Administrative and legal regulation of migration relations in Ukraine (scientific and methodological approaches)

Abstract

The work analyzes the scientific and methodological approaches presented in the legal literature concerning the study of legal regulation of migration relations in Ukraine. It is stated that none of the existing scientific and methodological approaches does not fully disclose the specifics of legal regulation of migration relations, but creates favorable conditions for the emergence of numerous contradictory conclusions, approaches and concepts. Subjects a critical analysis of the scientists’ opinion on the place of migration law among the elements of the Ukrainian legal system and reveals errors in the research methodology of the legal regulation of migration relations. It is argued that migration relations are the subject of administrative-legal regulation, however, the question remains as to the status of migration law in the system of administrative law of Ukraine.

In research works devoted to the legal regulation of migration relations, four basic scientific methods are used: 1) through the analysis of the content of the legal acts regulating the migration relations; 2) through the characterization of the subject and method of legal regulation of migration relations; 3) through the elements of the mechanism of legal regulation of migration relations; 4) through the characteristics of the elements of the migration legal regime. Unfortunately, the results obtained here are controversial in content and are not always convincing.

It is noted that in studies of legal regulation of migration relations there are two extremes. The first extreme is connected with the theorizing of problems of migration-right regulation, when theoretical constructions sometimes do not see problems of practical-applied nature. In other words, it is about attempts by some scholars to justify the need to allocate in the system of law of Ukraine such an independent branch of law as migration law, the artificial separation from constitutional or administrative legal relations, so-called, migration legal relations, etc. At the same time, scientists sometimes do not notice their pernicious and devastating effects on the system of national law, since fragmentation of the law into smaller elements always leads to contradictions between them, and in the end, it can lead to the loss of the system of law of Ukraine of its main characteristic – systemic. The second extreme in the research of migration processes in Ukraine is the analysis of empirical data in the field of migration without the application of general theoretical approaches. That is, the conclusions and recommendations for improving the current migration law are made solely on the basis of statistical analysis without involving theoretical knowledge. Indeed, science, including the science of migration, without practice is dead, because science has arisen and exists to solve problems that arise in practice. At the same time, one should not forget that practice without science is blind, and therefore the development of migration legislation and improvement of the activities of subjects implementing the state migration policy is impossible without the development and systematization of scientific knowledge about migration, migration processes and migration relations.