KFG Working Paper No. 56 "The Transformation of European Migration Governance" by Andrew Geddes has been published.

Andrew Geddes, who has been a visiting fellow at the KFG from June to July 2012, explores how new forms of EU migration governance are driven by the production and use of knowledge about international migration, more specifically, by the incomplete nature of this knowledge.

At the core of the paper is the transformation of modes of governance linked to the roles played by instrumental, social and communicative logics of institutional action. As Geddes writes, "the key referent for migration governance in Europe remains the state," but the EU shapes the understanding of the issues and the pursuit of policy objectives.

How can this development be explained? Uncertainty about the causes and effects of international migration, but also about the actual numbers of international migrants living both regularly and irregularly in EU member states, seems to be a key factor. This uncertainty, the paper finds, creates social and political opportunities for EU action, including the "transgovernmental" cooperation of national government officials.

All KFG Working Papers are available online or can be ordered in print via transform-europe@fu-berlin.de