Abstract. Unpredictability of the migration movements; efforts to protect the state's territory from irregular and illegal activities; as well as tendency to fill in the gaps on the labour market in the receiving countries are only few out of many preconditions which stimulate attempts of the nation states to coordinate and influence migration on their territories using the instruments of the migration policy. However, the instruments as proposed in the strategic documents do not always meet the practical demands emerging from the migration profile of the particular state, or they are not applied properly -from different reasons. Our paper analyses the cited discrepancy in the Slovak Republic. The main aim is to identify instruments of the Slovak migration policy as presented in the latest strategic documents and compare the theoretical framework with the practical reality. The paper concludes by analysing reasons of existing gaps between the theory and practice in the Slovak settings.

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At the end of 2014, the numbers of irregular migrants and asylum seekers in the European Union began to sharply increase. This so-called European migration and refugee crisis culminated in 2015, but did not affect all EU Member States to the same extent. The aim of the paper is to evaluate the impacts of “the crisis” in the Slovak Republic. In addition to the recent developments in the area of irregular immigration and numbers of asylum applications, we focus on broader social, political and foreign policy implications. The research is primarily based on the analysis of the official statistics. We compare pre-crisis data, data in the period considered as “the crisis", and the current situation. The Slovak territory had not been influenced significantly by immigration flows during the European migration and refugee crisis. Nevertheless, migration flows became an important topic also in Slovakia: developments within the EU territory raised awareness on the topic among political representatives as well as among the Slovak public. The importance of migratory flows is growing. It reflects the increase in the volume of migratory flows but also how international migration is perceived and interpreted in society.