1 Summary • EU member states have increasingly tightened immigration restrictions towards family migrants. Family migration legislation is based on an outdated and narrow definition of what constitutes a family. Minimum wage requirements on families with non EU members penalise women, young people, refugees and ethnic minorities. Mixed status families are particularly vulnerable as they are subject to different migration laws based on the nationality and residency of family members which can result in family breakdown and separation. The framing of the 'migrant crisis' has significant implications for Europe-wide and national immigration and asylum policies. Brexit has implications for the rights and entitlements of EU families living in the UK, and British and mixed nationality families living in the UK and other EU countries. Asylum dispersal policies are negatively impacting on family life, well-being and feelings of belonging. Care giving and receiving practices within families have been severely disrupted as a result of changes in recent legislation brought in by EU member states to curtail older age migration. Introduction In February 2017 the Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity hosted a two-day conference ‘Migration and Families in Europe: National and Local Perspectives at a Time of Euroscepticism.’ The conference brought together researchers and practitioners from the UK and Europe to discuss the complexity of migration and what it means for families in the current political climate. The conference explored a range of topics on family migration including ageing and elderly migration; refugee families; parenting and migrant children; family migration policies and the movement of families to and within the European Union (EU); and methods and challenges in researching family migration. The purpose of this Briefing is to highlight some of the policy and practice issues discussed at the conference. Family Migration in Europe EU family reunification policy applying to non-EU citizens and specified in the EU Family Reunification Directive 2003/86/EC is based on a narrow definition of family which includes the nuclear family restricting admission for family members other than spouses and dependent children. Europe has witnessed increasingly restrictive conditions on family migration which have implications for EU citizens, migrants and refugees living together in Europe. In policy discourses in many EU member states, family migration continues to be seen as the cause and result of failed integration of migrants. Family migration restrictions, which include minimum income and language requirements, and restrictions to housing and welfare support, affect disproportionally female migrants who in policy terms are traditionally seen as dependent and divorced from the economic realm. In many EU members states, the income requirement for famly reunification is equivalent to the minimum income or income support. In the UK, which is one of the countries with the most rigid conditions on family reunification, income requirements are well above the minimum income, equivalent to £18,600 for those wishing to bring a spouse or partner and £22,400 for those with one dependent child, with an additional £2,400 for each further child. The minimum income requirement disproportionately affects those with a weak labour market position including women, young people, refugees and ethnic minorities. In most EU member states there are also accommodation requirements which need to be fulfilled in relation to ownership, lease or the standard of accommodation. The stringent criteria for family reunification have been associated with negative SEPTEMBER 2017 Migration and Families in Europe: Policy & Practice After Brexit, British citizens are unlikely to be able to exercise their right of free movement to be joined by a non EU partner without meeting UK reunification rules which are stricter than in most EU countries.
Transcript
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Summary
• EU member states have increasingly tightenedimmigration restrictions towards family migrants.
Family migration legislation is based on an outdatedand narrow definition of what constitutes a family.
Minimum wage requirements on families with non EU members penalise women, young people, refugeesand ethnic minorities.
Mixed status families are particularly vulnerable as they are subject to different migration laws based on the nationality and residency of family members which can result in family breakdown and separation.
The framing of the 'migrant crisis' hassignificant implications for Europe-wide and nationalimmigration and asylum policies.
Brexit has implications for the rights and entitlementsof EU families living in the UK, and British and mixednationality families living in the UK and other EUcountries.
Asylum dispersal policies are negatively impacting on family life, well-being and feelings of belonging.
Care giving and receiving practices within familieshave been severely disrupted as a result of changesin recent legislation brought in by EU member statesto curtail older age migration.
Introduction
In February 2017 the Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity hosted a two-day conference ‘Migration and Families in Europe: National and Local Perspectives at a Time of Euroscepticism.’ The conference brought together researchers and practitioners from the UK and Europe to discuss the complexity of migration and what it means for families in the current political climate. The conference explored a range of topics on family migration including ageing and elderly
migration; refugee families; parenting and migrant children; family migration policies and the movement of families to and within the European Union (EU); and methods and challenges in researching family migration. The purpose of this Briefing is to highlight some of the policy and practice issues discussed at the conference.
Family Migration in Europe
EU family reunification policy applying to non-EU citizens and specified in the EU Family Reunification Directive 2003/86/EC is based on a narrow definition of family which includes the nuclear family restricting admission for family members other than spouses and dependent children. Europe has witnessed increasingly restrictive conditions on family migration which have implications for EU citizens, migrants and refugees living together in Europe. In policy discourses in many EU member states, family migration continues to be seen as the cause and result of failed integration of migrants. Family migration restrictions, which include minimum income and language requirements, and restrictions to housing and welfare support, affect disproportionally female migrants who in policy terms are traditionally seen as dependent and divorced from the economic realm.
