Venue-Shopping and Issue-Linkage in Global Migration Governance. The case of EU external agreements

Abstract

In the absence of an international migration regime, the rising salience of migration issues leads states and the European Union to seek appropriate venues for cooperation. Many of the newer relevant venues are soft law frameworks, be it at the multilateral level (such as the Global Forum for Migration and Development) or at the regional level (such as most measures included in the EU’s Global Approach to Migration). In contrast, a formal instrument that is increasingly used as a venue for introducing migration related clauses is trade agreements.

Trade agreements not only provide a formal basis for cooperation, they also allow for politics of issue-linkage and, capitalizing on market power, may boost the leverage of the negotiating parties. Considering that the EU is, given the size of its internal market, a “market power” (Damro 2012), this paper investigates how far it makes use of its commercial agreements in promoting its migration policy goals. More specifically, we want to find out whether trade agreements are used as a venue to constrain third countries to abide to EU preferences or whether the inclusion of migration related clauses in such agreements follows other prerogatives.