State-Based Logic versus EU-based Logic towards Immigrants: Evidences and Dilemmas

Abstract

Since the Treaty on European Union in 1992, there have been two contrasting conceptions of how one should approach the EU political union. From the EU standpoint, this process is a gain, but from the States' point of view it is a loss. There is a third logic that makes up the EU: that of third-country immigrants residing in the Member States (Euro-immigrants). For this population the process is neither a gain nor a loss, but simply something that is being discussed and carried out without taking them into consideration. This lack of attention shows that at present the treatment of Euro-immigrants is following a state fundamentalist logic and not a multicultural logic as would be historically appropriate for the EU. In the interest of fostering discussion, this paper presents relevant considerations in four sections. The first section presents the theoretical framework for the discussion; the second section discusses state fundamentalism, with a brief historical review of how the European States have treated immigrants politically; the third section sums up how the EU dealt with immigration from the Trevi Group of 1975 until the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997; and the fourth and final section, concludes with a discussion on the normative dilemmas and institutional challenges deriving from the relationship between the EU and the Euro-immigrants. I argue that the EU can only be politically constructed if it takes the presence of immigrant residents into account.