In many EU members states, the income requirement for famly reunification is equivalent to the minimum income or income support. In the UK, which is one of the countries with the most rigid conditions on family reunification, income requirements are well above the minimum income, equivalent to £18,600 for those wishing to bring a spouse or partner and £22,400 for those with one dependent child, with an additional £2,400 for each further child. The minimum income requirement disproportionately affects those with a weak labour market position including women, young people, refugees and ethnic minorities. In most EU member states there are also accommodation requirements which need to be fulfilled in relation to ownership, lease or the standard of accommodation. The stringent criteria for family reunification have been associated with negative
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Migration and Families in Europe: Policy & Practice
After Brexit, British citizens are unlikely to be able toexercise their right of free movement to be joined bya non EU partner without meeting UK reunificationrules which are stricter than in most EU countries.
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impacts on migrant families, most notably a disruption of family life, long-term separation or family breakdown, and a damaged sense of belonging and citizenship. Older age migrants have been subjected to increasing restrictions across the EU as a means of reducing pressure on public spending on welfare. Migration policies pay little attention to the complexity of the different forms of exchange among family members and particularly exchange of care which characterises transnational family networks. Care giving and receiving practices within families have been severely disrupted as a result of changes in recent legislation brought in by EU member states to curtail older age migration. Those mostly affected are children, single parents and older people. Health and social care policies also fail to address issues faced by transnational carers.
EU free movement and family reunification
The right of free movement continues to create a two-tiered system of migration that distinguishes between EU member state citizens from citizens from outside the EU, known as Third Country Nationals (TCN). EU and member state laws are used to monitor family reunification within EU countries, and in some cases EU immigration law circumvents national immigration law. Families in Europe have been able to exercise free movement rights to move to another country to overcome restrictive conditions and family separation. The right of EU citizens to bring spouses was embedded within EU law that provisioned EU free movement rights to support both the mobility of member state citizens abroad as well as enable their return.
The Surinder Singh case refers to a piece of British case law that permits a British citizen to apply for a family permit or residence card that enables them to bring a TCN partner or spouse to Britain bypassing British immigration law requirements. The Surinder Singh route has created a legal loophole overcoming the national minimum income requirement set by British immigration law to bring a non-EU citizen to the country. In practice however, there are a number of complexities in using EU free movement rights and
EU Migrant, Refugee, or Humanitarian Crisis?
Migration in the EU is rarely discussed from the perspective of the family, despite the significance of families in the movement of populations to and within Europe. The story of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, received worldwide media coverage, shifting attention to the role of children in Europe’s ‘migration crisis’ associated with the sharp rise of refugees and migrants reaching the EU through the Mediterranean Sea. According to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than a million people crossed the Mediterranean Sea in 2015, with a large proportion being children. Child migration into Europe however, takes different forms and is often invisible in data and policy. EU wide data indicate a continued increase in unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) since 2015.
Political debates and media representations of the ‘crisis’ differ across the EU member states, particularly in relation to who is involved, where the migrants come from, and the causes of their migration. The terms ‘refugee’, ‘asylum’ and ‘migrant’ have been employed differently across EU countries and often used interchangeably to describe the ‘migration crisis’ discourse in Europe.
EU Asylum data identifies as many as eighteen nationalities comprising the larger asylum group travelling across Europe. The group includes families from Pakistan, Afghanistan as well as sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. The multiple forms of migration to Europe make it difficult to assess the identity of the migrants, why they have moved, and the regional and national policies needed to deal with the 'crisis'.
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family reunification law to enable migrants to join family members. One of the main complexities of the right of EU citizens to bring spouses relates to the requirement made for intimate relationships to be legitimate and without deception. In practice it is very difficult to define what constitutes a marriage of convenience and to identify what evidence is necessary to legally satisfy the criteria for family migrants.
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The rights of refugees wishing to reunify with their family depend on whether they are granted refugee status, subsidiary or humanitarian protection with the first two defined by EU law, and the last by EU member state law. In Germany and Sweden refugees are increasingly given subsidiary protection rather than refugee status which impacts on their ability to join families in countries of origin and elsewhere in Europe.
Several EU countries have asylum dispersal policies in place which remove the freedom of choice of place of settlement from those applying for asylum, which ultimately prevents asylum seekers from joining their families. In the UK, asylum disperal policy aims to remove asylum seekers from 'overburdened' locations in London and the South East, placing them in (more deprived) parts of of the UK particularly in the North. Recent changes in the provision of dispersal accommodation for asylum seekers in the UK have resulted in lack of coordinated support services for asylum seekers which have negatively impacted on asylum seekers' well-being, feelings of belonging and family life.
Attitudes towards migrants within the EU are more favourable towards Syrian families being displaced by the Syrian conflict which has been widely covered by the media accross Europe. The favourable, attitudes however, do not extend to asylum seekers from other parts of the world.
