Frontières, Sociétés et Droit en Mouvement
“For fifteen years, migration has been associated with the vocabulary of crisis. The ‘migrant crisis’ or the ‘refugee crisis’ – depending on whether it is the risk of invasion or the underlying vulnerability that is being emphasised – has informed the media and political discourse. The question of mobility is treated in this discourse as a break in the balance, an abrupt change that calls for exceptional emergency measures. It is depicted both as an irresistible, even unpredictable, phenomenon and as a problem to be dealt with, a threat to contain”, argue Sylvie Mazzella and Delphine Perrin, both researchers at the University of Aix-Marseille, in their introduction to this collective work presenting a particularly in-depth analysis of the phenomenon of migration, how it is perceived and how it is evolving over time (Our translation throughout).
Mazzella and Perrin remind us that until the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families was adopted in 1990 (and which did not enter into force until 2003), the “international community” was not especially interested in migration. But very soon afterwards, a more repressive discourse began to take shape. The fight against “irregular migration” made its debut in the European Union’s negotiations for the Euro-Mediterranean Barcelona process in 1995. However, the authors consider that it is precisely the “restrictive policies based (from the 1990s onwards) on new legal frameworks and new operational instruments [that] are in fact the very cause of irregular migration”. They explain: “by removing legal migration channels and increasing the number and sophistication of the modes of control, by making it a criminal offence for aliens to enter and remain irregularly, they forced them to use not only illegal means to move around, but also third parties, who gradually became professionalised and criminalised”.
In an article in English (the work comprises contributions in both English and French, depending on the language of the author), Hélène Lambert (University of Sydney and University of Westminster) takes a look at the normative powers and thus the influence of the EU on migrant protection at an international level. She stresses that the EU is a model of inspiration for legal reforms throughout the world. This influence is made greater by the EU’s “proselytising” when it seeks to disseminate its values and its standards through agreements, meetings or capacity-building programmes. And restrictive and repressive standards always spread more easily than protective ones.
The work also devotes much space to examining the causes of migration and the evolution of migratory flows. Although political instability, insecurity, war and economic difficulties are always the main factors behind departures, the phenomenon now affects all social classes and has been made worse by the emergence of criminal phenomena (smugglers, traffickers in human beings, etc.). It also stresses that first and foremost, it is the regions of origin that continue to bear the brunt of refugees: 84% of refugees were located in the countries of the South in 2017, in the vicinity of the crisis areas.
Robert Baduel, honorary director of research in political science at CNRS, who wrote the afterword to the book, points out that current migration levels are nowhere near the scale of the population movements experienced in Europe between the years 1930 and 1950. However, these mass movements have gradually shaped an ethnic homogenisation that has fed a sense of nationalism, with their terrible excesses in the 20th century, and represent a breeding ground for tension among current societies in response to the arrival of new migrants.
After the Second World War, various pacts were agreed upon (NATO, Warsaw Pact) which led to “all States being placed under the separate yet objectively complicit guardianship of the two superpowers (USA and USSR) and a situation in which States had ‘limited sovereignty’ to greater (Eastern Europe) or lesser (Western Europe) degrees”, Baduel argues. “The creation of the European Community and its transformation into the European Union could not lay claim to the reconstruction by other means of the power of the old States that made it up; consequently, they made the best of a bad job, obliged by virtue (to find the narrow door of self-affirmation without risking displeasing the American imperium), opting for soft power, construction guided by the ideal or ideology of ‘legal grounds’, as in the time of the French Revolution”, he goes on to stress. He ends with a rhetorical question: “unlike the USA (at least as presented by R. Kagan in 2003), has the European state not become an organisation that is less assured of its power than one seeking a rational formula creating uncertainty of purpose and doubt among citizens – in sum, an uncertain, overly cautious organisation that is therefore insecure in the directions its actions have taken?”.
This insecure supranational group has the merit of offering a transnational European citizenship, the outlines of which are still vague, but it has also seen a rise in nationalism and the emergence or development of demands based on region, identity or community. Baduel considers that this carries a risk of seeing a regression to a situation of rights attached to persons, as was the case after the French Revolution. He writes: “the question raised by the decline of the political formula of the nation-state, of which the development of diasporic or transnational figures would be, at one and the same time, the symptom, the consequence and the catalyst, is what will become of the conquest of ‘subjective rights’ (…) when the nation has disintegrated, when the nation-state no longer holds water. For the state of residence to weaken and therefore allow the door to a transnationalisation of migrants’ practices to be opened is one thing, but this begs the question as to what happens to the individualism of rights if the individual is in some way ‘reduced’ to a community to which he or she ‘belongs’? The nation-state was once a process of absorbing the ‘subjective rights’, of the process of individualisation and, jointly, of assumption of democracy: what will become of a democracy and the ‘subjective rights’ associated with it when there are no more ‘demos’?”.
Ultimately, what this work aims to do is to “contribute (…) to a better understanding of the migration phenomenon and also to act as whistle-blower, keeping an eye out for any serious breach of the ethics of hospitality related to the freedom of movement”, Mazzella and Perrin explain. They go on to quote from the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas: “to shelter the other in one’s own land or home, to tolerate the presence of the landless and homeless on the ‘ancestral soil’, so jealously, so meanly loved – is that the criterion of humanness? Unquestionably so”. Olivier Jehin
Sylvie Mazzella and Delphine Perrin (under the direction of). Frontières, Sociétés et Droit en Mouvement – Dynamiques et politiques migratoires de l’Europe au Sahel. Bruylant. ISBN: 978-2-8027-6330-7. 305 pages. €70
L’Union européenne doit-elle se défendre ?
