Journal article

Publication details

Between Law and Political Truth? Member State Preferences, EU Free Movement Rules and National Immigration Law
in journal: Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies

Volume number: 17
Issue number:
Release year: 2015
Page range: 247-286

Author(s) details

Jo Shaw

Publication description

Keywords:
free movement, national law, europeanisation, united kingdom, Brexit
Abstract:
This article explores how Member States respond to the challenge of complying with EU law obligations, whilst remaining alert to the demands of domestic politics in the context of contentious areas of EU competence. It is argued that in the case of free movement we can see the United Kingdom drawing upon three overlapping strategies in order to tread the fine line ‘between law and political truth’: it exploits as much as possible any uncertainties within free movement law; it draws upon the proximate field of domestic immigration law in order to reinterpret free movement law; and it argues for new resources to be brought into the field of free movement, in particular resources which restrict the freedoms of Member States. A discursive frame of migration governance provides the analytical construction within which the argument is located. The article is therefore a contribution to debates about (legal) Europeanisation and compliance, as well as the more specific challenges facing the UK in the latter half of the 2010s, namely a renegotiation of and referendum on EU membership.