Keeping up with Schengen: Migration and Policy in the European Union

There is an inescapable relationship between the existence of migration movements and the resulting policies which are adopted by the authorities of the area concerned towards encouraging these movements, or more commonly towards attempting to control or to reduce them. This in turn means that the migration researcher must not only look at the effects of policy and changes in policy, important though this is, but must also attempt to understand the changing political factors which fuel the formation of policy. This paper aims to bring together some of the wide variety of policy issues and responses which may be observed in Europe at the present time and in the recent past, and in particular to make an assessment of the approaches being taken by the European Union member states as a whole, and also by the so-called Schengen group of member states. This article also attempts to look at the perceptions of these policies and their effects from the point of view of both the “western” and the “eastern” European countries, as migration policy issues are rarely onesided. In conclusion, it considers some of the research issues and problems which are raised by geographers and others working in this area, difficulties which might be implied by our possibly flippant title, “Keeping Up with Schengen.”