The Shadow of Lives Lost in the Mediterranean Over Europe

Personal Reflexive Statement

I want to take up the issue of Europe’s treatment of refugees, as I believe that this is a topic that deserves attention in its full seriousness. Lack of commitment to search and rescue operations and criminalization of NGO rescue missions means that refugees face grave risks when trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea in search of a better future. Many die each year. And these deaths are no longer perceived as shocking, they are merely statistics in Europe’s social imaginary. What we are seeing is a disregard for refugee lives. I contend that this disregard is revealing when it comes to the state of contemporary Europe and especially the European Union. I explore the contradictions that characterize the EU’s response to refugees and irregular migration since 2015, the year when the Syrian civil war propelled a surge of movement towards Europe’s shores. The humanistic critique I undertake in this article is as act of solidarity from a distance with those who have borne the brunt of EU’s harsh migration regime.

[T]ragedies involving refugees are not investigated. There is no forensic research, no search and rescue mission, no DNA testing, no post-mortem evaluations, no apologies to bereaved families and no compensation. Khiabany (2016:757)

A recent survey, published by the European Council on Foreign Relations, titled “Crisis of confidence: How Europeans see their place in the world (2021),” has revealed that public faith in the EU institutions has declined due to the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. The haphazard response, that saw individual Member States approach the pandemic as a zero sum game (choosing to go it alone instead of cooperating), has understandably caused much disappointment among Europeans. On the other hand, the results of the study also indicate that the project of Europe is not doomed: democracy and human rights rank first among the respondents’ expectations of Europe. According to the survey, these two values of Europe and the EU ought to be strengthened if the continent is to successfully navigate the challenge of Covid-19 and retain its identity. Europeans recognize that however much leaders of the current institutions fail, they only have temporary stewardship of the EU. As much as this is a hopeful proposition, it is anything but certain that the continent will not continue to move in the direction opposite to its (declared) values.

In fact, before and during the Covid-19 pandemic, Europe’s treatment of refugees provides growing evidence that the continent is losing its moral compass, and that Europe is increasingly callous – so-called Fortress Europe. ¹ Brute force, deterrence, including pushbacks and barbed wire fences have become the instruments with which European governments have used to respond to irregular migration and refugees. Far right leaders such as Marine Le Pen, Matteo Salvini and Viktor Orban have exerted a decisive influence on the politics which is behind this response. The far right has in the course of few years turned Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel’s initial welcoming attitude towards refugees (Wir Schaffen das, We can do it) into its opposite across Europe (Guardian Editorial 2021a). ²

This article contends that Europe’s treatment of refugees is an issue where “a titanic battle is being waged for Europe’s integrity and soul, with the forces of reason and humanism losing out, so far, to growing irrationality, authoritarianism and malice” (Varoufakis 2016:245). A Fortress Europe mentality speaks to a callous disregard for humanity with authoritarian tendencies. Overshadowed by Covid-19 since 2020 in Europe and beyond, this is an important phenomena in its own right. This article does not set out to offer solutions or remedies to what is often called a “crisis”. “Crises” of the contemporary Europe Union have been a prominent research topic of late in European Studies. This has included studying the European integration process and engagement with the three grand theories of European integration — neo-functionalism, intergovermentalism and post-functionalism — by exploring their ability to explain integration, disintegration and crises (the Eurocrisis, the migration crisis, Brexit and illiberalism) (see Marks and Hooghe 2019; Schimmelfennig 2018). The anthology The European Union in Crisis edited by Dinan et al. (2017) is a comprehensive study of the EU crises that combines both theoretical discussions and empirical studies of various EU crises and EU institutions. In addition, the crisis of European integration is comprehensively researched in the book. Most recently, The Palgrave Handbook of EU Crises edited by Riddervold et al. (2021), analyses competing scenarios for the EU in short, medium and long-term — from breaking down to heading forward. The book endeavors to understand how public organizations cope with crises and thus studies the sustainability and resilience of public organizations during times of unrest.

