European Integration and Migration Policy: Vertical Policy‐making as Venue Shopping

Since the beginning of the 1980s, migration and asylum policy in Europe has increasingly been elaborated in supranational forums and implemented by transnational actors. I argue that a venue‐shopping framework is best suited to account for the timing, form and content of European co‐operation in this area. The venues less amenable to restrictive migration control policy are national high courts, other ministries and migrant‐aid organizations. Building upon pre‐existing policy settings and developing new policy frames, governments have circumvented national constraints on migration control by creating transnational co‐operation mechanisms dominated by law and order officials, with EU institutions playing a minor role. European transgovernmental working groups have avoided judicial scrutiny, eliminated other national adversaries and enlisted the help of transnational actors such as transit countries and carriers.