The genealogy of the external dimension of the Spanish immigration regime: when a bricolage national policy becomes a driver of Europeanisation

Abstract

This chapter will examine the genealogy of practices, logics and organisational strategies strongly linked to multilevel policy framework that fostered the development of the Spanish migration regime’s external dimension. The analysis focuses on the changing relations between Spain and the EU associated with the policymaking on externalisation of immigration policy in order to better understand influences, policy diffusion and circulation between these two political actors.

The evolution of the Spanish regime is segmented into three different periods, characterised by specific internal dynamics and by specific interactions with the EU. First, a focus on the period of “top-down Europeanisation” (1985–1999) where the EU asserted a dominant influence that impacted Spanish immigration policy, pushed by the conditionality of the Spanish accession to the EU, and later to the Schengen Area. Second, the chapter analyses how Spain progressed from a passive receiver of European norms and standards to become an active player in European policy-making, fostering changes and new developments in the EU immigration regime, initiating a more horizontal Europeanisation beginning in the 2000s. Third, through the development of the external dimension of Spanish immigration policy, Spain became a model and inspiration for migration policies implemented at the EU level in the 2010s, marking a bottom-up Europeanisation. In each of these phases, Spain utilised Europeanisation in a functional way to pursuit its own interests, signalling how the external dimension of its immigration regime influenced the development and the implementation of that of the EU.