This article explores the EU’s (relative) disintegration on the issue of migration and refugees. I will argue that, although Member States repeatedly chose to circumvent supranational institutions in order to stem the tide of refugees (see Bosilca 2021), they have been emboldened by the conduct of the EU. I seek to bring to the fore the contradiction between the EU’s self-proclaimed values — human dignity and human rights — and the authoritarian practices of the (neoliberal) union and its border guard agency, Frontex. My main focus lies on the calamitous conditions of refugees and the thousands of deaths that have occurred at the Mediterranean since 2015, the year that refugees fleeing Syria’s civil war started making their way to Europe. Importantly, the Mediterranean is the deadliest border in the world; it is the veritable global epicenter of lethal border crossings (De Genova 2018; see also Fargues 2017). I will argue that the lack of political impetus to meliorate this dire reality reveals a disregard for refugee lives. Not ignoring the level of nation states, this article will nonetheless primarily focus on the EU’s responsibility for this human calamity.

Methodologically, I follow the tradition of the first generation from the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. I thus proceed by way of confronting realities with the norms that are meant to undergird the EU’s governance (see Adorno 1998:281–288). In order to arrive at a Europe which is not Fortress Europe, the current day humanitarian crisis must be critically understood. In other words, “the false, once determinately known and precisely expressed, is already an index of what is right and better” (Adorno 1998:288). In terms of study materials, I rely on reports, policy documents and academic research on migration and refugees in Europe.

I begin the article by providing definitions of the key terms of this article. Secondly, I sketch an overview of the European migration policy as outlined in the European Agenda on Migration. The document from 2015 articulates the EU’s aims and principles vis-à-vis the increasing numbers of refugees and the growing humanitarian calamity at the Mediterranean Sea. Thirdly, I investigate how response to the refugee crisis contradicts the Agenda on Migration. Lastly, drawing on critical theory, I reflect the normative failing that this contradiction exposes and dissect the underlying forces that have contributed to it in Europe.

Definition and Essential Protections

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees declared that

[r]efugees are people outside their own country of origin because of fear persecution, conflict, violence, or other circumstances that have seriously disturbed public order, and who, as a result, require “international protection.” Their status is often so perilous and intolerable, that they cross national borders to seek safety in nearby countries, and thus become internationally recognized as “refugees” with access to assistance from states, UNHCR, and relevant organizations. They are so recognized precisely because it is too dangerous for them to return home, and they therefore need sanctuary elsewhere. These are people for whom denial of asylum has potentially deadly consequences (UNHCR 2016:1).

Migrants, on the other hand, “may move across international borders to improve their lives by finding work, or in some cases for education, family reunion, or other reasons. People may also move to alleviate significant hardships that arise from natural disasters, famine or extreme poverty” (UNHCR 2016:2). In addition, irregular migration is generally used to identify persons moving outside regular migration channels. The fact that they migrate irregularly does not relieve states from the obligation to protect their rights. Moreover, categories of migrants who may not have any other choice but to use irregular migration channels can also include refugees, victims of trafficking, or unaccompanied migrant children (The International Organization for Migration 2021).

The principle of “non-refoulement” means that refugees and asylum seekers cannot be returned to a territory where they will, or are likely to be, subject to persecution. Non-refoulement does not mean that states are obliged to grant refugees asylum, citizenship, or permanent residency; it merely obliges them not to contribute to the harms of persecution. Academic research concedes that there is no sharp distinction between “refugee” and “migrant”; instead, we are dealing with a continuum with mixed and often changing causes and motivations (Crawley 2016:17)

The right to asylum is the other main protection afforded to refugees in the current international system. The right to asylum is a compendium of other, more specific rights, including the right not to be legally penalized for seeking asylum, to access the justice system, to primary education, to work, to access documentation, to the same levels of freedom of movement as enjoyed by citizens of the state, and to similar levels of welfare provision as are made to the citizens.

In practice, an individual’s right to non-refoulement, and subsequent right to asylum, is established via a credible fear interview conducted by an agent of the state or territory in which the individual has landed (Kling 2019:5–8).

The EU Migration Policy: An Overview

When over 4000 refugees lost their lives in the Mediterranean in 2015, a need for common action in the EU became clear. This led to the creation of Emergency Action Plan. The plan included strengthening joint operations in the Mediterranean, closing down human trafficking, the creation of EU wide projects for resettlement, the creation of new return programs and coming to agreements with third countries. Subsequently, the European Agenda on Migration was adopted to manage the external dimension of EU migration. I will now provide an overview of the aims and principles of the 2015 Agenda, as the document that decisively shaped the EU’s response to irregular, external migration.

