal Odysseus study, has a
broad, comparative impetus and focuses on the policies as such. The main focus of this strand of
research is on identifying types, criteria and objectives of regularisation measures and on providing
indications for which objectives, in which form and under what circumstances regularisation may be
an appropriate policy tool. This strand of research thus focuses on the overall design of regularisation
91 Ibid. p.13. See also Migration Policy Institute/ Weil, P.: op. cit. for systematic assessment on policies on
irregular migration.
92 Papadopoulou, A. (2005): op. cit.
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