European Integration and Migration Policy: Vertical Policy‐making as Venue Shopping

Since the beginning of the 1980s, migration and asylum policy in Europe has increasingly been elaborated in supranational forums and implemented by transnational actors. I argue that a venue-shopping framework is best suited to account for the timing, form and content of European co-operation in this area. The venues less amenable to restrictive migration control policy are national high courts, other ministries and migrant-aid organizations. Building upon pre-existing policy settings and developing new policy frames, governments have circumvented national constraints on migration control by creating transnational co-operation mechanisms dominated by law and order officials, with EU institutions playing a minor role. European transgovernmental working groups have avoided judicial scrutiny, eliminated other national adversaries and enlisted the help of transnational actors such as transit countries and carriers.