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Centro Studi di Politica Internazionale
Via d'Aracoeli, 11 - Roma
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Centro Studi di Politica Internazionale Via d'Aracoeli, 11 - Roma
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Migraction
MIGRAZIONI E COOPERAZIONE INTERNAZIONALE, IL FUTURO DELL'ITALIA
Migration policies and human rights at EU borderlands
| The
project
The
quality of European democracy is increasingly to be measured at European
borderlands. Frightened
by an increasing migratory pressure at its frontiers, the EU tends to
stop undesired migrants from arriving well before its territory,
decentralising controls and entitling countries located at the European
periphery with the delicate and costly tasks of controlling and
contrasting irregular migrations, fighting smugglers, protecting
refugees and asylum seekers. Peripheral
contexts do not always ensure adequate respect for fundamental human
rights, especially in the case of migrants and asylum seekers. The need
for more efficient controls could lead to undermining migrants’ rights.
The EU thus plays an ambiguous role: on one hand it considers democratic
principles and the respect for human rights as a central component of
the dialogue with neighbouring countries and as condition for developing
further relations with them. On the other hand, requiring these
countries to filter migrations, it runs the risk of favouring the
adoption of undemocratic control policies. Migrations
and human rights is
a component of CeSPI’s MigraCtion
research programme and it aims at analysing
the link between migration policies on one hand and the quality
of democracy and the respect for human rights on the other, in two
relevant and problematic regions, situated at the Eastern and the
Southern European frontier. The analysis is based on monitoring the
evolution of the legislative and policy framework and of public debate
on immigration, emigration, asylum and human trafficking and smuggling
in these two regions, particularly focusing on Romania and Morocco.
Two
correspondents were selected in these countries to follow the political
and legislative developments, to report and analyse related news and to
animate a trans-national debate on what happens in these two regions in
the field of migrations and human rights. This
webpage offers part of the research products and the main tools for our
analysis: a policy framework for both countries, regular updates on the
debate, a review of links and bibliography. The site is organised in two
parts, one devoted to the Eastern border, the other to the Mediterranean
border. Each section is divided in three subsections: analyses, news and
links. In order to promote a truly trans-national debate, the website is
trilingual. |
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Our research Diritti migranti aims at analysing the nexus between the quality of democracy and migration policies at EU borderlands. Romania has been chosen as a key test case, as it is situated at a very delicate hub of the East West migration routes, and represents a major stopover on the way the EU territory for important emigration countries such as Moldova and Ukraine. An emigration country itself all through the 1990s, Romania has seen the lifting of Schengen visa requirements for its citizens in 2002, and Romanian communities have grown significantly in several EU countries (Italy is an important case in point). The process of EU accession, that Romania will successfully complete in 2007, provides the main guidelines for the evolving Romanian migration policies. Romania recently closed all chapters of negotiations for adhesion, including chapter 24, on justice and home affairs. EU concerns are however mainly centred on the Romanian authorities’ capacity to manage the future EU external border. The need to rapidly comply with demanding Schengen requirements can lead to forcing democratic processes, in the field of migration laws and policies, while the rights of transit migrants and asylum seekers risk to be undermined by an improved efficiency in control mechanisms. A close monitoring of the evolution of migration policies, in this crucial phase of the accession process, is very useful to analyse to what extent there is an (EU-induced) trade off between respect for democratic, civic and social rights and migration control. The critical target of our analysis is the actual effect of the external projection of EU policies, rather than the effectiveness of Romanian adaptation to norms and standards, and our research should not be see as aimed at putting under further scrutiny Romanian authorities in their path to the EU. While focusing on Romania, our analysis also addresses these issues in the wider regional context, taking into account developments in Bulgaria, Ukraine and Moldova.
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A
traditional emigration basin, Morocco and other Maghreb countries
are increasingly becoming a transit area for irregular migrants heading
to the EU. This unprecedented development has led the EU to involve the
Maghreb countries more extensively in controlling and countering
irregular migration flows, and to tie financial assistance and the
opening of legal migration channels for the citizens of these countries
to the engagement of Maghreb governments in contrasting illegal
migration. A
short-sighted political approach and the strong impact on media of
migration issues generate a strong demand for facts and figures (quantative
data) to be disseminated to European public opinion. But using mere
quantitative criteria to evaluate the involvement of Maghreb countries
in controlling transit migrations might hide risks related to the
systematic (and unmonitored) outsourcing of migration controls to such
countries. Our website “MigraCtion-Migration and Human Rights” aims at monitoring on the field, carefully and independently, the actual effects of locating irregular migration controls at the EU’s southern gate.
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