Contesting the integration narrative: Shifting perceptions of EUrope

Mercosur: Limits of Regional Integration This study is focused on the evaluation of successes and failures of the Common Market of the South (Mercosur). This analysis of Mercosur’s integration seeks to identify the reasons why the bloc has stagnated in an incomplete customs union condition, although it was originally created to achieve a common market status. To understand the evolution of Mercosur, the study offers some thoughts about the role of the European Union (EU) as a model for regional integration. Although an EU-style integration has served as a model, it does not necessarily set the standards by which integration can be measured as we analyse other integration efforts. However, the case of Mercosur is emblematic: during its initial years, Mercosur specifically received EU technical assistance to promote integration according to EU-style integration. Its main original goal was to become a common market, but so far, almost thirty years after its creation, it remains an imperfect customs union.The article demonstrates the extent to which almost thirty years of integration in South America could be considered a failure, which would be one more in a list of previous attempts of integration in Latin America, since the 1960s. Whether it is a failure or not, it is impossible to envisage EU-style economic and political integration in South America in the foreseeable future. So far, member states, including Brazil, which could supposedly become the engine of economic and political integration in South America, have remained sceptical about the possibility of integrating further politically and economically. As member states suffer political and economic turmoil, they have concentrated on domestic recovery before being able to dedicate sufficient time and energy to being at the forefront of integration.

This is a reprint of the Special Issue The Rule of Law and Human Mobility in the Age of the Global Compacts: Relativising the Risks and Gains of Soft Normativity?, which hosts nine contributions that critically dive in the normative, administrative, and judicial obstacles and potential standing of the legal framework and implementation setting of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration (GCM) and the Global Compact for Refugees (GCR). The following four thematic clusters are proposed: 1. The justiciability of the actionable commitments under the Global Compacts before domestic courts as a threshold for the degree of judicial protection for migrants and refugees; 2. How human rights treaties and the Global Compacts are connected might matter for the level of rights protection; 3. Externalized migration policies and border management as a threat for the regional scope of human rights and as a risk factor for the rule of law; and 4. Data-driven and evidence-based migration policies, including digital technology as facilitators for standardizing migration and asylum decisions. By inquiring into human rights protection at the boundaries of the political commitments under the Global Compacts, this reprint engages in a conversation about the confinements that migrants and refugees encounter when accessing their substantive and procedural rights and encourages legal science/scholars to map an emerging field of study within global migration governance.

This chapter investigates and unravels the extent and drivers of Turkey’s external differentiated integration with the European Union (EU) in the field of border management. While Turkey’s EU accession negotiations remain in a state of coma, there is a continuing need for policy convergence and alignment in areas of common interest such as migration governance. With a view to combat irregular migration, the EU has placed the export of its border management norms and rules at the centre of its dialogue with Turkey. Thus, EU–Turkey relations in the field of border management represent an appealing case to study policy convergence between the EU and Turkey outside the accession scheme and examine the ever-evolving phenomena of external differentiated integration from both policy-centred and theory-directed angles. The chapter first conceptualizes external differentiated integration and introduces the five explanatory factors that have been recurrently used by the literature to explain the variance in (external) differentiation: politicization, extent of mutual interdependence, asymmetry of interdependence, incentives and domestic conditions. It then critically assesses the effect of these prevailing drivers of differentiation on the three central issue areas concerning EU–Turkey dialogue on border regime: the implementation of the Integrated Border Management (IBM), Turkey’s operational cooperation with FRONTEX and the March 2016 EU–Turkey Statement. Our findings reveal that attractive and credible material rewards functioned as a key driver of policy transfer in consideration of strong interest asymmetries in favour of Turkey. At the same time, issue-specific politicization and unfavourable domestic adaptation costs weakened Turkey’s external differentiation with the EU in the field of border management.

