The Routledge Handbook of Justice and Home Affairs Research

Ariadna Ripoll Servent, Florian Trauner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138183759
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317292562
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Immigration Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Justice and Home Affairs is one of the fastest expanding areas of research in European Studies. The European response to security concerns such as terrorism, organised crime networks, and drug trafficking as well as to the challenge of managing migration flows are salient topics of interest to an increasing number of scholars of all disciplines, the media and general public. This handbook takes stock of policy development and academic research in relation to justice and home affairs and analyses the field in an unprecedented thematic depth.

The book comprehensively investigates the field from the perspective of the three dimensions central to European integration: the sectoral (policies), the horizontal (states, regions) and the vertical (institutions, decision-making) dimensions. It also discusses the most important theoretical approaches used in this research area and provides the reader with a state of the art picture of the field.

By adopting such a comprehensive and broad-based approach, the handbook is uniquely positioned to be an important referent for scholars, practitioners and students interested in the area of justice, home affairs and European politics.

PART I

Introduction

1
JUSTICE AND HOME AFFAIRS RESEARCH

Introducing the state of the art and avenues for further research

Florian Trauner and Ariadna Ripoll Servent

Introduction

The European integration process has become more contested. The resilience of democratic standards in view of populist governments and parties, slow economic growth and inflated public debts, migratory pressure, terrorist attacks and the departure of the United Kingdom from the EU are among the internal challenges facing the Union. Many of these issues are interlinked with developments in the outside world, notably instability or the consolidation of authoritarian rule in a range of third countries. This combination of internal and external forces has led to a process of politicization, which has been defined as ‘an increase in polarization of opinions, interests or values and the extent to which they are publicly advanced towards the process of policy formulation within the EU’ (Wilde 2011: 560). Indeed, we see how the outcome of national and European elections is increasingly determined by the way in which politicians deal with immigration, border control, counter-terrorism and citizens’ and migrants’ access to justice and rights. Justice and home affairs (JHA), being a particularly sensitive field of public policy and closely linked to states’ sovereignty, has become a playing field for those attempting to politicize EU integration.

Therefore, this handbook comes at a crucial moment in time. The volume takes stock of policy developments and academic research in relation to JHA and aims to analyze this field in unprecedented thematic depth. The volume contains thirty-nine chapters that investigate the research area from the three dimensions central to European integration: the sectoral dimension, looking at specific policies and how they relate to each other; the horizontal dimension, which concentrates on specific states and regions; and the vertical dimension, which examines the role of EU institutions and changes to policy-making processes (Schimmelfennig and Rittberger 2006). However, these different dimensions cannot be understood without looking into the different research perspectives and theories to grasp the fundamental changes and challenges that JHA policies are facing today. Therefore, the chapters provide the reader with an up-to-date picture of what has happened thus far (either in theory or policy development), how we can make sense of these developments and what the likely avenues of future research are.

Academic research in the field of JHA

There is a multiplicity of scholarly terms to refer to the field of internal security, most of them reflecting domestic cultures and institutional evolutions. We have opted to maintain the original term used in the framework of EU integration. Justice and home affairs has been employed since the introduction of the ‘third pillar’ in the Treaty of Maastricht (1992) as an umbrella concept to grasp the wide range of internal security and migration-related issues that the European Community/European Union has dealt with since the mid-1970s. Therefore, JHA is, by nature, related to the EU and its particular jargon, and may be compared to other, similar wordings like ‘homeland security’ in US ‘home affairs’ or ‘internal security’ more generally. To complicate matters, the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) established an ‘Area of Freedom, Security and Justice’ as an EU objective and its abbreviation – AFSJ – is now also commonly used to refer to this policy field. Still, the wording ‘justice and home affairs’ has remained relevant in political debates and the specialized literature. In the EU institutions, the Council of the EU’s formation in charge of internal security is still called the ‘Justice and Home Affairs Council’, the Commission now has a ‘Just’ (justice and consumers) and a ‘Home’ (migration and home affairs) Directorate General, and the European Parliament’s specialized committee bears the title ‘Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs’ (LIBE). Therefore, JHA continues to be connected with the policy area and is still generally of use, while the AFSJ refers rather to a goal set by the treaties designing the ideal shape that European integration should take.

