Externalization of the EU Asylum Policy under the Light of the Arab Spring: How Did South-European Countries Recalibrate after the Uprisings?

Abstract

This chapter sheds light on the steps required for the European Union (EU) to provide a more effective coordination of increased mobility in the Mediterranean in times of acute emergency or crisis. In particular, the questions that drive the analysis are, first, how the EU structured its discourse of externalization of asylum before the Arab Spring and, second, how the EU and its southern EU member states, which are the most affected by mixed flows, reacted to this discourse and reshaped their relevant policies. In order to explain the institutional formulation of the EU and the Southern member states in parallel levels of regional and national governance, this work draws on the discursive processes that framed the problem definition regarding externalization and both the discursive and institutionalized policy solutions (Mehta 2010).