Asylum Policy and European Union Politics

Bu makale, AB’nin barışçıl bir bölgesel bütünleşme modeli olarak temsilinin Birliğin, “çatışma bölgeleri/kırılgan bölgeler” olarak tanımladığı bölgelerin üzerinde disipline edici bir güç uygulamasını nasıl meşrulaştırdığını göstermeyi amaçlamaktadır. AB, bu meşruiyet ile kendi “en iyi uygulamalar”ını diğerlerine empoze eder, kendi norm ve değerlerini yansıtır ve böylece Avrupa tarzı bir yönetimsellik uygulamış olur. Tüm bu uygulamaları sırasında AB, “çatışmaya açık” toplulukların kendilerine has kültürel, siyasi, ekonomik ve sosyal özelliklerine çok az önem verir ve yerel/toplumun tabanına ait failliği göz ardı eder. Bu makalede AB’nin bir barışçıl bütünleşme modeli olarak temsil edilmesinin onun bir “ideal güç” olarak yapılandırılmasına katkıda bulunduğu ve başka bölge ve ülkelerdeki barış inşası çabalarını meşrulaştırdığı argümanı öne sürülmektedir. Makalenin vardığı ana sonuç, AB araştırmacıları ve politika yapıcıları tarafından üretilen/yeniden üretilen“ideal güç Avrupa” meta-anlatısının Birliğin yönetimselliğini beslediği ve barış inşası ile alıcı toplumları disipline etmesine katkıda bulunduğudur.

Expert insights into the impact of aeropolitics on regional air market integration in ASEAN

The purpose of this study was to investigate the European Union (EU) Migration and Asylum Policy, a perspective of African migrants in Europe. Attempts were made to identify the perception of Africans in the EU on its migration and Asylum policy and assess whether the policy encourages migration and Asylum in the EU. To achieve this, descriptive survey was employed and questionnaires were administered to 100 respondents in Europe from different African countries. The data collected using the online questionnaires were analyzed using percentage, mean and standard deviations. From the results, it was concluded that immigration into the EU is undertaken by male citizens of most African countries especially at their youthful ages driven by the need to pursue education and job opportunities. Their stay in the EU breeds the desire (positive perception and desire) to obtain either work status or EU nationality. Many of them desire to be integrated into the host countries rather than repatriated to their countries. Finally, most of them greatly esteem the EU migration and asylum policy and prefer to stay within the EU than be resettled or repatriated, according to the new EU Pact policy.

The evolution of the border management landscape in the European Union (EU) over the past 40 years has been greatly shaped by two significant events: the 2004 EU enlargement and the 2015 “refugee crisis”. The two events led to the transformation of an exclusive competence of the EU Member States into a shared competence between them and the Union. They also catalysed the development of crucial mechanisms to current border control practices: the Schengen Information System (SIS) and other EU large-scale information systems, along with the establishment and transformation of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (EBCGA or FRONTEX). In recent years, border management has further evolved with the inclusion of new technologies such as algorithmic profiling or the use of artificial intelligence (AI). These innovations, however, also bring forth new ethical and fundamental right challenges.

This article delves into the role of bureaucrats and administrations in the development of national migration policies in West Africa. Based upon 87 interviews conducted in Accra, Dakar, and Brussels, it argues that the process of developing migration policies in Ghana and Senegal exhibits features of “bureaucratic politics.” West African bureaucracies have gained more national policy-making agency, due to the opportunities created by external funding from the European Union (EU) and the International Organization for Migration. EU funding fostered the policy expertise of local officials and provided certain administrative branches with resources to grow. In the process, bureaucracies in Ghana and Senegal have become more receptive to developing national migration policies and adapting to the EU external migration agenda. These findings add to an often-heard assumption in the literature about EU conditionality in its migration policy with non-EU countries — namely, that adaption to EU standards may be determined by not only the rewards given to foreign governments but also by the donors’ ability to establish a longer-term engagement with the bureaucracy. The research also demonstrates that EU migration cooperation reinforces the typical pattern of the postcolonial state, wherein the bureaucracy is funded by the state and external donors. The article addresses a gap in research on EU migration cooperation with the Global South and acknowledges the role of domestic bureaucracies in maintaining dependent postcolonial relationships with the EU in the realm of migration governance.

The European Union (EU) can serve as an example of a successful regional cigarette tax harmonisation and integration regime. This level of integration was motivated by an effort to ensure...

