The European Agenda on Migration: Make-Believe Solidarity to
Undermine both Solidarity and Rights in Pursuit of Strategic Policy
Goals
by Yasha Maccanico
The 2014-2019 period has brought to the fore the systemic and structural effects of efforts to perfect the EU’s immigration and asylum policy (European Commission, 2015) in relation to normative frameworks at the EU and national levels in ways that contradict several of its foundational principles. These include legal aspects like respect for human rights and the rule of law, although it may be more important to relate developments to their instrumental role in enabling the exercise of state power(s) in increasingly discretional ways at the service of strategic policy options maintained over time. A crucial aspect of the drive to subordinate safeguards, legality and basic humanity to restrictive immigration policy was that actions by citizens and civil society groups to mitigate the worst effects of policies that dehumanise people and force them into destitution were considered a problem at the EU and national levels. This is one example of how the expansive scope of immigration policies threatens normative principles both beyond the EU’s borders through externalisation, and within it, by affecting EU nationals who either have relations with third-country nationals or oppose the abuses and discrimination this policy field promotes, and act accordingly.
This has determined two important discursive shifts: mystification to conceal what was being done to ensure that nobody entered the EU by promoting death and abuses on massive scale while subordinating human rights and the rule of law to policy goals; imposing the idea that anything citizens do to assist migrants is a “pull factor”. Events surrounding both the setting up of hotspots to process people arriving in Italy and Greece and the deaths at sea in the Mediterranean clearly belied official claims. The relocations the two frontline states were offered as tangible evidence of solidarity by other member states hardly materialised, while life-saving operations by civilians and NGOs and acts of solidarity by citizens like feeding and providing clothing or shelter to those on the streets were criminalised and obstructed. Solidarity was redefined as collusion with either traffickers or illegal migration, with an instrumental logic that legitimated racism and the far right while singling out migrant support activities for vilification, both for helping illegalised people and for documenting crimes and illegal acts by states. The EU and some national governments tried to use the far right to fight solidarity, providing instrumental justifications for racist ideologies and even violence in the process. It is worth recalling that several national constitutions and EU foundational principles and texts uphold solidarity as a positive value, often alongside human rights and the rule of law, which the Commission/Frontex duo have doggedly worked to undermine for five years to perfect their migration management model.
Jessop’s strategic-relational approach to state power (2016) and detailed examination of official documents produced at the EU and national levels enable understanding of these developments and of some mystificatory aspects that emerge from official accounts.
This has determined two important discursive shifts: mystification to conceal what was being done to ensure that nobody entered the EU by promoting death and abuses on massive scale while subordinating human rights and the rule of law to policy goals; imposing the idea that anything citizens do to assist migrants is a “pull factor”. Events surrounding both the setting up of hotspots to process people arriving in Italy and Greece and the deaths at sea in the Mediterranean clearly belied official claims. The relocations the two frontline states were offered as tangible evidence of solidarity by other member states hardly materialised, while life-saving operations by civilians and NGOs and acts of solidarity by citizens like feeding and providing clothing or shelter to those on the streets were criminalised and obstructed. Solidarity was redefined as collusion with either traffickers or illegal migration, with an instrumental logic that legitimated racism and the far right while singling out migrant support activities for vilification, both for helping illegalised people and for documenting crimes and illegal acts by states. The EU and some national governments tried to use the far right to fight solidarity, providing instrumental justifications for racist ideologies and even violence in the process. It is worth recalling that several national constitutions and EU foundational principles and texts uphold solidarity as a positive value, often alongside human rights and the rule of law, which the Commission/Frontex duo have doggedly worked to undermine for five years to perfect their migration management model.
Jessop’s strategic-relational approach to state power (2016) and detailed examination of official documents produced at the EU and national levels enable understanding of these developments and of some mystificatory aspects that emerge from official accounts.
