REGINE Regularisations in Europe Final Report - European ...

measures; it does address questions of implementation to some extent, but is less interested in the
overall impact of regularisation.
By contrast, a second strand of research, which includes the OECD studies on regularisation (as well
as work done by Papademetriou, amongst others) is less interested in conceptual issues, the criteria
and conditions used in regularising illegal migrants or the specific objectives of regularisation
measures, but instead places the focus on the wider (fiscal and economic) impacts of regularisation
measures. In addition, a secondary focus is on possible conclusions that can be derived from the
assessment of past regularisation exercises for the design of new regularisation programmes or
mechanisms. Generally, this strand of research focuses on large-scale employment-based
regularisation programmes and does not cover regularisation measures in their entire breadth. Nor is
this strand of research interested in regularisation as a policy tool to address the presence of illegal
migrants per se. Rather, the main interest is in establishing to what extent, and under what conditions,
regularisation can be an appropriate policy tool to address illegal migrant employment and the
informal economy at large. In the European context, the focus of this strand of research thus
essentially is on those countries which have conducted large-scale employment based regularisation
programmes – notably, the southern European countries (in particular Spain and Italy) and to a lesser
extent, France. Because of this specific focus on the nexus of illegal migration and the informal
economy, the conclusions drawn from this type of research cannot really be transferred to other
European countries without comparable patterns of irregular migrant work. The available evidence
suggests that in these countries – broadly speaking, the western and northern European countries–
illegal migration is to some extent dissociated from illegal migrant work and that the largest share of
persons engaged in irregular work consists of legal immigrants, EU citizens (in particular, citizens
from new EU Member States) and nationals. 93 Similarly, because the target populations of
regularisation programmes and mechanisms in these countries – where regularisations are largely
carried out for humanitarian or family reasons or where programmes target specific categories of third
country nationals (rejected asylum seekers, tolerated persons) – are starkly different from countries
with regularisation programmes targeting illegal migrant workers, the overall economic and fiscal
impact of regularisation measures is likely to be different as well.
The two strands of research, however, also suggest that it is indeed useful to distinguish between two
distinct objectives of regularisation measures: namely
(1) regularisation as a tool in addressing irregular employment and the informal economy, i.e. as
a labour market policy, and
(2) regularisation as a rectification of illegal or semi-legal residence and as an alternative to
removal
In the first instance, regularisation is a means to achieve wider objectives and essentially is an attempt
to re-regulate the informal economy. In the second instance, regularisation is a goal in itself and is
used to address policy and implementation failures (e.g. in the asylum system) and to respond to
specific situations and needs (e.g. humanitarian concerns, etc.).
93 In Austria, 56.8% of the persons found illegally employed in 2007 were citizens of new EU Member States.
See Table II.7 in Kraler, A., Reichel, D., Hollomey, H. (2008): Clandestino Country Report: Austria.
Unpublished Draft Report for the project Clandestino - Undocumented Migration: Counting the Uncountable.
Data and Trends Across Europe.
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