The Agenda declares that Europe should be a safe haven for refugees. Ethical obligations of solidarity and shared responsibility ought to guide the EU’s and member states’ response to migration. There needs to be a coordinated effort, a joint European action plan. Thus, different actors — member states, EU institutions, civil society, local authorities and third countries — need to work together towards a common policy.

The Agenda stipulates the following immediate actions to save lives at the Mediterranean:

• Saving lives at sea. Search and rescue operations will be stepped up to the level of former Italian “Mare Nostrum” operation. The budget for the Frontex joint-operations Triton and Poseidon will be tripled in order to achieve this. These operations will expand in scope, so that Frontex can fulfill its dual role of coordinating operational border support to the member states under pressure and to help save the lives of migrants at sea.

In addition to these immediate actions, the Agenda includes four pillars or levels of structural action which is fair, robust and realistic. These are (i) reducing the incentives for irregular migration, (ii) border management — saving lives and securing external borders, (iii) Europe’s duty to protect: a strong common asylum policy, (iv) new policy on legal migration. It is beyond the scope of this article to outline all these at length. There are also several aims that occur already in the immediate aims: these are stopping traffickers, strengthening the role of Frontex and crafting a common asylum policy. I note that the pillar (i) considers necessary a humane and dignified treatment of returnees and a proportionate use of coercive measures, in line with fundamental rights and the principle of non-refoulement (European Commission 2015).

All in all, the European Agenda on Migration from 2015 stipulates a response to the refugee crisis that is in accordance with human rights and based on the principles of coordinated action and solidarity. Furthermore, the agenda comes across as cognizant of the humanitarian dimension of the problem of forced migration. It suggests an openness and responsibility on part of the EU, instead of closure and deterrence.

Before proceeding, I note that the European Commission has renewed its migration policy in 2020. In an apparent admission of failure, the document, titled New Pact on Migration and Asylum, declares that the previous system no longer works, and that the issue of migration has reached a stalemate. The Pact is based on in depth consultations with the European Parliament, all Member States, civil society, social partners and business. It crafts a balance between these perspectives. Despite the admission of failure, the Pact does not undertake a thorough overhaul of the migration system. Rather, it reinforces the commitment to border controls and (declared) fair sharing of responsibility. Having outlined the principles of this system since 2015, I will now turn to the exploration of the actual practices and human consequences of the EU’s migration regime.

Narrating Systemic Failures and Violations

In what follows, I seek to present an overview of the main failures and violations of the EU’s migration practice at its external Mediterranean border.

I begin with the violation of the right to non-refoulement — the right not be returned to a territory where they will, or are likely to be, subject to persecution. Over the past years, as the EU and its Member States have decreased their maritime search and rescue (SAR) operations, the Libyan Coast Guard (LCG) has increased its role in intercepting migrants in the central Mediterranean Sea and returning them to Libya. In 2020, at least 10,352 migrants were intercepted and returned to Libya by the LCG, compared to at least 8403 in 2019. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN Human Rights) has repeatedly stressed that Libya cannot be considered a safe place for the return or disembarkation of migrants intercepted or rescued at sea. Furthermore, such returns may constitute a violation of the principle of non-refoulement. (OHCHR 2021:3–4). Pressure from the EU has been decisive in making Libya more proactive in SAR operations. The country has also dramatically increased their SAR zone, barring NGOs from entering their waters (Fine 2019:5). As Howden, Fotiadis and Campbell (2020) write, the EU’s machinations with Libya — which include the unlawful policy whereby the Frontex’s flight crews or drones provide coordinates of refugee vessels to the Libyan coast crew for interception (or so-called ‘pull-backs’) — has paved the way for Member States’ human rights violations (for instance, Greece’s decision to stop accepting asylum applications in 2020). This strategy has relied on a denial of responsibility for Libyan coast guard operations. Brussels and Rome have flouted international law in the name of controlling migration. As the Amnesty International (2021b:52, 48) writes in their recent report, entitled “‘No one will look for you’: Forcibly returned from sea to abusive detention in Libya,” “for over a decade, state and non-state actors in Libya have subjected to a litany of horrors including indefinite arbitrary detention, unlawful killings, rape, torture and forced labour. Despite full awareness of such crimes, EU member states, led by Italy, continue to enable Libyan coastguards to intercept thousands of people in the Mediterranean and return them directly to arbitrary detention and other abuse in Libya” and “these findings highlight predictable yet untenable outcomes of continued cooperation between EU member states and institutions with Libyan authorities to prevent refugees and migrants from reaching Europe.” No less critical of the EU is the Human Rights Watch (2019). In their report, “No Escape from Hell: EU Policies Contribute to Abuse of Migrants in Libya,” the argument is made that EU’s continuing contribution to Libyan coast guard operations, despite knowledge of wrongdoings, reinforces a cycle of violations. Under the aegis of taking back control of its external borders, the union’s efforts have only intensified since the year 2016 (Figure 1).OPEN IN VIEWER

