On July 10, Thanos Plevris, the Greek minister for migration, introduced new laws that will successfully deny asylum to those that attain the Greek shores following a treacherous journey by means of the Mediterranean from Africa. “Greece is not going to tolerate the uncontrolled entry of hundreds of irregular migrants from North Africa,” Plevris mentioned throughout an interview. Reactions towards Greece’s new laws have been fast: Human rights organisations described it as unlawful and referred to as for its withdrawal. The Plenary of Greek Bar Associations emphasised that denying the precise to asylum is a violation of worldwide and EU laws.
On the identical day, however on the opposite aspect of the continent, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer outlined a “ground-breaking deal” with France, which he mentioned would goal small boats and smuggling gangs and ship “a transparent message that these life-threatening journeys are pointless”. The UK-France deal has been criticised by all sides of the political spectrum. Organisations similar to Docs With out Borders referred to as it “reckless”, “ill-fated” and “harmful”, whereas the Migrants’ Rights Community emphasised that the brand new settlement is not going to stop individuals from attempting to cross to the UK.
Greece and the UK’s new plans to curb migration are set to fail, and the reason being easy: migration deterrence doesn’t work.
A decade in the past, in the summertime of 2015, the European Union confronted a disaster it didn’t count on and for which it had not ready. The rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also referred to as ISIS), Syria’s brutal civil struggle and instability in Afghanistan led hundreds of individuals to hunt security and safety within the European Union. The “lengthy summer season of migration” marked the start of the so-called refugee disaster within the EU. But the EU didn’t have a transparent plan; the European Agenda for Migration, which had been agreed upon in Might 2015, had not but been examined.
Right this moment, the narrative of a disaster continues to form migration coverage throughout Europe. In Greece, it has served to justify restrictive deterrence measures since 2015, making new crackdowns unsurprising. For Greece’s neoliberal authorities, migration is a blemish on the narrative of its financial success. Within the UK, it’s used to gasoline far-right sentiment. In each circumstances, migration coverage is crafted not solely to discourage arrivals but additionally to fulfill home political calls for.
Neither migration plan must be seen in isolation from the rise of the far proper throughout the continent. The adoption of far-right rhetoric surrounding the illegalisation of migrants has been utilized in each international locations to justify inhumane insurance policies. The justification for Greece’s new coverage centres on a questionable narrative of an “invasion” from Africa – a trope the Migration Minister has invoked repeatedly. For Greece’s minister of migration, the Greek border, and by extension the European border, have to be strengthened in order that solely “actual refugees” can get pleasure from the advantages of European safety. For the British authorities, small boats have the facility to “undermine [the country’s] border safety”, in line with House Secretary Yvette Cooper, and will due to this fact be prevented from getting into.
Though every migration plan is the product of various political processes in Greece, the EU and the UK, their design and the narratives used to justify them are related in a number of methods. They each conceptualise the migrant and the border in related phrases. For every state, the migrant is seen as a risk to the border, and the border is seen as in want of safety. The migrant who reaches every nation’s shores is criminalised, and the time period “unlawful migrant” has gained prominence amongst authorities officers. The border, in flip, is seen as a safety mechanism that have to be defended towards these attempting to succeed in it. Collectively, these approaches create an “us versus them” narrative of division. Migrants are lowered to their migratory identification; they’re seen as a mass, and their particular person experiences not matter. As such, migrants grow to be worthy or unworthy of worldwide safety, fascinating or undesirable to the Western nation-state. Solely these perceived as “actual refugees” are deemed deserving of worldwide safety. The “undesirables” are was nothing and are expelled by the border. Consequently, a story of worry is promoted and a disaster is manufactured.
Though the occasions on the European border turned often known as a “refugee disaster”, they have been, the truth is, a disaster of the European border.
In the course of the border disaster, the European border regime emerged stronger than ever earlier than, and the EU’s neoliberal creativeness of a borderless world collapsed. Partitions have been erected all through the continent, new border applied sciences have been deployed to discourage and expel the “undesirables”, and pushbacks, human rights violations and violence have been normalised. Dying continues to loom over the European continent’s borders. The UK-France deal could have been described as ground-breaking, however the EU-Turkiye deal in 2016 paved the best way for such “swap” insurance policies. These agreements fail. The EU-Turkiye deal could have lowered the variety of individuals crossing the Aegean Sea within the quick time period; nevertheless, it didn’t cease them. As a substitute, it shifted migratory routes, opened new ones, and made migratory journeys extra sophisticated and harmful.
The rationale for his or her failure is straightforward: human motion can’t be managed. Arguably, it may be prevented or delayed, but it surely can’t be stopped.
These insurance policies are rooted in racism and are intentionally designed to create division. Their primary goal is to separate human beings and decide who’s worthy of residing in security and who must be expelled from Western territory. They shouldn’t be seen in isolation from the EU’s and the UK’s colonial and capitalist pasts. On the identical time, the spectacle of the border is totally staged: It produces the phantasm of management over a manufactured disaster that can’t really be managed. In actuality, the essence of migration deterrence is to not succeed however to persuade residents that it’s mandatory.
The views expressed on this article are the authors’ personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
