This proposal seeks to assess how migration governance has been influenced by the recent ‘refugee crisis’, and how crises at large shape policy responses on migration.
Since the beginning of the ‘refugee crisis’ in 2014, different policy responses have been put forward by governments and international organisations alike. Albeit very different from one another, these different responses had two common traits:
- They were generally presented as the sole realistic solution in the face of a situation that was often characterized as ‘unsustainable’.
- They were often geared towards a more efficient control and surveillance of the borders.
As the humanitarian crisis and the dire situation in countries such as Italy, Greece or Hungary should have prompted more cooperation in the EU, policy responses usually hinted at less cooperation, with the notable exception of the control and surveillance of the EU external border. This meant that the humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean soon transformed into a political crisis with the EU, culminating in the Brexit referendum, where the issue of border control played a decisive role in the decision of the British electorate to leave the EU.
As an attempt to revive the idea of a global governance of migration, the United Nations issued on 19 September 2016 the New York Declaration, which led to the launch of the Global Compacts on Migration and Refugees - both are them are still being negotiated at the time of submitting this proposal.
Therefore, MAGYC seeks to appraise these policy responses in the light of the crisis and assess their efficiency for the long-term governance of migration.