The External Dimension of Europeanization

With its focus on the external dimension of the rapidly evolving European Union immigration policies, this article seeks to contribute to the debates on the EU’s impact on states and international relations in two ways. Firstly, it seeks to move beyond the inward-looking focus of contemporary studies on the EU’s effects on the member states, and proposes a framework for analyzing its external effects on non-EU member states. Secondly, and in contrast to traditional accounts of the EU’s strengthening international role, which focus on external trade policy or foreign and security policy, it highlights a hitherto overlooked aspect of the EU’s foreign relations related to immigration control. Drawing on the recent literature on Europeanization and policy transfer, it is shown that the external effects of European policies take place along a continuum that runs from fully voluntary to more constrained forms of adaptation, and include a variety of modes such as unilateral emulation, adaptation by externality, and policy transfer through conditionality. The scope and shape of policy transfer is conditioned by existing institutional links between the EU and the third countries concerned, the latter’s domestic situation at hand, and the costs of nonadaptation associated with an EU policy.