REGINE Regularisations in Europe Final Report - European ...

3.2 Regularisation as a policy response to stocks of irregular migrants
In examining regularisation policy across the EU (27), one of the first questions that springs to mind
is whether or not there is any correlation with a Member State’s propensity to regularise and the
extent of its irregularly resident third country national population. Using all available datasources,
with particular emphasis on quantitative data, Table 5 (overleaf) provides estimations of the extent of
irregular migrant stocks (as a proportion of total population). Even when allowing for the difficulty of
making such evaluations, it does seem that certain Member States are more affected by illegal stocks
than others. From Table 5, we can say that two countries have had extremely high illegal migrant
stocks – Greece and Cyprus. Another eight countries (Spain, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, Hungary, the
UK, Germany, the Czech Rep.) have high stocks; six countries are evaluated as having medium-level
stocks (the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Estonia, France, Austria and Sweden). 103
Is there any obvious relation between irregular migrant stocks and regularisation practices? Of the two
countries with very high stocks, one (Cyprus) has never held a regularisation programme. Of the eight
countries with high stocks, all but one have undertaken programmes since 1996 (although Germany
denies that its policy is a regularisation), all but two had programmes prior to 1996, and all but two
also have regularisation mechanisms. We might also posit a counterfactual: are there any countries
with low (or medium) irregular migrant stocks that have undertaken regularisations? Of the 12
countries evaluated as having low stocks, five have undertaken programmes since 1996 but only one
had a programme prior to 1996; all five also have regularisation mechanisms. Thus, there seems to be
a rough but highly imperfect correlation of regularisation policies with the extent of irregular migrant
stocks. Clearly, other intervening variables play important roles in shaping policy responses.
In Table 5, we have tried to categorise Member States’ policies into various clusters of policy
approaches. These are explicated below, along with some suggestions as to what might be the
intervening variables that mediate the linkage between the policy problem (illegal migrant stocks) and
the differing policy responses.
3.2.1 Policy clusters of regularisation behaviour across the EU (27)
The southern European countries
(Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal)
These countries are distinguished by their reliance on regularisation as an alternative to immigration
policy: the great majority of legal TCN workers have acquired their legal status through regularisation
programmes, 104 as opposed to being recruited from abroad (as their immigration laws require). As
103 However, one should add, that most estimates refer to the period before 2004, i.e. before the two waves of
EU enlargement. As a consequence of EU enlargement and the de facto regularisation of a large number of
citizens of new EU Member States who were irregularly staying in a EU(15) Member State, the number of
illegally staying third country nationals has since decreased significantly (Michael Jandl, personal
communication).
104 This is absolutely clear for the period 1980—2000 (see e.g. Reyneri, E. (2001): ‘Migrants' Involvement in
Irregular Employment in the Mediterranean Countries of the European Union’, International Migration Paper
41, Geneva: International Labour Organization, p. 4; Simon, G. (1987): ‘Migration in Southern Europe: An
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