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This article proposes an explanation as to why institutional change -understood as more competences for the European Union's supranational institutions -has rarely led to policy change in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ). It draws attention to the constraints that newly empowered actors have faced in the wake of introducing the co-decision procedure. If the key principles of a given AFSJ sub-policy -its 'policy core' -were defined before institutional change occurred, the Council (as the dominant actor of the early intergovernmental co-operation) has found it easier to prevail in the altered structural environment and to co-opt or sideline actors with competing rationales. The article compares the importance of the new decision-making procedure with two alternative pathways potentially leading to policy change, namely, the power of litigation and the impact of unexpected external events.

Studies on EU-Africa migration cooperation often focus on the interests of the EU and its member states. But what do African states themselves seek to achieve with respect to migration policy? This article presents an in-depth look at Ghana and Senegal, two stable West African democracies, and assesses which types of migration policies they support, and why. We suggest that a distinction ought to be made between West African policymakers' more domestically-driven migration policy goals (to cooperate more closely with the diaspora or creating legal migration channels, for example) and internationally-induced ones (such as the reinforcement of border control capacities). Each type of policy interest is defended by an increasingly diverse set of national actors whose interests oftenbut not alwaysconverge. This distinction should be considered as a continuum, as most West African migration policy preferences are driven by domestic as well as international factors, albeit to diverging degrees. Our findings demonstrate that migration policy-making in countries targeted by international cooperation can only be studied as an 'intermestic' policy issue, reflecting the dynamic interplay of international and domestic interests.

This article analyzes how Member States have used the opportunities and avoided the constraints of the EU's multilevel governance architecture to return unwanted migrants. Drawing on sociological approaches to the EU and a broad understanding of return policies, we investigate the ways in which the northern Member States, notably Germany and Austria, have increasingly relied upon the EU's operational and financial resources to achieve their goal of pursuing a bold return policy. A key 'usage' of Europe has been the pooling of political and financial power to externalize and informalize its return policy. At the same time, the northern Member States' deliberate -yet widely under-researched -'non-use' of Europe, such as using and maximizing national leeway, has been an equally important strategy to reduce migratory pressure and achieve higher return rates.

This article elaborates on the impact of EU migration policies on African countries, taking Mali as a case study. Building upon fieldwork in the country, it argues that enhanced European involvement (EU and individual member states) has caused Mali to develop a more control-oriented dimension to its migration policy and to strengthen its links with European development actors and the Malian diaspora. While these reverberations of EU policies can be likened to what scholars have established for other African countries, Mali is unusual because of its large exposure to altered regional patterns of migration cooperation. Many of the regional refoulements and deportations end in Mali despite the fact (or, perhaps, because of the fact) that the official Malian state does little to regulate these operations. In the absence of official policy responses, civil society organizations have stepped in to provide returned migrants with basic care and reception.