Within the EU there is currently an explicit struggle to articulate and render coherent a range of policies, narratives, definitions and processes for governing migration, and in particular for introducing new governing logics and relationships under the heading of ‘new immigration policy’. The struggle to assert a coherent governance regime in the field of migration involves combining and re-combining different policy narratives, institutional assumptions and relationships within the EU, and between EU and member states. In this article we identify and evaluate the key, often contradictory narratives, mediated among the institutions and broader dynamics of EU policymaking: (human) rights, security, economic needs, and social integration. These discourses interact to construct a new, identifiable policy terrain of European migration governance. only subscribers can see the full article