The case of the EU and Libya is one particular example of a strategy that Almustafa (2021:11) calls “externalizing” or “outsourcing border controls”, using a third country to deter and detain refugees and irregular migrants. Search and rescue operations by the EU or Southern European countries have come to a standstill because Member States assign responsibility for it to countries on the other side of the Mediterranean. European cooperation with North African countries on this issue at large is motivated by the will to delegate responsibility for border security and asylum processing to them. Morocco and Tunisia, however, are ill-equipped to manage these tasks. Attempts to reform their asylum systems have not succeeded, partly because these nations fear that the EU will label them as safe countries, and thereby make them responsible for the numbers of asylum seekers in the region. Nonetheless, this strategy has had its impact. After the height of migration from North Africa, between 2015 and 2018, the annual number of migrants has fallen sharply. Some European politicians have considered this a success story in terms of the reduction of migration to Europe’s shores. But as research points out, the North African countries to which the responsibilities have been delegated, are not signatories to the 1951 Geneva Convention that established the rights of refugees to seek sanctuary, and the obligations of states to protect them. Although the absolute number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean has fallen, the proportion of deaths in relation to arrivals has markedly increased between 2017 and 2019 as a consequence of outsourcing maneuvers. Thus, the death rate has increased from one in every 38 arrivals in 2017, to one in every 14 in 2018, to one in every three in the first 4 months of 2019 (Fine 2019:4).

In another sinister step, the EU and Member States have criminalized rescues at sea by NGOs. According to the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), national authorities in EU Member States have undertaken some 50 administrative and criminal proceedings against NGOs conducting SAR operations. NGO’s SAR vessels have been either impounded or otherwise prevented from carrying out operations. Reasons for doing this range from questioning the legality of their work and funding to allegedly facilitating and abetting “illegal migration.” UN Human Rights experts have voiced their concern over attempts to criminalize the work of NGOs. This amounts to a campaign against civil society organizations and migrant right defenders. Consequently, the already limited SAR capacity in the central Mediterranean has further declined, directly endangering the lives of migrants (OHCHR 2021:26–27). Member State obstructions include denying the NGO rescue vessels access to ports. In 2018, Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Salvini banned people from disembarking from Italian ports. Later, in 2019, the Spanish government followed suit and also criminalized NGO rescue operations. The country has refused to grant departure permits to NGO rescue vessels since 2019. The Spanish Ministry of development subsequently threatened Spanish NGO, Proactiva Open Arms with a fine of up to €900,000 for defying orders to confine its rescue ship to port (Fine 2019:7). ³

In sum, violations of non-refoulement principle through cooperation with the Libyan state, the wider policies of externalization of the handling of migration and criminalization of NGO SAR operations are some of the key policies that exemplify what the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called the “lethal disregard” shown by the current migration regime. It thus should not come as a surprise that a recent inquiry into search and rescue and the protection of migrants in the central Mediterranean Sea argued that “the real tragedy of the death and damage along the central Mediterranean route is that so much of it is preventable” (OHCHR 2021:2). Thinking about these realities in relation to the aims of the European Agenda on Migration (EAM) adopted in 2015, the contradictions are unmistakable. If saving lives was a priority, then, Frontex would be above all else a rescue agency instead of a border-patrolling security enforcement at the EU’s external border. Nation states and Frontex would clearly also cooperate with NGOs; in reality, Italy and Spain have criminalized a large part the SAR activities of NGOs. Criminal smuggling networks — the EU’s target in the EAM — have benefitted from the lack of legal pathways to Europe, which has led many asylum seekers to turn to people smugglers. The EAM states that a new policy on migration is one of the strategic priorities, but Europe’s migration regime has moved in the opposite direction since 2015. This can be discerned from the form that EU’s cooperation has taken with third countries: it is led by the motivation to externalize or outsource the issue of irregular migration. As we have seen in the case of Libya’s EU assisted pull-back operations in the central Mediterranean, violating the principle of non-refoulement and thereby endangering the lives of refugees is part and parcel of the hostility shown by the current migration regime.

