The Rise of the European Migration Regime and Its Paradoxes (1945–2020)

Abstract

How can we explain the demise of the new postwar moral framework of anti-racism and equality and the subsequent rise of integration pessimism in Western Europe in the 1980s, a pessimism that led to the widely accepted idea, from left to right, that “multiculturalism” has failed? And how does this square with the simultaneous establishment of an extraordinary free migration regime within Europe that enables EU citizens to move and pick up work in any other member state? Answers to these questions can be found in three very different, yet complimentary studies that help us to understand more deeply the current alarmist public view of migration and integration, as well as its historical roots: The Crisis of Multiculturalism by Rita Chin, based in Ann Arbor; The European Migration Regime by Emmanuel Comte, from Berkeley; and Steven Jensen's (Danish Institute for Human Rights) The Making of International Human Rights . The studies by Chin and Comte offer a representative gauge of the blossoming field of migration studies and, in particular, show how this specialist niche can enrich insights into much broader (political, cultural, economic, and social) postwar developments in Europe and beyond. Jensen's innovative and critical book on the postwar “humanitarian turn” is highly relevant for migration studies, as it places the establishment of the United Nations (UN) and a number of its institutions, such as UNHCR and UNESCO, in a new light. Although many more books have been published on these topics in recent years, these three complement each other and provide a useful building block for a new understanding of the emergence of the postwar European migration regime, its paradoxes and consequences. In this review, I will first sketch the wider context and then detail the three books and how they relate to each other.