Circular Migration between the EU and Third Countries

This paper is concerned with the question: To what extent does EU circular migration policy benefit the development of third country immigrants and their countries of origin? To answer that question three relevant EU policy documents are analyzed with the help of a framework consisting of three dimensions, namely, economic development, autonomy and integration. The EU policy documents analyzed cover all ‘actor-dimensions’ but, overall, the interests of the countries of origin seem to be addressed better than the interests of the migrants. Thus, the EU policy focuses more on increasing the development of the country of origin as a whole then on improving the individual situations of the migrants.