Europe’s New Asylum Pact With the Devil
After the EU Parliament passed legislation last week to detain and expel more migrants, some lawmakers chanted “Send them back.” The anti-migration measures were pushed by the far right — but passed thanks to centrist pro-EU parties.
New EU legislation making it harder to apply for asylum won’t stop people heading for Europe in search of a better life. But it will undermine basic legal protections and produce an easily blackmailed mass of undocumented workers. (Hasan Mrad / DeFodi Images News via Getty Images)
As the European Union’s Brussels parliament voted through the latest piece in a jigsaw puzzle of anti-migrant legislation, dozens of far-right politicians took to their feet chanting “Send them back! Send them back!” There could not have been a clearer sign that Europe’s fascist past has successfully taken hold of its current political heart.
EU migration policies — designed by the far right and ushered in by centrists — attempt to unite Europeans behind a vision of mass violence against black and brown people. It will almost certainly fail in its ostensible objectives: it will not bind together the member states of the EU more intimately and correct the inequalities between them; it will not stop people dying at sea; it will not safeguard “real” refugees. And it will also fail in the implicit objectives of its strongest proponents: it will not deport hundreds of thousands of people; it will not make Europe more white, or more Christian, or more prosperous, or more secure. It will fail in every single way, on everyone’s terms.
A Decade in the Making
Ten years ago, in response to the arrival of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the repression of the Arab Spring, the EU instigated the “hotspot” policy. As I wrote back then, the term “hotspot” can be traced back to New York’s 1980s zero-tolerance policy and the first introduction of computing into police operations. The idea was that instead of responding to crimes after they happen, police units sit and wait at predicted “hotspots” to intervene before a crime happens. In 2016, the name was applied to a new method of detaining people on arrival in Europe, enforcing mass fingerprinting, screenings, and smuggling investigations. The “crime” was illegal entrance, the “heat” was simply people, and the “spots” were Mediterranean islands, from Lesbos to Lampedusa. For a decade, the hotspots have staggered onward without any proper definition under EU or national laws, a legal limbo in a political mess.
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