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The Rhetoric of European Migration Policy and Its Role in Criminalization of Migration

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Book cover Causes and Consequences of Migrant Criminalization

Part of the book series: Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice ((IUSGENT,volume 81))

Abstract

European migration policy frames migration predominantly as a securitarian issue and thus paints migrants as a threat to the established order of the EU. Even though the most recent documents use more liberal and humane rhetoric, the underlying assumptions about migration have not changed, and, furthermore, are getting even more difficult to recognise. This chapter demonstrates how the European migration policy has undergone some discursive changes since the pre-Maastricht period until today. Whereas the softening of discourse could, on the one hand, lead to less restrictive measures within migration policy, it, on the other hand, establishes a new field where foreignness is produced, and membership and belonging of migrants in the EU are delineated. These discursive shifts, despite exhibiting a widening of themes and terminology, including integration of new sensitivities, and ostensibly suggesting a picture of greater liberalism and humanitarianism, do not ultimately change the hierarchy of fundamental values, as all newly introduced themes remain subordinate to the current securitarian priorities. Furthermore, it is becoming even more challenging to detect the criminalisation of migrants within this changed field of political discourse, which is characterised not only by repressive aspects of power but also by affirmative discourses of fundamental European values, such as the protection of human lives and other humanitarian ideals.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Bigo (2005, p. 63).

  2. 2.

    Guild (2009), Cuttitta (2015).

  3. 3.

    Bigo (2005), Düvell (2006).

  4. 4.

    Babayan (2011).

  5. 5.

    Albahari (2015).

  6. 6.

    Moreno-Lax (2018, p. 120).

  7. 7.

    Calavita (2005).

  8. 8.

    Ibid.; Brown (2010), Mezzadra and Neilson (2013).

  9. 9.

    Bigo and Guild (2005b), Pallitto and Heyman (2008).

  10. 10.

    Balibar (2007), Jones (2017), Guild (2009).

  11. 11.

    Anti-European in a sense that it is in contradiction with the humanistic values of respect for human dignity and human rights, freedom, democracy, equality, and the rule of law, which are supposed to be the building blocks of the European Union.

  12. 12.

    Balibar (2007).

  13. 13.

    The analysis included: The Palma Document (1989), Treaty on European Union (1992), Treaty of Amsterdam (1997), Convention implementing the Schengen Agreement (1985), Tampere European Council (1999), The Hague Program (2004), The Stockholm Program (2011), European Council Conclusions (2014), The Global Approach to Migration and Mobility—GAMM (2011), the European Agenda on Migration (2015), and the European Agenda on Security (2015).

  14. 14.

    The common European migration policy was designed long before the signing of the Treaty on European Union or the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, which is one of the two treaties forming the constitutional basis of the European Union. Various working groups were preparing reports on questions of free movement of people in the EU after 1992, and these efforts culminated in the preparation of 1989 The Palma Document (Huysmans 2000), which is the first document of my analysis.

  15. 15.

    The empirical analysis was part of my Ph.D. research study at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. I used thematic analysis as defined by Philo and Berry (2004) to analyse the documents according to the main “explanatory themes” (Philo 2007), which define how migration is understood in the EU. The relations between these themes allow us to understand the hierarchy of values of migration policy, which then dictates the use of concrete measures on the ground. In the documents, I follow the occurrence and order of certain themes, the importance of different perspectives, the values that mirror through the exposed themes and the hierarchy of values that is established through conflicting interpretative frameworks. An additional analytical perspective is added by the analysis of key discursive elements, as defined by critical discursive analysis, such as new or changed terms and semantic relations between words, a priori assumptions and colocations, implicit common truths, typical semantic structures, syntax, and lexical elements (Fairclough 2003; van Dijk 2002), and, also, who is defined as an actor of the social event and to whom the responsibility is attributed for solving a particular challenge (Philo 2007).

  16. 16.

    Balibar (2007).

  17. 17.

    Albahari (2015), Cuttitta (2015), Moreno-Lax (2018).

  18. 18.

    Calavita (2005).

  19. 19.

    Huysmans (2000).

  20. 20.

    De Giorgi (2010).

  21. 21.

    Aliverti (2012).

  22. 22.

    Calavita (2005), De Giorgi (2010), Melossi (2003).

  23. 23.

    Tsoukala (2005).

  24. 24.

    Balibar (2007).

  25. 25.

    Stumpf (2006), Aliverti (2012).

  26. 26.

    Aliverti (2012), Tsoukala (2005), De Giorgi (2010).

  27. 27.