Finally, I sketch the main differences between the actions of states in relation to managing irregular migration. Frontline states such as Greece and Italy criticized the lack of solidarity shown by other Member States and pushed hard for a fairer redistribution mechanism, but lacked leverage. By contrast, transit and destination countries supported more restrictive border controls, and had more bargaining power by virtue of their unilateral options. States could decide to seal their borders, or force asylum seekers to remain in the first state of arrival Transit countries such as Hungary, Macedonia and Austria feared large numbers of refugees being stranded in their territories, and subsequently facilitated the transit of refugees to their destination countries. In turn, destination such as Germany, Sweden and Norway countries gradually became more restrictive as migration flows steadily increased. Lastly, non-affected countries such as the Baltic countries had no interest or incentive to cooperate. Such displays of the primacy of national interests played their part in pushing the EU to outsource the migration issue. This includes the EU-Turkey agreement in 2016, which curbed the large number of refugees arriving in Europe (Bosilca 2021:474–475, 482).

Some Reflections

In this section, I will take up the tension which exists between the EU’s neoliberal policies and its commitment to human rights. In the second part of the section, I will draw on critical theory to makes sense of the lack of compassion shown to asylum seekers in Europe. The core of the discussion will focus on the EU.

The rise of right-wing populism stands out among the recent developments in Europe’s political landscape. The failures of the EU and nation states’ governments have provided fertile soil for hostility towards migrants which populist leaders from Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orban to Matteo Salvini have exploited. Consolidation of state finances, especially in the form of austerity in the post-2008 economic recession, has meant that as welfare protections in Europe has been cut back, competitive individualism has been on the rise. States may invest heavily in policing their borders but provide little protection against social and economic insecurity — once a primary duty of a government. The EU, with its resignation towards the perceived reality of the “brave new world” of globalization and its poor record of investing in its citizens, has not managed to counter these tendencies in any meaningful way. European societies remain internally stratified and vast differences of power and influence exist within the EU. The Southern periphery of the EU — at the forefront of grappling with migration — has borne the brunt of the eurozone’s German designed neoliberal economic policy. A lack of real unity or progressive vision continues to hold back Europe for more than a decade. ⁵ (This has arguably not changed since the advent of Covid-19). ⁶ Europe’s media has been part and parcel of this problem, and “the migration panic” is here a paradigmatic case. In and around 2015, when the migration crisis became a controversial and hotly contested topic, Europe’s media often (and sometimes using inflammatory language) presented migrants as exhausting Europe’s coping capacities, as even constituting a biblical exodus. ⁷ Thus, following Europe’s media, one gets the idea that most, if not all, refugees from the Middle East and Africa have chosen to find their way into Europe. ⁸ It is this fear-mongering cultivated by the media that is behind the migration panic that has in turn been exploited by nationalist or right-wing populist political forces across Europe. The recent burgeoning of nationalism in Eastern and Central Europe — but also in Italy and to lesser extent Spain and France — provides ample evidence that nationalism continues to be a potent force in Europe. Nationalists and ideologues for resurgent state sovereignty do not merely reject liberal Europe and the EU: they, claiming to stand for real Europe, invert it. ⁹ This applies especially, but not exclusively, to the rise of illiberal, authoritarian regimes in Eastern and Central Europe that in the last decade have been actively attacking the idea of further European integration and the liberalism of metropolitan elites. Ethnic nationalist parties have put forward similar arguments in Italy and France. Furthermore, research has shown that when far-right parties hold government positions, there is a substantive reduction in recognized asylum claims (Winn 2020).

