Anton Ahlén

European family migration policies increasingly impose economic, linguistic, and legal requirements on residents seeking reunification with family members abroad. Based on a conjoint experiment in three European Union member states, this article examines public attitudes towards this policy trend. Contrary to expectations, the respondents do not support conditioning reunification on residents’ status or attributes. Resident family members’ economic resources, work experience, language skills, and legal status exert minimal influence on respondents’ preferences for allowing family reunification. These findings indicate that, while conditionality is a central feature of contemporary migration policy, it does not reflect public sentiment regarding residents’ opportunity to reunite with family members living abroad. The study uncovers a new and significant opinion–policy gap, which has not been noted in migration studies so far.

Family migration constitutes by far the largest form of entry into countries with established democracies. Yet, it remains widely neglected in the literature on public attitudes. One of the key challenges in researching this topic is its inherent complexity. Family migration involves not only the claims of outsiders seeking entry, but also those of insiders wishing to reunite with family members. To address both dimensions simultaneously, we designed a conjoint survey experiment using an innovative dyadic approach. Respondents were presented with hypothetical cases of aspiring family migrants, alongside their respective family members already residing in the destination country. Key attributes, such as financial resources and types of family relationships, were randomized for each pair. We conducted the survey with 5,000 respondents across France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Our results suggest that respondents pay close attention to the characteristics of the incoming family migrant, such as language skills, while also being concerned with the economic resources of the family member already residing in the destination country. These findings indicate that research on public attitudes cannot treat family reunification as just one among many immigration motives. Study designs must also systematically account for the status of the family member already living in the destination country.

This study investigates whether and how much family migration policies have influenced patterns of family migration in European states. Family migration has been the largest category of entry in many Western countries in recent decades, and it has been the subject of increasing contestation in political debates. While research on family migration policies has advanced in recent years, no comprehensive cross-country comparisons have been done of the impact of different policies on the size and composition of family migrant inflows. This study addresses this gap by analysing the connection between admission policies and rates of family migration in 31 European states during the 2008 to 2019 period. Combining data from Eurostat and the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX), this study uses a time -series regression analysis to assess the effects of admission policies on different types of family related immigration. While restrictive admission policies have led to falling overall levels of family migration, the analysis here reveals stratifying implications, whereby the effect has been greater where the sponsor is a non-EU citizen than where he/she is an EU citizen. By providing evidence on the differential impacts of admission policies on family related immigration, this study contributes new insights on the effects of restrictive migration policies.

The notion of a 'progressive dilemma', according to which there is an intrinsic tension between comprehensive welfare states and large-scale immigration, has figured prominently in scholarly as well as political debates over the last decade. As one of the main categories of entry in most affluent democracies, family immigration stands out as a particularly interesting test case in this context. Building on this notion of a progressive dilemma, as well as on other theorizing on the welfare-migration nexus, this study examines whether the restrictive effects of certain risk factors on family-immigration policies, such as growing immigration and rising unemployment, have been conditioned by the type of welfare regime. The empirical analysis herein finds that increasing immigration and higher unemployment have triggered policy restrictions in Basic Security welfare states, but that the influence of these factors on policy changes is less clear in State Corporatist and Universal welfare states. Contrary to what the idea of the progressive dilemma would lead us to expect, Basic Security welfare states with weaker universal and redistributive features have been more likely to sharpen restrictions on the admission of family migrants when under pressure from increasing immigration and rising unemployment.

There has been a rapid diffusion of civic integration policies (CIPs) in Europe since the 21st century. The spread of CIPs has, however, been uneven across Europe, with some countries adopting civic integration strategies with tougher integration requirements, whereas others keeping more of a multicultural approach. The implementation of CIPs has mainly been motivated based on concerns about immigrant integration. As discussed in this article, however, an implied function of this policy framework is that immigrants who do not meet the conditions will face difficulties acquiring residence. This article develops and conducts a preliminary test of the argument that CIPs affect migration flows. The assumption is that CIPs provide states with tools to control and limit the inflow of immigration by a certain category of entry. The analysis lends support to the idea that there are connections between the extensions of CIPs and reductions in family immigration and labour immigration among European countries, which indicates that push for internal inclusion seems to come along with barriers of exclusion.