Frontex, the Euro-Mediterranean Border and the Paradoxes of Humanitarian Rhetoric

Abstract

The article explores the ambiguous dialectic between the technocratic ideology of risk management and the recurrent call for emergency measures which characterizes Euro-Mediterranean border control policies, showing how Frontex has ultimately succeeded in capitalising on the recurring cry to humanitarian emergencies coming from some Member Countries. Far from seeing its legitimacy undermined as a risk management agency that should predict and prevent potential migratory crisis, it has incorporated the emergency rhetoric into its official communication, making it a legitimating tool for a steady expansion of its role, prerogatives and resources to the detriment of alternative actors in migration policy. This reproduces the paradoxes of a humanitarian policy which is intended at protecting the bare life of migrants and asylum seekers, while violating their fundamental rights to escape and find asylum elsewhere.