The North African Revolutions: A Chance to Rethink European Externalization of the Handling of Non-EU Migrant Inflows

Abstract

In this paper I discuss EU and member state externalization of the handling of non-EU migration flows. I begin with a discussion of the migration consequences of the 2011 Maghreb revolutions, which provoked an EU migration policy crisis. Then I show how this was an outcome of the ineffectual and strategically incoherent nature of EU immigration policy, which is incorrectly criticized as a well developed non-entree regime that skirts human/immigrant rights obligations by externalizing interdiction, detention, and processing to countries with lower detention standards and higher human rights abuse rates. Lastly I demonstrate that when such externalization policies are enacted, they are less due to EU action and more a function of member state decisions. I show that EU periphery member states are responsible for the most problematic policies in part because of constraints on EU-level policy-making that lead these member states to erect 'Fortress Europe' through their own devices.