The perceived difference between the increasingly illiberal migration policies of the Member States and the presumed liberal EU is, however, often over-stated. Since the 1970s, power, national interests and economic benefits have been integral to EU’s migration regime (Wolff 2020). The disparities I outlined between the EU’s migration rhetoric and actual practices shows that the presence of all of these forces has changed little or become even more pronounced in the last decade. The union is fiercely protective of its external borders much like, the United States. Its border guard agency, Frontex, which has recently come under scrutiny for human rights violations, is only the most conspicuous institution of this endeavor. Furthermore, a report in 2021 on Frontex concerning alleged human rights abuses has concluded that the agency was aware of Member State wrongdoings (i.e., pushbacks) in joint operations but failed to address these promptly and effectively. Consequently, Frontex failed to prevent the violations or stop their repeat in the future (Strik 2021). Two claims ought to be made here about the agenda and development trajectory of Frontex. Concerning the agenda of Frontex, Benedicto and Brunet (2018:14) write that “its main function is to control crime related to border areas, including intercepting refugees and migrants so that they do not arrive on the shores of Member States, so that no State has to manage the registration, possible asylum claim or deportation of the person” and “it is not a rescue agency for people as it is often said to be, as its activity focuses on the detection and processing of border-related crimes and surveillance and control of borders.” Frontex was established in 2004 with a task to coordinate operational coordination amongst member states in order to strengthen security at external borders (Fjortoft 2020:7). After the 2015–2016 “migration crisis”, in line with the spiralling securitization of migration in the EU, Frontex’s focus has been increasingly directed towards security related issues (Leonard and Kaunert 2020:10). While this does not explain the agency turning a blind eye to the human rights violations, it indicates that the issue of human rights has been overshadowed in its agenda by concerns with security and surveillance.

This reveals a broader tension between the EU as a neoliberal union where economic and financial interests dominate (see e.g., Ali 2018; Negri 2018) and human rights as one of the EU’s core values. The leitmotif of neoliberalism is competition, whereas the leitmotif of human rights is protection. Demands that vulnerable people require state protection (in accordance with international agreements) are antithetical to neoliberalism. Secondly, while human rights converge in the primacy they accord to individual responsibility, their constructions of self-responsibilizing individuals differ markedly. The ideal neoliberal individuals are citizen-consumers who exercise their freedom of choice in markets, the poster children of human rights are individuals who belong to vulnerable groups and find themselves exposed to violence, displacement or disrespect (Nash 2019:501–502). Human rights have not been powerful enough to ‘contain’ neoliberalism and its excesses. As Moyn (2014:151) argues, “human rights have not made enough of a difference in the short timeframe and global space they share with their neoliberal frere ennemi. They have been condemned to watch but have been powerless to deter.” Human rights have been powerless to deter spiralling inequality within nation states as well as globally but also the disposability of populations deemed surplus.

I now want to argue that Butler’s (2010) work, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?, can shed further light on the bloc’s current anti-humanist and anti-humanitarian refugee policy. The book, which is a response to Western countries war making in the Middle East and European immigration policies regarding Muslims, investigates how discursive framing of war and the suffering it causes are constitutive of both the reality of these phenomena and their (mediated) experience. As DuBois (2019:209–210) has argued, Frames of War explores how discourse frames what is (not) seen or heard, thereby contributing to the selectivity of human perception and affiliation. Doing so, Butler asks how the framing and the actual policies of Western powers deny the value of the lives of certain groups (who are perceived as “Others”). The current realities of Europe and the EU stand in relation to global states of affairs: the US invasion of Iraq and Israel’s occupation of Palestine. She particularly focuses on the conditions of “grievability” — it is the quality of lives being grievable that constitutes their inherent value. In her own words, “[p]recisely because a living being may die, it is necessary to care for that being so that it may live. Only under conditions in which the loss would matter does the value of life appear” and “without grievability, there is no life, or, rather, there is something living other than life. Instead, ‘there is a life that will never be lived,’ sustained by no regard, no testimony, and ‘ungrieved’ when lost” (Butler 2010:14–15). Ungrievable lives do not count in the social imagination: they cannot be destroyed because they are already dead. Accordingly, for example, the framing of (im)migration as “war at home” destroys any positive affiliation that European societies could have with immigrants and refugees.

