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The Meritorious ‘Other’:The Interconnection of Merit and Race in EU Migration and Asylum Law
Ganty, Sarah Romani, Laurence Arendas, Zsuzsanna Pachocka, Marta
Ganty, Sarah
Romani, Laurence
Arendas, Zsuzsanna
Pachocka, Marta
Title / Series / Name
JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies
Publication Volume
Publication Issue
Pages
Editors
Keywords
EU migration and asylum law
merit
race
selection
stratification
worth
Business and International Management
General Business,Management and Accounting
Economics and Econometrics
Political Science and International Relations
SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities
merit
race
selection
stratification
worth
Business and International Management
General Business,Management and Accounting
Economics and Econometrics
Political Science and International Relations
SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities
Files
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/28983
Abstract
Adopting a law-in-context approach, this article suggests that merit-based migrant selection in the European Union (EU) is implicitly shaped by racial dynamics. With a focus on EU law and more specifically on cases from the Netherlands and Germany, it argues that the growing emphasis on merit enables a limited number of ‘racialised others’ to counterbalance the structural disadvantages associated with their citizenships, whilst simultaneously legitimising the exclusion of those considered insufficiently meritorious within the same group. By bridging two distinct strands of scholarship – critical analyses of the racial dimensions of migration policy and studies of merit-based selection mechanisms – this article advances existing debates on EU migration and asylum governance. It posits that the normative appeal of merit acts to justify existing hierarchies and to obscure the underlying racialisation processes that sustain them.
Topic
Publisher
Place of Publication
Type
Journal article
Date
2026-04-19
Language
ISBN
Identifiers
10.1111/jcms.70107