Under the title of this European platform published in the most recent edition of the journal Futuribles, one might reasonably have expected a militant argument in favour of reinforcing European defence. Instead of this, a former employee of the European Commission presents us with the political evolution of Turkey and the associated risks, although he sees this as an opportunity to justify European intervention in the eastern Mediterranean.
Jean-François Drevet’s starting point is that Turkish aggression, in February 2018, against a gas drilling ship owned by Eni in the exclusive economic zone of Cyprus, the first direct attack on the integrity of the territory of the European Union, did not inspire anything more than a protest on the part of the European Council and that since then, there has been increased Turkish drilling activity under military escort. The author interprets this as one more challenge thrown down by Erdogan to the European Union, NATO, which he describes as “bankrupt”, and the United States. He argues that Turkey belongs to the category of “producers of insecurity”. “Its pan- Islamic and neo-Ottoman ambitions as well as its dreadful relations with its neighbours make it one of the main trouble-makers in the region, where its many interventions (Iraq, Syria, Libya and Sudan) have left it virtually completely isolated”, he states (our translation throughout).
“In Brussels, where the worsening of relations is nothing new, it is noted that Turkey is increasingly isolated. Admittedly, policies continue to express fears of renewed blackmail over the migration dossier and business circles hope to preserve the acquis of customs union. But inertia is no longer an option, given the size of the political (solidarity between member states) and economic stakes (enormous gas resources) in play”, Drevet writes. He adds: “Brussels is not short of leverage, as trade with the EU (42% of the total in 2018) and preserving investment streams (49% of the total in 2070) are vital to Turkey. It is particularly well-placed for action as R.T. Erdogan is politically and economically weakened. Could European action go as far as a ‘coordinated maritime presence’ by the member states with the resources to do so, to manifest solid support the Cyprus, in line with article 42.7 (mutual assistance) of the Lisbon Treaty? A European intervention initiative would show that the EU is willing to defend its territory, drawing on the experiences acquired in naval operations in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Guinea”. O.J.
Jean-François Drevet. L’Union européenne doit-elle se défendre ? Futuribles. Numéro 433 (November – December 2019). ISBN: 978-2-84387-446-8. €22
Défendre l’Europe
This pamphlet, co-authored by two experts on European Union defence policy, opens with an interesting preface written by the French General Vincent Desportes, former Director of the French Ecole de Guerre. The work is extremely well-timed, coinciding with the start of a new European legislative period, with the European Union in disarray over Brexit and with external challenges mounting up and seeming to intensify.
The authors deliver a clear and systematic analysis of the main questions: why a European army? With what objectives? How could it fit into the institutional framework? What is the perimeter of participants among member states? What should its components be (common objectives and planning, common budget and decision-making, operational and industrial capability)? To achieve an “capacity for autonomous action, backed up by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them, and a readiness to do so” (as per the ambition of the Saint-Malo declaration of 1998), simple cooperation is not enough, as shown by the experience of several initiatives and in various forms in both the past and the present (permanent structured corporation). Instead, integration ought to be the way forward, as this would see true European sovereignty, the concrete expression of which would be a European army at the service of common defence, rather than (national) “surface sovereignty”.
Of the various institutional options available, the authors favour that of a “defence Eurogroup” with a specific agreement on the margin of the European treaties. In view of the “triangle of incompatibility between unity, efficiency and unanimity”, a defence Euro group, based on qualified-majority decision-making, a formula that has not yet been tried, does indeed look like the only way of ensuring a “defence of Europe, by Europe and for Europe”. Stirring stuff! K.R.
Frédéric Mauro and Olivier Jehin. Défendre l’Europe – Plaidoyer pour une armée européenne. Nuvis (http://www.nuvis.fr ). ISBN: 978-2-36367-113-4. 126 pages. €14
Europe: a human enterprise
This is the title of the English-language version of a work by the Council of Europe, published in French under the name “Artisans de l’Europe” by La Nuée Bleue. This book, a set of 30 personal accounts by individuals and staff of the pan-European organisation which now has 47 member states, was reviewed at length in the second edition of our Kiosk series. O.J.
Denis Huber (sous la direction de). Europe: a human enterprise – 30 stories for 70 years of European history 1949-2019. Editions du Conseil de l’Europe (http://book.coe.int ). ISBN: 978-92-871-8973-8. 261 pages. €20/US$40
Responsibility and artificial intelligence
This report by a committee of experts of the Council of Europe looks at the impact of advanced digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, from the point of view of human rights. It pays particular attention to rights as compromised by algorithmic decision-making systems (ADM) and the societal problems associated with data profiling. An entire chapter is given over to responsibilities in matters of the threats, risks, prejudices and damage caused by advanced digital technologies. O.J.
Karen Yeung, rapporteur. Responsibility and AI. Report of the Council of Europe published in French and English. 102 pages. Available to download free of charge from https://edoc.coe.int/en/artificial-intelligence/8026-responsibility-and-ai.html