The academic communities dominating JHA research

There are two kinds of ‘academic communities’ that participate in or contribute to this research field – one that originates in European studies and takes JHA as a specific field of study, and another that stems from various fields of policy analysis (like migration studies) and uses the EU as an example or case study. Among the first group – that of EU scholars interested in processes of European integration and policy-making – the analysis of JHA has become a burgeoning field of research on its own. This is reflected in the considerable number of recently released books focusing on the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice as a whole (Bossong and Rhinard 2016; Kaunert 2010; Monar 2010; Eckes and Konstadinides 2011; Walker 2004; Kaunert et al. 2013; Trauner and Ripoll Servent 2015; Guild and Geyer 2008; Wolff et al. 2011; Holzhacker and Luif 2014; Aden 2014; Bendel et al. 2011; Peers 2016; Cremona et al. 2010; Bigo et al. 2010; Fletcher et al. 2016).

Scholars from migration studies, criminal law and security studies have also developed the research field. Researchers in these fields have gradually incorporated the EU as an additional arena or factor of influence. Coming from area studies their research has prioritized policy aspects, such as the effect of Europeanization on domestic policies. Over time, some of the subfields of JHA have become flourishing research fields in their own right: European migration and asylum policies or EU criminal law are obvious cases. However, other AFSJ sub-fields such as EU civil law receive only limited academic attention (Skorskrubb and Wallerman, Chapter 17, this volume).

Scholars doing research on JHA policies can now rely on a range of specialized journals such as the European Journal of Migration and Law, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, The European Review of Organised Crime or the European Criminal Law Review. They have reached a degree of organization and networking, usually structured along disciplinary boundaries. A case in point is the European Criminal Law Academic Network (ECLAN) created in 2004. This now counts more than 200 specialized scholars (see Weyembergh and Brière, Chapter 16, this volume). The Odysseus Network for Legal Studies on Immigration and Asylum in Europe, founded and coordinated by Philippe de Bruycker, is another example. These kinds of networks have gained relevance by exchanging views and research findings among scholars. They also tend to engage with practitioners in the EU’s institutions and member states. A close cooperation with the academic world has become a means and a strategy of the European Commission to strengthen the legitimacy of its policy proposals, for instance, in the field of immigrant integration (Bonjour, Chapter 18, this volume; see also Geddes and Scholten 2015).

In terms of disciplines, the research field – similar to this handbook – is dominated by lawyers and political scientists. Other disciplines such as sociology and anthropology tend to focus on a few AFSJ sub-fields, notably migration and migrant integration policies. Since they are generally situated in area studies, their research often concerns less the dynamics of policy-making or the substance of the adopted laws and regulations and focuses rather on the role, behavior and experience of the ‘subject’ of such a policy, i.e., the migrant. Therefore, there is some space for furthering interdisciplinarity, even beyond the social sciences. For instance, it could be beneficial to strengthen collaboration with academic communities that have so far been neglected, such as science and technology studies (STS) (Jeandesboz, Chapter 15, this volume).

Not surprisingly, given the geographical focus of JHA policies, most research has been done by academics in Europe looking at Europe. However, there is a growing body of projects applying a comparative focus on different regions, for instance, by investigating the similarities and differences of migration management or counter-terrorism policies in the USA, Australia and Canada (see Weiner, Chapter 29, and Fahey, Chapter 28, this volume). There are notable gaps in this respect, with only very limited research done on cooperation and policy developments in Asia, Africa and Latin America (see Pennisi di Floristella, Chapter 31, Vorrath and Zoppei, Chapter 27, and Gómez Arana, Chapter 30, this volume).

Normative versus non-normative approaches

It has become a distinctive feature of the academic debates in the field whether or not authors argue normatively. Scholars often (implicitly or explicitly) adhere to normative standards; for instance, perceiving the protection of human rights as a ‘desirable’ objective. Normative arguments are particularly common in the field of law, where scholars often suggest what should be done in order to achieve a specific outcome. This may mean ‘a more inclusive, multilayered and multicultural conception of citizenship’ (Kostakopoulou 2007: 623), more or less harmonization in EU civil justice (Storskrubb and Wallerman, Chapter 17, this volume), or a better safeguarding of rule of law at EU or member state level (Herlin-Karnell, Chapter 33 and Coman, Chapter 22, this volume).

