The making of immigration laws
The project MIGRINTERACT (Normative interaction and law-making: Regulating migration in the Maghreb) delved into the plurality of interactions between wide-ranging exogenous and endogenous normative factors that led to reforms in the law. It also considered country specificity of law-making in a field where law is being globalised. Project work began in mid-2013. At that time all three project countries were in the process of legal changes, and civil, social and political debates abounded on matters related to migration and protection issues as well as questions regarding discrimination and identity. Research partners investigated how recent regulations relevant to migration were deliberated, elaborated and adopted in the three Maghreb countries. The team examined societal evolutions alongside the processes of immigration law-making, analysing and comparing laws adopted in the 2000s with bills and measures in progress since the beginning of the 2010s. The research team identified forces likely to carry and diffuse norms and standards in the field of migration in each project country, and assessed their normative impact on legislative processes. In Morocco, a large number of stakeholders took part in efforts aimed at introducing a new immigration and asylum policy. In Tunisia, the process was more discrete and less prioritised, but with more diversified influences and interactions than in the past. Researchers found Mauritania to have a more constant profile, with recent (limited) legal evolutions marking a continuation of the process begun in 2005. Another set of findings concerns the dynamic nature and country-specific interaction of the forces impacting law-making in Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. There appear to be two decisive elements regarding the assessment of normativity: the role of individuals (e.g. the minister of migration) and interactions between the latter and the various forces (actors and factors). Project findings are of value to subsequent research on migration, highlighting ongoing fundamental changes in the Maghreb region, in terms of both law-making and migration. Having prepared the ground for a transdisciplinary approach to migration, MIGRINTERACT outcomes could impact the way civil society and policymakers approach migration-related legal and policy developments in Africa, the EU and the Maghreb.
Keywords
Migration, law-making, MIGRINTERACT, Maghreb, normative interactions, policy
