Border controls which allow migrants to bypass them may have been part of a deliberate policy to boost domestic economies and garner party-political support, according to new LSE research.
The research comes right after the news that tens of thousands of Syrian refugees will be taken directly from Turky to Europe in a one for one swap with those on the Greek islands. In an attempt to draw a line under Europe's worst migrant crisis since the Secomd World War.
A study focusing on Greece, but with wider implications across European governments, found that migrants have often been essential to domestic political and economic interests such as serving the needs of large informal labour markets that rely on cheap labour. The study concludes that policies and practices of border control which purport to exclude all migrants can in fact be imperfect by design. Governments may adopt policies and promote practices that essentially relax border controls so as to enable the mass import of exploitable migrant labour. State policies restricting welfare and employment rights, combined with tolerance or even active support towards practices of violent intimidation, serve to bolster migrants’ exploitability in the labour market.
The study adds that asylum and regularisation procedures have been notoriously arduous, protracted and, for the overwhelming majority of applicants, ineffectual. Efforts to apprehend and deport irregular migrants have long been known to be of limited efficiency and effectiveness, voluntary repatriation schemes for undocumented migrants remain little used, and the legal maximum length of administrative detention of irregular migrants underwent repeated extensions before being rendered indefinite in April 2014. Â