In addition, the turn made by security studies at the end of the 1990s towards more ‘critical’ approaches (Bossong and Hegemann, Chapter 2, this volume) served to emphasize alternative understandings of security. As a result, scholars started to problematize (often in normative terms) how governments and societies interact in the creation of security and insecurity (e.g., Bigo et al. 2010). The concept of securitization that emerged from this ‘critical’ turn has featured prominently in the field (Kaunert and Yakubov, Chapter 3, this volume). This concept focuses on what ‘internal security’ means and why some fields like migration have become associated with it. By contrast, governance and institutionalist approaches have concentrated on the dynamics of decision-making, the role of actors and policy outcomes (Rhinard, Chapter 4, and Bossong and Hegemann, Chapter 2, this volume). In these approaches, a stronger emphasis tends to be placed on research design and case selection to ‘objectivize’ the academic interest.

By assembling a diverse group of academics for this handbook, we can see that the trend towards more politicization is not reserved to the political sphere. Indeed, various chapters indicate that academic research is also getting more polarized along normative discussions. We have given the authors academic freedom to discuss these issues, but have insisted on the need to back claims with empirical evidence. The main normative dimension continues to follow the traditional cleavage of ‘security vs. liberty’. For instance, in counter-terrorism, there is a growing divide on whether it is legitimate to curtail fundamental rights and civil liberties in the fight against terrorism, and if yes, to what extent. In the area of migration, the main question continues to be how open or closed ‘Europe’ should be to migrants, notably asylum-seekers. For instance, when discussing the crisis of the EU’s asylum regime, Carrera and Allsopp (Chapter 6, this volume) critically question the focus on ‘efficiency’ in the EU’s ‘fight’ against irregular migration, while Menz (Chapter 10, this volume) highlights the desirability of an end to liberal migration policies and criticizes Germany’s behavior when facing migratory pressures. This shows the multifaceted nature of the field and the challenge to assess it ‘objectively’.

The major lines of research

The thirty-nine chapters in this volume provide a fascinating and multifaceted journey through many different research arenas within the JHA field. This introduction refrains from claiming that it summarizes or reflects all of them. It has the more modest ambition of identifying some major lines of research and points, later on, to potential areas of future research.

Dynamics of decision-making and the role of EU institutions

A first area of research concerns the dynamics of European decision-making and the role of EU institutions. Research has investigated both inter-institutional dynamics and individual EU actors and institutions. A particular interest has been to grasp the consequences of treaty changes, notably the introduction of co-decisions and the empowerment of supranational EU institutions. In so doing, scholars have often relied on the rich ‘toolbox of public policy analysis’ and new institutionalist theories (Rhinard, Chapter 4, this volume).

When studying the impact of institutional change in the JHA field it is important in to consider to what extent it fits within broader patterns of EU integration. European integration in internal security matters has often been regarded as a special – or even unique – case due to the field’s intergovernmental origins (Monar 2001) and its reliance on transgovernmental networks of law enforcement officials (Lavenex 2009). However, the field has been progressively communitarized and brought in line with the traditional ‘regulatory’ mode of EU policy-making such as economic governance or the Single Market. This means that the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Court of Justice of the EU have gained a much bigger say in JHA matters.

This handbook demonstrates that some of the expectations raised in the context of the ‘normalization’ of the field have failed to manifest themselves. Yet the question remains whether these outcomes indicate specificities of JHA or whether they rather reflect wider trends in EU decision-making patterns. The empowerment of the European Parliament is a case in point. Its transformation into a co-decider was seen as a window of opportunity to soften the security-led rationales of many sub-policy areas. However, the EP has rather shifted towards a ‘more pragmatic behavior that has brought it closer to the restrictive positions of member states’ (Ripoll Servent, Chapter 32, this volume). This shift has been explained by looking at the changes in cost–benefit calculations as well as an evolution of intra- and inter-institutional social practices and norms under co-decision. Similarly, the expectation that a closer inter-parliamentary cooperation between the EP and national parliaments would develop following the Lisbon Treaty has not materialized. As Tacea (Chapter 36, this volume) remarks, this is not surprising given that national parliaments are usually dominated by their governments and may not have any incentives to oppose them. On the contrary, governments have found in national parliaments a new channel to express themselves in the European arena.

Indeed, national governments continue to occupy a central space in JHA policy-making. There are different reasons for this. For one, they have been central in shaping the core of EU polici...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgments
• PART I Introduction
• PART II Theories of justice and home affairs
• PART III Analyzing justice and home affairs policies (the sectoral dimension)
• PART IV Justice and home affairs inside and outside Europe (the horizontal dimension)
• PART V EU institutions and decision-making dynamics (the vertical dimension)
• Index