This Article sheds new light on one of the longest-running debates in the European Union (EU) citizenship literature: the concept of ‘reverse discrimination’ and the question of whether it is justified. Reverse discrimination has divided EU lawyers into roughly two distinct groups. One group believes that it constitutes an unjustified violation of the principle of equality; a second that it is inevitable in a Union governed by the constitutional principle of divided powers. This Article questions this by offering a typology of reverse discrimination. While most scholars assume that reverse discrimination is a singular phenomenon that demands a singular response, this Article shows that it is a variegated phenomenon that demands a variegated response. It distinguishes three types of reverse discrimination and explains that the proper response depends on the type we are considering. Type I is caused by the application of the principle of mutual recognition; Type II by an interaction between domestic federalism and internal discrimination; and Type III by the CJEU’s confusion over the aim of the right to free movement and residence. Through this typology, the Article shows that reverse discrimination is never a corollary of the principle of divided powers, nor is it always incompatible with the principle of equality. Finally, the Article shows that to the extent that reverse discrimination violates the principle of equality, the solution is not to equalise rights upwards but downwards to the lower (national or regional) level of government. This shows that the principle of equality and the principle of divided powers need not collide.

Developed in Britain and the United States in the 1980s, genetic profiling has since become a global technology. Today, it is widely regarded as the evidentiary “gold standard” in individual and forensic identification. However, its origins as a technology of post-empire at Britain’s externalized borders in South Asia have remained unexamined. This article will argue that the first state-sanctioned use of “DNA fingerprints,” a pilot program exploring its value in disputed cases of family reunification migration from Bangladesh and Pakistan to Britain’s postcolonial cities, repays closer examination. National and transnational responses to the advent of genetic profiling as an identification technology demonstrate the interplay between imperial and postcolonial models and networks of power and truth production. At the same time, this experiment prefigured and conditioned the wider reception of DNA profiling in matters of kinship. Far from being a footnote, the use of genetic profiling by migrants determined to exercise their legal rights in the face of a hostile state also worked to naturalize genetic ties as the markers of “true” familial relationships.

Objective: A reunification tool that captures images of children at the time of the disaster would enable parents to locate their missing children, particularly if the children are unable to communicate their identity. This study assessed the ideal features and parameters of a photographic-based reunification tool.

Methods: A convenience sample of federal, state, and hospital-based emergency management professionals were surveyed to elicit their preferences regarding an image-based reunification algorithm, to assess the parents' level of difficulty in viewing images with facial trauma, and to determine the minimum percentage of successful reunifications needed to justify adoption of a reunification tool.

Results: Of 322 emergency management professionals surveyed, 129 (40%) responded. Only 18% favored a photographic-based tool that would display images in which only the categories of age, gender, and facial features (eye, hair, and skin color) would exactly match the parent's description of the child. However, 72% preferred a broader, less-rigid system in which the images displayed would match all or most features in the parents’ description of the missing child, allowing parents to view more of the image database. Most (85%) preferred a tool showing unedited images of living children, allowing parents to view facial trauma. However, more respondents reported that parents would find viewing unedited images with facial trauma somewhat or very difficult emotionally compared with edited images for both living (77% vs 20%, P <. 001) and deceased children (91% vs 70%, P <. 001.) In a disaster involving 1000 children, a tool that reunites a minimum of 10% of families would be adopted by over 50% of the participants. Participants were willing to accept a lower percentage of reunifications in a disaster involving 1000 children compared with disasters involving 10 (P <. 001) or 100 children. (P <. 001).

Conclusions: Emergency management professionals identified desirable characteristics of a photographic-based reunification tool, including an algorithm displaying unedited photographs of missing children that loosely matches the parents' description, acknowledging the parents' emotional difficulty in viewing photographs with facial trauma. Participants were also willing to accept a lower percentage of successful reunifications as the scale of the disaster size increased.

(Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2012;6:156–162)

On 4 March 2010 the Court of Justice of the European Union issued its first judgment on the conformity with EU law of national provisions implementing Directive 2003/86/EC on the right to family reunification. In the case Chakroun v. Minister van Buitenlandse Zaken the Court had to rule on the Dutch implementing measures concerning resource requirements and the concepts of family reunification and family formation.

What governs the first entrance to the territory of a member state by a third country national who is a family-member of a European citizen who has migrated to that member state: (secondary) Community law or national law? This question, of the utmost constitutional importance as it regards the power to decide on the entrance of foreigners on national territory, one of the pearls in the crown of traditional national sovereignty, was facing the Court of Justice of the European Communities in the case of Yunying Jia v. Migrationsverket. Earlier the Court had sent out different signals. Now, in the long-awaited and remarkably short full Court decision of 9 January 2007, the Court carefully manoeuvred between Scylla (the member states are in full control) and Charybdis (Community law decides all): a member state is not required to make the grant of a residence permit to a third country national subject to the condition of lawful residence in a member state – but it apparently may do so. It is quite unlikely that this judgment once and for all settles the question.

The European Union aims at a stronger participation by its population in work to foster growth and welfare. There are concerns about the attachment of immigrants to the labour force, and discussions about the necessary policy responses. Integrated labour and migration policies are needed. The employment chances of the low-skilled are limited. Whereas Europe could benefit from a substantive immigration policy that imposes selection criteria that are more in line with economic needs, the substantial immigration into the European Union follows largely non-economic motives. This paper discusses the economic rationale of a selective immigration policy and provides empirical evidence about the adverse effects of current selection mechanisms.