Where have all our Human Rights Gone? EU Migration Policy 2008: Response and Resistance

Fortress Europe, with the free movement of labour within its borders and militarized borders facing the rest of the world has been constructed step by step during the past two decades. We have witnessed the sustained and deeper criminalisation of migrants, not only by right wing extremists, but by government Ministers at the national level as well as by official policy makers at the European level. Since 9/11, the issue of migration and asylum has been drawn into the debate and policy making on security.

These trends are very visible in the multiplication of detention centers in several EU countries; militarisation of the borders (Frontex project); mass raids on migrant centers and churches and summary deportation practices against undocumented migrants; a new attempt to recycle ‘guest worker’ programmes and to popularise ‘circular migration’ as a response to the perceived, but often denied need of migrant labour in the European economy.

While Europe’s economy, politics and culture has benefited enormously from decades of migration, European governments and their electorates continue to display a profound ambivalence about immigration. While similarities between European countries should not be overstated, in almost all cases, the issues of labour migration, undocumented migration, asylum and integration have become highly politically contested. Public and parliamentary debate on these issues are currently dominated by racism, xenophobia and islamaphobia.

The EU Return Directive

2008 will surely be marked as a watershed year in the formulation of the EU’s double standard migration policy:
On June 18, the Europe Parliament passed the EU Return Directive – an Expulsion Directive which was was adopted by 367 votes in favour, 206 against and 109 abstentions, with the Green and Left factions voting against the Directive.

The Directive allows member states to detain undocumented migrants for up to 18 months and impose a five-year ban on their return to the EU. This draconian directive targets impoverished workers and children from poor countries. It will affect the lives of an estimated 10 million undocumented migrants, who already suffer intense exploitation and are deprived of human and legal rights because the EU refuses them access to visas for residence and work.

This Directive has drawn global condemnation and protests: from within the European Parliament itself, from government leaders in the Global South (Bolivia, Mercosur governments in Latin America and from Senegal and ACP countries in Africa) and from Human rights organisations (Amnesty International, the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), the L'Association Européenne pour la Défense des Droits de l'Homme (AEDH) AEDF/International Federation on Human Rights (FIDH) and from migrant and social movements from Europe and across the world.

As a European Commission Directive, national mechanisms will still be required for its implementation and this provides the opportunity to intensify campaigns to defeat the Directive. Since its passage in the EP in June, several campaigns have been launched aimed at stopping the implementation of this Directive which not only denies migrants and refugees their human rights but also irreversibly rolls back years of human rights, political and civil liberties enshrined in EU national legislation.

The EU proposed Migration and Asylum Pact

With the French Presidency of the European Union (July-December 2008), a new EU Migration and Asylum Pact has also been placed at the top of the EU policy agenda.
Among its most notorious features are the adoption of a “selective discriminatory immigration” policy, which proposes cherry picking the brains and skills of the South and the use of the carrot of development aid to condition and entice Southern governments to implement EU’s migration policies. The imposition of a virtual EU ban on collective regularization, a mechanism which some EU governments (e.g Spain, Greece) have implemented to respond to the rights of undocumented workers, is particularly worrying.

The French Presidency of the EU is proposing to the EU member States that they adopt common agreements on a “concerted management of migration flows and co-development” as a model of negotiation through which the EU will promote selective immigration, and insist that Southern countries accept its nationals back home as well as those of other countries who have passed through their territory.

Since 1993, the UNITED death list has monitored the deadly results of the implementation of such closed borders policy. More than 6,700 deaths of migrants and refugees have been documented up to now. These deaths can be put down to border militarisation, asylum laws, detention policies, deportations and carrier sanctions. As we see in the proposed Migration and Asylum Pact, the EU governments’ only response to this is to introduce increasingly harsher retaliatory measures.

Similar protest to that which greeted the EU Return Directive is already growing around this proposed Migration and Asylum Pact.
Under the Banner of Bridges not Walls, a broad coalition of migrant and citizens movements are organizing a Citizens Summit during October 17-18 in Paris on the occasion of the Summit of the Council of the European Union and the holding of the Second Euro-African inter-ministerial conference on migration and development.

Increasingly, the link is being made between the strategy of Global Europe and Fortress Europe. In 2006, the European Union published its “Global Europe: competing in the world” whose explicit aim is to ensure “that competitive European companies, supported by the right internal policies (in Europe), must be enabled to gain access to, and to operate in, world markets”.

