Headed towards convergence? The development of family migration procedures in the form of 'pre-entry policies'

In recent years an ever-increasing set of demands regarding integration requirements for family migrants has made its way on the political agenda of European member states such as Germany and The Netherlands. When choosing between either a similar (convergent) or dissimilar (divergent) explanatory framework to assess the extent of progress that has been made on this policy field, as well as to evaluate the similarities between these two countries in their process towards the development of restrictive family migration policies, the convergent model proves to be predominant. In addition, the hypothesis which explores the concept of policy transfer, where best practices regarding migration policies are being exchanged and implemented between member states, provides the best explanatory fit. Throughout this research, it becomes quite clear that Germany and The Netherlands are countries that share a comparable institutional background and a similar set of norms and values, which enables them to learn from each other’s policies and sometimes even follow the same line of argumentation as regards to the implementation of new family migration policies with a restrictive character. However, this does not mean that the same means lead to the same ends, as Germany and the Netherlands still maintain some differences in the way they voice their motivations, justifications and preferences as regards to imposing restrictions on the family migration policy agenda. For instance, while Germany focuses more on socioeconomic inclusion and making less educated migrants more independent through increasing linguistic proficiency, the Dutch feel that well-developed linguistic skills in combination with knowledge about Dutch society should lead to socio-cultural inclusion, or ‘assimilation’ of less-advantaged migrant groups. However, due to increased coordination ambitions and cooperation efforts encouraged through the supranational level by EU institutions, it is nonetheless very likely that persistent patterns of divergence will gradually downsize over time, while patterns of convergence will be more apparent.