148 Andrew Geddes
The external dimension of EU migration policy focuses on relations with
third countries and measures to tackle the root causes of migration. Here
we see clear evidence of the external dimension of EU action on migration,
as well as the blurring of the distinction between internal and external
security. This is now labelled as the Global Approach to Migration and
Mobility or GAMM (CEC 2011b). The implication of this blurring is that the
location of responsibility for migration within national and EU political
systems also becomes more complex. If we take the EU as an example, the
Commission’s Directorate General (DG) for Freedom, Security and Justice
held lead responsibility, but was divided in 2010 into two units. A new DG
for Home Affairs was established which holds responsibility for issues such
as migration, asylum, border security and immigrant integration. A new
DG Justice was created to deal with rights-based issues, although with
only minimal involvement in migration policy. A range of foreign-policy
actors – such as the European External Action Service created by the Lisbon
Treaty and with other interested DGs, such as those dealing with social
policy, employment and development – have also developed an interest in
aspects of migration policy.
As far back as 1994, the Commission’s communication on immigration
had registered the need for cooperation with non-EU states and hence
recognised the growing ‘foreign-policy’ dimension (CEC 1994). This external
dimension raised what are known in EU jargon as ‘cross-pillar issues’, as they
bridge ‘external’ and ‘internal’ security and render visible both the domestic
and the international politics of migration, as well as links between them
(Geddes 2005).
The shift to EU responsibilities in this area has also induced a depo-
liticisation of migration in the sense that issues are now regularly dealt
with in secretive European-level forums, usually comprising off icials with
specialist expertise and within agency-like structures that often possess a
strong bias towards security concerns. While this form of EU politics may
not correspond with more usual understandings of politics as open contests
over policy alternatives, these EU-level developments do constitute a very
particular form of social and political action centred on the mobilisation
of expertise. This could be seen to accord with what Schmidt (2006) calls
‘policy without politics’ – i.e., that the EU now holds policy responsibilities
without much, if any, political debate. The national-level counterpoint to
this is ‘politics without policy’, as debate may occur but policy responsibili-
ties have relocated to the EU level. A simple time-line can be used to identify
the key elements of EU migration policy (see Table 4.1).