Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

96 Andrew Geddes
unpromising issue because of the absence of previous experience and the diverse
and deeply rooted policy responses in the member states. The EU can thus affect
deeply rooted national responses to immigration and its sequels, and establish legislation
with direct effect that extends rights to EU citizens and third country nationals
in relation to racist discrimination and discrimination in the workplace.
Conclusion
Immigration challenges the nation-state – the organisational practices within
these states and the ideas that animate these practices. This chapter has attempted
to show the ways in which changes within states and changed relations between
states affect understandings of migrants and minorities. Welfare state pressures
and European integration have led to a tighter demarcation of the community of
legitimate receivers of welfare state benefits with attempts to exclude new immigrants.
At the same time, there is a policy discourse that places far more emphasis
on the responsibilities of individuals and far less on the rights of groups. This applies
more generally, but has particular effects on immigrants who – often for reasons
linked to understandings of culture and difference – are viewed as a particular
integration problem. Yet, this perception of these groups as an ‘integration problem’
has less to do with the culture or identity of these groups than it has to do with the
changes in background institutional conditions such as welfare state pressures that
change the perceptions of migrants and minorities.
The chapter developed these points through analysis of the evolving EU migrant
inclusion agenda, and addressed two main questions: what role does the EU play
in offering new sources of inclusion for immigrant and ethnic minorities? What does
this mean for the usual national frame of reference for these integration policies?
To answer these questions the chapter examined the development of pro-migrant
mobilisation at EU level and the legal and symbolic resources that groups could
draw from when making claims for inclusion. It was shown that proposals dealing
with anti-discrimination drew from existing Community legal resources and had a
greater chance of success than those that focused on nationality and citizenship.
The progress of the legislation – in particular the speedily agreed directives of June
2000 on race equality and equal treatment in the workplace – were also impelled
by the political will that emerged within the Council working group in the aftermath
of the FPÖ’s entry into the Austrian coalition. The result is that the EU offers
new sources of inclusion for migrants and minorities based on a form of inclusion
that draws from existing EU legal resources, which have a strong link to marketrelated
functionality. These create new supranational resources for pro-migrant
mobilisation with the capacity to feed into domestic contexts. These derive from the
forms of material and symbolic power associated with European integration and a
limited vision of economic citizenship that confounds more ambitious views about
post-national membership and the EU’s progressive potential.
We can also ask what these anti-discrimination measures mean for the future
development of the EU. If the EU is indeed to develop as some kind of ‘neo-medieval
empire’ that embraces diversity and multiplicity and understands these as integral