The European Union, Immigration and Global Justice: Why and How to Study It?
Migration has shaped the history of Europe.1 Centuries of movements of people within great empires (Roman, Ottoman), flows of populations in the form of invasions or flight from wars or famine, and movements of workers have all contributed to making Europe what it is today.2 Moreover, Europe’s own emigration has helped to change the face and composition of communities outside Europe, as the anthropologist Erik R. Wolf reminded us in his famous Europe and the People without History (1982).
Over time, the social and political consolidation of nation states has not stopped intra-European migration but has significantly changed the perception of borders and citizenship, giving a different social meaning to the category of migrant. Up until the 1970s, several European states continued to be countries of emigration more than immigration.3 But the European integration process (particularly the common market, free movement of people and the establishment of European citizenship), coupled with the growing interconnectedness of European societies, transformed the meaning of peoples’ movement. Europe seemed to have become a post-Westphalian land and to have revised its understanding of borders and state sovereignty (Caporaso 1996; Sperling et al. 2009; Linklater 1996). It has even been able to develop an identity grounded in a ‘temporal othering’ (distinguishing itself from the conflict-prone Europe of the past) rather than in physical othering with respect to entities outside its borders (Wæver 1998)—better described as frontiers, given their unsettled nature. Yet in recent years a nationalistic rhetoric has been rediscovered, which views immigration as a contemporary sin threatening the purity of nations, or which depicts migrants as a potential challenge to the ‘European way of life’. The memory of migration flows from Europe to the rest of the world as well as its role in forging internal transformations seems to have been lost by large portions of European society. In this context, even the intra-European movement of people has begun to be questioned. It is no coincidence that migration was one of the main issues discussed during the 2016 UK campaign for the referendum which led to the country’s decision to withdraw from the EU (so-called Brexit).4 Gradually, European borders have started to be described and enforced as hard borders, marking the limits of communities increasingly in terms of geo-cultural juxtaposition. In other words, Europe seems to be retreating towards a modern understanding of sovereignty, borders and identity. While this process probably started with the transformations which took place after the end of the Cold War, it has been reinforced by the pressure of international terrorism (Diez 2004). But important accelerating factors have also been the economic crisis which erupted in 2008 and the so-called migrant crisis of 2015–2016.
Indeed, the rise in the number of arrivals of migrants on the European territory in 2015 (about 1 million according to estimates, over 5 times more than the previous year5)—at a time when Europe was still recovering from the social strain of a severe economic crisis—triggered a series of reactions on the part of several Member States aimed at stopping the flow of migrants. These included the creation of physical barriers (including real walls), the reintroduction of controls at internal borders in the Schengen area and the ratification of agreements with neighbours (Turkey in first place) aimed at externalizing the control of migrants’ arrival to European coasts. In order to ‘save Schengen’ (to use the telling name of the Commission’s communication—European Commission 2016), the EU adopted a series of measures aimed at reassuring its Member States of the EU’s ability to ‘protect’ its external borders (such as the creation of the Border and Coast Guard and the launch of maritime operations aimed mainly at fighting human smuggling). Furthermore, the EU gradually enhanced the externalization of the management of migration by supporting the drafting of agreements with neighbouring countries by EU Member States (e.g. the Turkey agreement mentioned above, but also the Italy-Libya agreement of February 2017, see European Council 2017). The EU has also developed partnership framework agreements with African countries with the main purpose of stopping migration flows to Europe (one of the most developed is that with Niger) (CINI and Concord Europe 2018). These practices have had a relevant ‘bordering function’, making the EU’s external borders more ‘Europeanized’ and securitized (hence less and less similar to unsettled frontiers), and by moving southwards to patrol and control the EU’s borders.
Various actors have contributed to the functioning and transformation of what we label the ‘EU Migration System of Governance’ (EUMSG): EU institutions, EU Member States, the other states participating in the Schengen area, some neighbours, and NGOs. Each has struggled to define the internal rules of the game, the degree of burden sharing and relations with third countries. Each has contributed to redefining the very understanding of Europe’s borders and sovereignty as well as the relationship between the latter and migration. Each has endorsed different understandings of what constitutes a ‘just’ migration policy. The European debate in the past few years has been illustrative of this latter point.
Research shows that one of the dominant legitimizing narratives used to sustain the practice of limiting migration across borders (even through arbitrary suspensions of the Schengen agreement or refusals to share the burden of arrivals) has been a normative one of a Westphalian nature (D’Amato and Lucarelli 2019). This widespread legitimizing narrative prioritizes the ‘protection’ of states citizens’ in the face of massive arrivals of foreign people who would allegedly destabilize or even directly threaten the domestic society.
Against this line of reasoning, which also serves to legitimize measures aimed at differentiating between categories of migrants6 and to limit their access to European countries, NGOs as well as several international organizations have stressed the importance of prioritizing respect for migrants’ rights (see, e.g., OHCHR 2017; Amnesty International 2017). On these grounds, measures undertaken to limit arrivals to Europe such as the externalization of EU migration policy to third countries whose credentials in terms of respect for human rights are not strong to say the least, have been subject to severe criticism. The 2016 EU-Turkey deal to stop flows through the so-called Balkan route was blamed particularly for its negative consequences on migrants’ human rights (Council of Europe 2016). Equally criticized have been the open violations of human rights in several EU Member States (Human Rights Watch 2018). The academic argument in favour of ‘open borders’ (Carens 1987, 2013; Block 1998; Clemens 2011) has also started to be debated in the media (The Economist 2017) and has been used in the political debate: ‘Inevitably - claimed UK shadow chancellor John McDonnell - [… t]he movement of peoples across the globe will mean that borders are almost going to become irrelevant by the end of this century, so we should be preparing for that and explaining why people move’ (John McDonnell, quoted in BBC 2016).
To support the argument that we have a moral duty to help migrants and allow them in, a narrative frequently endorsed is the humanitarian one. Such a narrative, however, has been criticized for ‘inadvertently producing voiceless and agency-less victims’ (Sandro Mezzadra, quoted by Ceccorulli 2019) and for ‘shifting our attention from development to emergency assistance, [also] establishing a moral geography of the world’ (Musarò 2011, 1). These critics call for greater attention to migrants’ subjectivity (Mezzadra 2015; Fassin 2011; Marvakis 2012), which can be disregarded even in the case of formal compliance with legislation on human rights.
In other words, the migration crisis has exposed a number of normative and ethical issues connected to the current management of migration within the EUMSG: to what extent can such a system be reasonably deemed ‘just’? Just for whom? Does the EU’s management of migration live up to the principles of global justice? And which understanding of global justice? Ultimately, what are the political and normative implications for the EU as a sui generis polity which has long been described as a normative power (Manners 2002), if not an ethical power (Aggestam 2008) of a post-Westphalian nature?7...