Recent European Legislation on immigration has revealed a particular paradox on migration policies. On the one hand, the trend of recent legislation points to the increasing closure of frontiers (OECD 1999, 2001,2004), also by using immigration quotas. On the other hand, there is an increase of...

EU leaders are well aware of the relevance of migration in the European policy agenda. Thirty-two pages out of forty-eight of the Presidency Conclusions at the November 2004 European Council were devoted to migration policies. Economic theory suggests that there is a strong case for policy...