The Global Europe strategy is pursued in the new generation of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) which it is currently negotiating with Latin America, Africa and Asian regions and countries. These EU-FTAs are seen not only as promoting exploitative access to natural resources and public services in the South but also to contributing to deeper impoverishment and out-migration.
Besides being actually linked to the internal and external policies of a regime of ‘competitiveness’ and ‘deregulation’, the Global Europe strategy is also directly connected to other policies such as the undemocratic Lisbon Treaty, militarisation of borders, and promotion and intensification of polices underpinning Fortress Europe.

A particularly problematic aspect of this current policy trend is the increasing use of aid to promote the EU’s geopolitical interests. The French Presidency proposal includes re-directing development policy towards the fight against migration using part of the ODA budget. In France there is already a Ministry which combines development and migration policy. French and European development NGOs reject this tendency to use development aid, as a tool in the fight against migration, is extremely counter-productive.

Challenge and opportunity

In the face of the current EU policies, broad alliances of resistance are being built. During the September 21, Assembly of the Social Movements held at the closing of the European Social Forum (ESF) in Malmo, a common European campaign was launched to address both the European social as well as the migration agenda.

Significant and exciting strategies are being developed to bring together new transnational platforms among migrant communities and movements. Links are also being made to social movements in Europe and trade and ecological movements and campaigns in the South. Common visions are being forged and strategies are emerging to place a comprehensive human rights framework with people, not corporations and markets, at the center of policy making in Europe.

On April 15th, undocumented migrants in the cleaning, construction, retail, security and restaurant industries went on strike in Paris, occupying the headquarters of more than a dozen companies and demanding immediate legalisation. In Paris as well, sans papiers, undocumented workers, have been occupying a trade union hall in the center of the city since May 2 calling for trade union support for this demand.

This challenge calls for new social movement initiatives as well as new political actors as was articulated during the World Social Forum (WSF) on Migrations, held in Rivas, Spain in July:

“We, migrants, refugees, and displaced persons, our movements and organizations, and those in solidarity with our struggles, hereby constitute ourselves as a new political actor and social force on a global scale which has been further consolidated in this III World Social Forum of Migrations…
We want to restore the full dimensions of the dignity of all human beings, and reaffirm our commitment to struggle together against the damaging effects of market logic among us, which undermines the quality of the lives of our families and communities, and of our social movements and organisations. This includes a recognition that our identities as migrants, refugees, and displaced persons does not imply the denial of our multiple and diverse identities, demands, and struggles in other spheres…

Migration is not a crime. It is instead the conditions which produce migration that are criminal.
We raise our voices, we defend our rights, and we struggle together in order to build a world without walls.
"

But of course the current migration policy regimes are not only a reality and challenge in Europe. Under neoliberal globalisation, migration both internal as well as out-migration has become a global phenomenon. In Africa, Asia and Latin America, migrant and social movements are facing similar challenges to move governments beyond inter-governmental cooperation on migrant ‘management’ and improved border controls.

Some international initiatives highlight migrant human rights protection, notably the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights of Migrants, the Global Campaign promoting the 1990 UN Convention for the Protection of All Migrant Workers and Members of their families and the UN General Assembly proclamation of International Migrants Day to be celebrated on December 18th. These UN frameworks have become important focus points for joint campaigning and reclaiming the rights of migrants, whether in Europe and in other global regions.

However, it is clear that the challenge to achieve fundamental transformation of migratory regimes needs to be a top priority of the global social movements and not only of migrant movements. Increasingly, the potential of such an alliance of social and migrant movements is being realized as evidenced at the Madrid WSF on Migrations and will also be on the agenda of the Global Week of Action in Manila (October 22-30) being organised as a counterpoint to the intergovernmental and corporate Global Forum on Migration and Development.

Some Further Selected Reading:

Anderson, Bridget (2008), Foreigners: Victims or Villains-a Political Debate in Open Democracy
Anderson, Bridget (2003) Turning survival into resistance in Life After Capitalism Essays
Boswell, Christina (2005) Migration in Europe: A paper prepared for the Policy Analysis and Research Programme of the Global Commission on International Migration, Migration Research Group, Hamburg Institute of International Economics
L'Association Européenne pour la Défense des Droits de l'Homme (AEDH) AEDH Statement, Brussels July 9, 2008
Transnational Migrant Platform (TMP) Call to Action, June 27, 2008
Call for a citizen summit on migration: Under banner of ‘Bridges not Walls’, this Citizens’ Summit is being organized in Paris on October 18-18th on the occasion of the EU Council Ministers Meeting and the second EU-African inter-ministerial conference on migration and development.
Global Call to Action (June 2008) Join the “Peoples’ Global Action on Migration, Development and Human Rights”, 22-30 October 2008, Manila, Philippines
Open Letter by President Evo Morales, Bolivia Regarding the EU "The Return Directive"
June 14, 2007
Source the Guardian, June 15, 2008