COMPLIANCE with the EU counter-terrorism strategy: the impact on national migration policies

This master’s thesis will research the impact of compliance with the EU Counter-Terrorism (CT) Strategy on the restrictiveness of national migration policies. In order to gain in-depth insight in this research question, this thesis will specifically focus on two Member States of the European Union (EU), Hungary and Ireland. Over the past years the three core components of this thesis – migration policies (see e.g. de Haas & Natter, 2015), compliance (see e.g. Tallberg, 2002; Versluis, 2005) and the EU CT Strategy (see e.g. Herlin-Karnell & Matera, 2014; Monar, 2007) – have been extensively researched. However, these three aspects have not – to my knowledge – previously been connected in the academic literature, making this research question very novel. A congruence analysis will be applied by the use of two theories: the topdown approach and the bottom-up approach. This research will determine the applicability of these theories to the cases. Based on these two theories three hypotheses will be formulated that will contribute to answering the research question of this thesis: “What is the effect of compliance with the EU Counter-Terrorism Strategy on the restrictiveness of national migration policies in Hungary and Ireland?”. The chosen timeframe for this research will range from late 2015 until late 2019, with a minor reference to early 2020. Key primary and secondary sources that are used to conduct this research are official policy reports, peer-reviewed academic research articles, news articles, books and surveys commissioned by the European Commission (EC). Furthermore, the most prominent role in the analysis is assigned to documents of the Asylum Information Database (AIDA). This research has shown the relevance of the arguments made by the bottom-up approach concerning the restrictiveness of the national migration policies of Hungary and Ireland rather than support for the arguments made by the top-down approach.