Refugee deaths in the Mediterranean keep occurring almost daily. These deaths do not have a meaning, be that political or emotional. They have become an unremarkable part of the news coverage in Europe. This should be seen as an indication that refugee lives do not count in the social imagination. What stands out more than any other particular framing is that such a calamity continues at Europe’s doorstep. The institutions of the EU and nation state governments flout responsibility. Their legitimacy remains intact despite the continuous failure to protect lives — to value the lives of refugees. As the EU has sought to outsource migration to third countries, responsibility for migrant deaths too has been outsourced. Here particular the framing does matter. Framing the crossing of the Mediterranean as governed by smugglers delegates responsibility to notoriously unscrupulous smugglers; framing a commitment to rescue operations as a “pull factor” invoke danger and deadly accidents as necessary deterrence. Framing refugees as undeserving — for instance, a security threat — individualizes responsibility. If refugees do not deserve to live in Europe in the first place, then the loss of their lives does not mean much: the value of their lives is denied. Maneri (2021) and De Genova (2018) argue that the issue of race has to be taken into consideration when trying to grasp how the Mediterranean Sea has become a mass grave in the last decade. These deaths are not racially “neutral” — instead, they are disproportionately inflicted upon black and brown refugees from different parts of Africa and the Middle East. Europe’s external border is thus thoroughly racialized. Europe’s fortified borders defend white, postcolonial Europe by way of making black and brown lives disposable. ¹⁰ This is reinforced by a routine omission of race in migration discourses, by color-blindness that refuses to acknowledge the existence of racism in Europe’s past and present.

Before concluding, I would like to add that changes in the migration regime need to go further than respecting the human rights of refugees, important as this is. A new humanism —perhaps one similar to what Butler outlined, which affirms the value of refugee lives, is necessary. Migration policy needs to be guided by an actual regard for refugee lives. This means abandoning the prevailing security paradigm to irregular migration in favor of a humanitarian paradigm. Legal pathways for refugees are necessary in order not to leave them to the mercy of smugglers. Arguments for legal migration ought to be humanitarian, not based demographic trends such as Europe’s aging population or labor shortages. Doing so would go a long towards not only rehumanizing refugees but also rehumanizing “ourselves” by showing actual commitment to Europe’s values among which the value of human life is foundational.

Conclusion

This article has explored the rise of Fortress Europe as a response to the irregular migration and refugee crisis which followed the Syrian civil war. At Europe’s doorstop, at the Mediterranean, the EU’s and the nation states’ defense of territorial sovereignty is prevailing against humanitarian efforts to save lives. Thus the Mediterranean has become the most lethal border in the world. Those who dare to try to enter Europe’s closed border risk perishing. This is a calamity which continues daily — each new sunken vessel fails to bring change. Sporadic, ritualized mourning attended by Europe’s political classes fails to conceal that racialized refugee lives matter little in Europe and for the EU. Passing responsibility for these (avoidable) deaths on smugglers or blaming refugees’ recklessness means that European institutions and states often shirk theirs.

Drawing on the work of contemporary critical theorist, Butler (2010), I have contributed a humanist critique of the European status quo. What this humanism entails, is a strong normative commitment to equality, which undergirds a robust universalizing of human rights that seeks to address basic human needs, including security, for living. The leitmotif of the article has been critical theory’s insistence for us to confront prevailing norms with the realities that actually exist. The EU, as a force for a better, more livable world, is on its way to becoming irrelevant, something that was obvious well before the Covid-19 pandemic. This is what is principally at stake today, rather than the Union’s ability to survive an authoritarian nationalist turn in Europe, which has not helped its cause. As we have seen, the authoritarianism of the Right stands in a dialectical constellation with Brussel’s realpolitik — its securitarian agenda, exemplified by Frontex. European Studies, especially European Union Studies, should further investigate this constellation, and how it exposes the limits of the EU’s self-understanding as a bastion of human rights and human dignity in a world of widespread arbitrary power of states.

Finally, Europe’s response to Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, and the need for safe haven for refugees that this creates, indicates a continuity with how Europe has sought to outsource solutions to handling refugees in the recent years. The events in Afghanistan have invoked fears of a new refugee crisis similar to that of 2015 in Europe. Countries such as Greece, Austria, Germany and France have been adamant that this must not be allowed to happen. Avoiding another mass influx of asylum seekers – rather than solidarity – has thus been at the forefront of Europe’s response. While support for resettling the most vulnerable asylum seekers, especially women and children, does exist, the EU’s main strategy appears to be to keep refugees in the region. To do so, the EU’s cooperation will be strengthened with Afghanistan’s neighboring countries Pakistan, Iran and Tajikistan, and financial support of up to 1 billion euros will be offered as well (see Bennhold and Erlanger 2021; Von Der Burchard 2021).