Content area
Abstract
This dissertation explores the relationship between migration and trade in the case of France and the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (1995). The dissertation argues that French support for this trade agreement between the members of the European Union and sixteen non-member Mediterranean countries was a response to French domestic and foreign policy goals, some of which were related to migration. French lawmakers' support for free trade with the Mediterranean countries was grounded in a liberal conception of the causes of migration. This liberal analysis proposes that migrants chase higher wages and that trade and migration can act as substitutes for one another. But, as this dissertation shows, trade and migration do not invariably relate to each other in this way. Thus, the policies French lawmakers have espoused are unlikely to have the desired effect of reducing unwanted migration from the Mediterranean region.
In addition to calling into question the liberal theory of migration, this dissertation shows that immigration policy is formulated for reasons that are cultural and political as much as economic. The core chapters of the dissertation explore the French history of migration and expose the rationale behind recent shifts in immigration policy that move decision-making and compliance from the realm of national policy toward the jurisdiction of European institutions. Tracing the lineage of shifts in immigrant-related policy, the dissertation investigates the relationship between immigration and French national identity.
Although the dissertation explores the genesis of migration policy in French politics and the Euro-Mediterranean Agreement, the analysis is applicable in a range of cases, including the North American Free Trade Agreement. In the debates surrounding the North American Free Trade Agreement (1993) and the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, lawmakers and experts made strikingly similar arguments and assumptions about migration and its relationship to trade. The dissertation therefore concludes by drawing parallels between the European and American cases.
