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The categorization of internationally mobile persons is an indispensable and crucial component of any contemporary migration policy. The European Community, and after 1993 the European Union (EU), gave since their foundation played a key role in the categorization processes of cross-border movements and across member states. On the basis of a fundamental tripartition (mobility of EU citizens; forced migration of persons entitled to protection; voluntary migration of economic migrants), the EU’s categorical architecture has been evolving particularly through a gradual expansion and multiplication of some rights-based migrants’ categories. Since the 1990s and more markedly since the mid-2000s, some major geopolitical and economic developments (EU’s Eastern enlargements, Eurozone crisis, upheavals and conflicts in the Mediterranean) have concurred in blurring established normative categories and in reducing their regulatory effectiveness. The current crisis of the European migration and asylum regime can thus be interpreted also as a categorization crisis, which is triggering highly controversial attempts at the redefinition of established categories and the launching of new ones. The outcomes of this contentious re-categorization process will crucially affect the capacity of the European migration and asylum governance system to overcome the present crisis by recovering both effectiveness and legitimacy.
