Migration and security interdependencies between Ukraine , Belarus and Russia and the EU

1. Migration and security interdependenciesbetweenUkraine, Belarus and Russia and the EU Dr Marta Jaroszewicz, /Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW) Kiev 28 November, 2018

2. Presentation outline: Results of twoWorkingPapers: • EU-STRAT Working Paper no. 10 Interdependencies of EasternPartnershipCountries with the EU and Russia: Three Case Studies(authoredby: Kamil Całus, LaureDelcour, IldarGazizulin, Marta Jaroszewicz, Tadeusz Iwański, Kamil Kłysiński), April 2018

3. Presentation outline: Results of two Working Papers: 2) EU-STRAT Working Paper no. 8 • How Bilateral, Regional and International Regimes Shape the Extent, Significance and Nature ofInterdependencies(authored by Rilka Dragneva, Laure Delcour, Marta Jaroszewicz, Szymon Kardaś, and Carolina Ungureanu), March 2018

4. Concept of interdependencies: • Keohane and Nye’s broad definition of interdependence as “situations characterized by reciprocal effects among countries or among actors in different countries” (1977: 8) • Interdependence can be created and perpetuated by policyitself. It is the outcome of a political game where a range of interests is involvedresulting in a set of governance arrangements or regimes.

5. Concept of interdependencies (2) Two dimensions of interdependencies: • Sensitivity:captures the effects imposed on a country from the outside expressed in the volume of flows but also the ease with which changes in those flows are translated into costs; effects are linked to existing policies without changing them; • 2) Vulnerability: highlights the costs of adjustment in response to external events. It captures the costs • of making effective changes over time, including the political willingness to bear them.

6. Concept of interdependencies (3) • Interdependenciesversus policy makingof both Russia, the EU and the EaPstates(quest for policyalternatives); • Issue-linkage - a term coined by Keohane and Nye (1977), to detect strategies whereby an actor ties one policy area to another policy area.

7. Scope of reaserch: • Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova • Russia, the EU; • Foursectoralinterdependencies: trade, energy, migration, security; • Issuelinkage

8. Results: • Labour and forced migration, and related flows of remittances: Countries become sensitive (vulnerable?)based on the scale, ease and destination of movement of its citizens, be it labour migrants or refugees • Russiais agile in exploiting existing interdependencies with EaP countries and applyingissue-linkage strategies. Security has emerged as Russia’s preferred leverage and has repeatedly been usedacrossthesectors.

9. Results: • EU has made limited use (if any) of issue • linkage strategies. it does not exploit existing sectoralinterdependencies with EaPcountrieseven though these are expanding (especially with Ukraine and Moldova). Instead, the EU relies uponsectorspecific conditionality.

10. Results: • The prevalence of irregular migration, due to the combination of burdensome Russian procedures, the seasonal nature of labour migration and the visa-free regime with Russia, gives full license to Russia to interpret new migration rules arbitrarily, thereby using migration as a foreign policy instrument in relation to Ukraine and Moldova.

11. Results: • Belarus’ participation in strongly institutionalized, Russia-driven regimes has protected the country from Russia’s opportunistic use of migration interdependencies, especially placingmigrationin an issue-linkage context • On theotherhandit contributes to perpetuating migration interdependencies with Russia, thereby increasing Belarus’ vulnerability to Russia’s policies in the absence of any other international regime

12. Results: • The lack of any regime that would impose constraints on Russia has increased Moscow’s leverage and thereby exposed Moldova and Ukraine to harsher Russian policies. • However, these have so far led the Moldovan and Ukrainian authorities/citizens (?) to explore alternative policy options for migration, thereby decreasing their vulnerability to Russia’s actions.

13. Results: • While Ukraine’s sensitivity towards Russia in terms of trade, energy and migration has decreased since 2014, Ukraine remains vulnerable to Russia in terms of its security and territorial integrity. • In the case of Ukraine, changes in migration interdependencies with Russia do not stem from the stricter Russian legal framework; The 2014 conflict had contradictory implications for migration interdependencies, owing both to individual strategies and third countries’ legislations.

14. Results: • Finalconlusions: • The plasticity of Russian migration rules (both with Moldova and even more so with Ukraine) carries major weight to explain the preservation of strong interdependencies between these two countries and Russia (and therefore a high degree of sensitivity to Russian policies). • Can we speak of migration interdependencies and its political implications in the case of Polish/Ukrainian migration with the whole complexity and multiactorness of Polish migration policies and diversity of Ukrainian migrants’strategies?