The lack of clarity about who is involved in the 'migration crisis' has heightened issues of border protection and brought attention to the strengths and weaknesses of specific EU-wide and national asylum policies. It also created ambiguity about the responses needed to aleviate the 'crisis' including how to direct international and domestic aid efforts. As a result, the 'migration crisis' gained political momentum and contributed to national disputes between EU member states over the application of targeted interventions and EU-wide policies. The plans included methods to shore up EU borders, implement return migration schemes, and quota systems to disperse asylum applicants more evenly between member states.
Brexit and migrant families in Europe
In June 2016, the British people voted to leave the EU. The referendum has resulted in an unprecedented time of legal and policy change. EU citizens living in the UK and their families are facing the prospect of increased restrictions and barriers to live and work in the UK. Efforts to uphold the UK governments’ £18,600 minimum income threshold to bring non-European spouses into Britain, and the rejection of the House of Lords amendments to the EU Withdrawal Bill, which recommended protecting European citizens currently living in the UK, provide indications of these restrictions.
The status of families with EU migrants and the degree to which the rights of long-term EU migrants in Britain (and equally British nationals' rights residing in other EU countries) will be protected following Brexit, remains to be decided. There is also uncertainty about Britain's position towards the naturalisation and citizenship of EU migrants, the rights of EU migrants with dual citizenship and the threshold that will be used to discriminate between long-term and more recent EU migrants. The family migration route which will apply to EU nationals opting for British citizenship, as well as British nationals returning to the UK with EU nationals, is indicative of the scale of the ways Brexit will impact on family life in the future.
There are also concerns that the increasing hostility to immigration across Europe, which is thought to be one of the factors behind the result of the EU
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The changes will affect British and EU nationals in the UK, and mixed nationality families, comprised of British and EU or EU nationals and non EU nationals. They also affect British nationals living in other EU member countries. Following Brexit, not only will British citizens and UK permanent residents lose their right to free movement but EU citizens will have to follow British immigration regulations in relation to their future family arrangements. Mixed status families, for example, families consisting of citizens or permanent residents and non EU nationals or members with irregular status, are subject to different migration laws across Europe which can result in the separation of families.
referendum in the UK, will play a big part in determining the status of EU nationals after Brexit.
Brexit has implications not just for British and EU citizens but also for asylum seekers. The escalation of asylum applications in the EU have been uneven between member states. The uneven dispersion of asylum seekers in the EU partly reflects the proximity of some countries to established migration routes and differences in the attractiveness of different EU countries as destinations for settlement. The Dublin Regulation is the EU law that determines which EU countries are responsible for the decision over the status of asylum applicants from outside the EU or stateless persons. Under EU’s Dublin III regulation, refugees can apply to be reunited with their close family.
The Brexit vote challenges the status of the Dublin Regulations post Britain’s separation from the EU since the Dublin regulations exist as a multilateral agreement that Britain entered into as an EU member. Little is known about whether the Dublin regulation provisions will continue after Brexit or whether they will be reformulated. There is recognition that an agreement between EU member states and Britain will need to be formulated to respond to the 'migration crisis' and enable refugees to continue to have a right to join family members. The focus is on Britain’s southern borders and the channel sea route with France, where migrant and refugee families regularly attempt to enter the UK. There are also concerns about the lack of provisions in UK legislation to ensure chidren are able to reach the UK safely, as in the Dubs Amendment, and protect the rights of all children, not just those with parents in the UK which are currently the only group of asylum seeking children entitled to settle in the UK under UK law.
Additional questions relate to the issue of EU-wide asylum dispersal and the UK's on-going role in any future quota system post-Brexit.
After Brexit, British nationals who have used the Surinder Singh case law loophole to bring third country national partners into Britain will no longer be able to exercise their right of free movement and the attached returns regulation to move to Britain and circumvent the UK's immigration reunification criteria.
Acknowledgements: we are grateful to all the participants at the Migration and Families conference. The Briefing draws on presentations by Eleonore Kofman (University of Sussex), Saskia Bonjour (University of Amsterdam), Betty De Hart (University of Amsterdam), Nando Sigona (University of Birmingham), Anya Ahmed (University of Salford), Jonathan Darling (University of Manchester), Chris Phillipson (University of Manchester). For more details see:
The Migration and Families conference was supported by the Cathie March Institute for Social Research (CMI), Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing (MICRA), methods@ manchester, National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) and University of Manchester School of Social Sciences. This Briefing was produced with support from the ESRC Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity and a Small Impact grant from the University of Manchester School of Social Sciences .
SEPTEMBER 2017
Migration and Families in Europe: Policy & Practice
This briefing is one in a series Migration and Families in Europe
Authors: Kitty Lymperopoulou and William Shankley.