    Cuttitta (2015).

  28. 28.

    Albahari (2015).

  29. 29.

    Fassin (2005).

  30. 30.

    Moreno-Lax (2018).

  31. 31.

    Stockholm Program (2011), GAMM (2011).

  32. 32.

    The Palma Document (1989).

  33. 33.

    Stockholm Program (2011), GAMM (2011).

  34. 34.

    Pallitto and Heyman (2008) even write about “mobility classes” that characterise groups of people, depending on their mobility capability, in analogy with Marx’s classes, which differ according to their relation to production means. “Classification into different categories of control means the distribution of benefits and burdens, opportunities and risks, in view of the already existing differences that at the same time generate and deepen social inequalities”. Ibid., 327.

  35. 35.

    Hague Program (2004), Stockholm program (2011).

  36. 36.

    Sassen (2000, p. 155).

  37. 37.

    Parker (2013).

  38. 38.

    The opportunities of migration are framed exclusively in terms of economic opportunities for labour markets and entrepreneurial development of European countries. The term “benefits” is used with other economic terms, such as “economy stimulation”, “migrant work force”, “labour market needs”, “competitiveness”, and others, which reveal the implementation of economistic market logic into the field of migration policies. Market logic, therefore, dictates the contexts of usefulness of migration in the EU. What is particularly important in this regard is that economic subjects are becoming the main moderators of migration policies, through their market needs. The main moderators of regularised migration are therefore employers, and not state strategies and directives. More about this topic of marketisation of migration and the rise of utilitarian market discourse in Parker (2013).

  39. 39.

    Stockholm Program (2011), European Council Conclusions (2014), GAMM (2011).

  40. 40.

    Tsoukala (2005).

  41. 41.

    Babayan (2011).

  42. 42.

    Broeders (2007), Walters (2006).

  43. 43.

    Fine (2009) in Chouliaraki (2012, p. 8).

  44. 44.

    Pallister-Wilkins (2017) in Moreno-Lax (2018, p. 120).

  45. 45.

    Bigo and Guild (2005b). The mechanism of externalisation was primarily introduced with the aim to prevent illegal immigration into the EU. Triandafyllidou (2010). It gained a central role in 2005, when the European Commission adopted the program “The Global Approach to Migration” Hayes and Vermeulen (2012). Externalisation is performed on the basis of bilateral and multilateral EU agreements with third countries. Largely, these are trade and development agreements that are supposed to contribute to the eradication of the root causes of legal and illegal migration, by addressing those circumstances that force people into migration. At the same time, development and trade objectives are linked to cooperation with the European Commission in the management of illegal migration flows—through visa regimes and through the re-acceptance of returned irregular immigrants and rejected asylum seekers. See Guild (2009).

  46. 46.

    Babayan (2011), Guild (2009).

  47. 47.

    Triandafyllidou (2010).

  48. 48.

    Wodak (2006, p. 186).

  49. 49.

    GAMM (2011), EU Council Conclusions (2014).

  50. 50.

    European Agenda on Migration (2015).

  51. 51.

    Ibid.

  52. 52.

    Moreno-Lax (2018, p. 120).

  53. 53.

    European Agenda on Migration (2015).

  54. 54.

    GAMM (2011).

  55. 55.

    Moreno-Lax (2018, p. 119).

  56. 56.

    Moreno-Lax (2018).

  57. 57.

    Guild (2009).

  58. 58.

    Moreno-Lax (2018).

  59. 59.

    Ibid., p. 127.

  60. 60.

    Chouliaraki (2012).

  61. 61.

    Cuttitta (2015, p. 131).

  62. 62.

    Moreno-Lax (2018, p. 130).

  63. 63.

    Balibar (2007).

  64. 64.

    Walters (2004).

  65. 65.

    Guild (2009).

  66. 66.

    Triandafyllidou (2010).

  67. 67.

    Bigo and Guild (2005a).

  68. 68.

    Huysmans (2000).

  69. 69.

    Calavita (2005).

  70. 70.

    Ibid., p. 13.

  71. 71.

    Huysmans (2000).

  72. 72.

    Calavita (2005).

  73. 73.

    Balibar (2007).

  74. 74.

    Bauman (1999).

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  1. Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Tjaša Učakar

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  1. Peace Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Neža Kogovšek Šalamon

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Učakar, T. (2020). The Rhetoric of European Migration Policy and Its Role in Criminalization of Migration. In: Kogovšek Šalamon, N. (eds) Causes and Consequences of Migrant Criminalization. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 81. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43732-9_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43732-9_5

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