The fact that 700 to 900 migrants have drowned in the
Mediterranean, most of them refugees, does not change the perspective of the EU
towards the rest of the world. Although extra funding is being provided to
Italy for the rescue operations these deaths in the beautiful Mediterranean are
not anything new. Amnesty International estimated the deaths in 2014 alone were
2500 (assuming that many weren’t found)[1].
The Italian government and other Southern European governments cannot take all
the responsibility alone as EU has its own borders and Italy, for instance, has
only been unfortunate enough to be at the southern side of these borders.
Nobody is talking about Frontex, the law enforcement agency
that controls the borders of the EU, and was established in 2005[2].
Frontex exists to incur cooperation amongst the member states of the EU as well
as cooperation with the buffer zones such as Poland and Turkey, for instance,
which are the transit countries for many refugees and immigrants. These are a
few duties of Frontex that you can easily find on EU the website:
•
“coordinate operational cooperation
between Member States as regards the management of external borders;
•
develop a common integrated risk
assessment model and prepare general and specific risk assessments;
•
help Member States train their
national border guards by developing common training standards, providing
training at European level for instructors of national border guards, holding
seminars and offering additional training to officials of the competent
authorities;
•
monitor research relevant to the
control and surveillance of external borders;
•
assist Member States in
circumstances requiring increased technical and operational assistance at
external borders;
•
provide Member States with the
necessary support in organising joint return operations. The agency may use the
Union resources available for this purpose and must draw up an inventory of
best practice for the removal of third-country nationals residing illegally in
Member States;
•
deploy Rapid Border Intervention Teams to Member States under urgent and exceptional pressure due to,
for example, a massive influx of illegal immigrants.”[3]
Nobody nowadays mentions the effects of establishing
a highly securitizing and excluding border agency and the consequences of it. And
few people have drawn attention to the link between migration and development.
It seems that tragedy, humanitarian rescue, and border control are the only
things we hear when we listen to the politicians. Some can even say, “well the
numbers of the dead are not that high”, or some can say, “it is the smugglers
and traffickers’ fault that these people are being fooled into these dangerous
routes.” What about the historical responsibilities of all the countries who
had, for centuries, colonies in all of Africa? The UK, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium,
Spain, Portugal and Turkey (especially North Africa and Middle East) are all
countries that have the historical responsibility towards the conflicts and
chaos that are caused in the most oil-rich countries of the world because
historically they had been involved. And history incurs responsibility.
Many years ago, when I attempted to become a
journalist, I met an Egyptian doctor and he had showed me Sub-Saharan Africa
and told me “this part of Africa is going to be so prominent in the future, as
they are all oil-rich.” No wonder why he told me this and no wonder why all
these people not being the owners of their own resources are being forced to
migrate out of their countries because of extremist groups that are definitely
supported by capitalist powers for their bloody strategic interests. I could
not understand at the time what he meant, but today it is easy to see that
human blood is cheaper than oil.
All these countries mentioned above have the
historical responsibility to open their doors, and borders in the face of a
humanitarian crisis to the refugees and asylum-seekers. These people are
desperate to leave their countries and they cannot benefit from the ‘right to
stay’. Right to stay as explained by Kieran Oberman[4]
(2011), is every person’s right to stay in their own country if the
circumstances avail them to do it. If they are peaceful and have the economic
opportunities, most of the people would not have left their cultures, families
and would not have taken these tremendous risks with their babies in their
arms.
The unfortunate issue and fact is that all we talk
about is numbers. How many migrants are there in that country? How many are coming
and how many are exiting? It’s too bad that nobody has exit controls. Let’s
build a Great Wall of China around Europe so that nobody but us can benefit
from prosperity while using cheap labor from all over the world. How many
people have died on the sea? And how many countries have taken a step to follow
a common European Asylum policy? While the answers to the other questions are
not clear and will never be exactly known, the answer to the last question is
that as long as the asylum-seekers’ numbers are not too high, all the EU powers
had signed up for the Common European Asylum Policy[5].
But it seems that the protections that are proposed amongst the common policies
might not be sufficient for the EU to take a more detailed and humanitarian
perspective towards the issue. Here comes the technocratic view, devoid of
empathy for ‘others’ but full of decisions that lead in some cases nowhere. And
yet it is the EU that is given the Noble prize for peace. Isn’t it paradoxical?
It seems that we are living in an upside down world (or
is it our ‘false consciousness’, as Marx would ask) that makes us think that
world is like this and this is the only way it could function. Therefore, many
of the suggestions proposed by scholars, experts and dreamers are never
listened to. And if it is the migration experts who are being listened to, why
don’tthese experts bring forward the old good ideas of ‘development of the
sending countries’ and ‘historical responsibility’?
[2]
http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/justice_freedom_security/free_movement_of_persons_asylum_immigration/l33216_en.htm
[3] http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/justice_freedom_security/free_movement_of_persons_asylum_immigration/l33216_en.htm
[4] Oberman, K. (2011). Immigration, global poverty and the right to
stay. Political studies, 59(2), 253-268.
[5] http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/asylum/index_en.htm
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