The author proposes in this article an updated methodological framework for the assessment and comparison of various models of regional economic integration in terms of assessing their advantages, strengths, weaknesses and effects. Set of criteria has been developed for this purpose (type, form, methods, mechanism, factors, terms). The proposed methodological approach also creates a framework, which allows comparing the scale, depth and dynamics of different models of integration

The European Union (EU) has been struggling to find a shared course on African migration since the entry into force of the Schengen Agreement (1995). It has done so through two interrelated processes of negotiation. Firstly, parties have negotiated narrative frames about migration and, in particular, whether migration should be interpreted in terms of security or in terms of development. Secondly, they have negotiated internal and external migration policies , that is, how migration should be managed respectively inside the EU (based on cooperation between EU member states) and outside it (based on cooperation with third states). In times in which narrative frames increasingly shape policy negotiations, it becomes very important to analyse how policymakers negotiate narrative frames on migration and how these shape policy responses. However, such an analysis is still missing. This discussion paper investigates how European states and institutions have negotiated the relation between EU borders and African mobility between 1999 and the beginning of 2019. It focusses in particular on how the process of negotiation of migration policies has been interrelated with a process of negotiation of narrative frames on migration. It does so based on an analysis of EU policy documents from 1999 to 2019 and on interviews with representatives of European and African states and regional organisations. Two major trends have characterised related EU negotiation processes: migration-security narrative frames have strengthened national-oriented and solid borders-oriented approaches (and vice versa), and migration-development narrative frames have strengthened transnational-oriented and liquid borders-oriented approaches (and vice versa). Since 1999, the European Council has mostly represented security- and national-oriented approaches, and the European Commission has mostly represented development- and transnational-oriented approaches. The two competing approaches have always been interlinked and influenced each other. However, in the last years, security-oriented national and solid border approaches have gained prominence over development-oriented transnational and liquid border approaches. In particular, the Commission has progressively mainstreamed national objectives in its transnational actions and security concerns in its development measures. Prioritising security over transnational development has augmented inequalities, in particular at the expenses of actors with scarce political representation in Africa and the EU. Such inequalities include increasing migrant selectivity and wage dumping.

Since the establishment of the Schengen area, border management has been having momentum within the European Union (EU) and, one of its major building blocks is the common policy on visas. This allows to control who can have access to the Schengen area for short stays that do not exceed three months over any six-month period. This article investigates how the EU visa policy has been influenced by the ever-evolving migratory dynamics towards the EU. Focusing on the latest reform of the Common Code on Visa, which has entered into force in 2020, this article argues that the new approach to conditionality in EU migration law has consolidated the intertwining between the EU visa policy and cooperation on readmission. Over the years, the latter has constituted an incentive for the EU in order to offer visa facilitation regimes or specific visa waivers to nationals of third countries. However, this article criticizes the new mechanism, introduced by the recent reform, and providing the European Commission with the mandate to propose specific restrictive measures related to visa processing and visa fee in case of a lack of cooperation especially on readmission. In an attempt to shed light on the legal concerns raised by this mechanism, the paper concludes that it even emphasises the discriminatory effects of the EU visa policy and, more generally, it impacts on the cooperation with third countries within the EU General Approach to Migration and Mobility.

Support for regional economic integration in Africa runs high amongst the continent's international development partners and African elites. However, its expression in European forms of economic integration is not appropriate to regional capacities and in some cases may do more harm than good. This lacuna is exacerbated by technical and theoretical analyses rooted either in economics or international relations literature. This article sets out to reconceptualise the foundations of African economic integration by reviewing key debates within each literature and comparing the results across disciplinary boundaries. Overall, it is concluded that a much more limited approach is required, one that prioritises trade facilitation and regulatory cooperation in areas related primarily to the conduct of business; underpinned by a security regime emphasizing the good governance agenda at the domestic level. Care should be taken to design the ensuing schemes in such a way as to avoid contributing to major implementation and capacity challenges in establishing viable and legitimate states. In doing so, the presence of regional leaders with relatively deep pockets – South Africa in the Southern African case – points to the imperative of building such limited regional economic arrangements around key states.

This article examines the role of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the implementation of the European Union (EU) migration and asylum policy in Niger. Building on policy analysis and qualitative interviews with stakeholders, it contributes to the literature on the externalization process of EU borders. The first part of the article focuses on the international and local context in which this process has taken place in Niger since 2015. The second part refers to the principal-agent (PA) theory inspired from economics to model the dynamics of the delegation relationships linking the European Commission (EC) to the IOM and the UNHCR in Niger. It is argued that the two main objectives pursued by the EU through the externalization of its migration and asylum policy—namely the offshoring of border control and the outsourcing of asylum claims processing—are respectively fulfilled by the IOM and the UNHCR in Niger. As such, this article highlights how the cooperation of International Organizations (IOs) is critical to enable the EU to filter and restrict human mobility from the Sahel region.