A vote on the EU Migration Pact – delayed from last week – will take place in the Dáil today. Niamh Keady-Tabbal and Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin argue that the Pact marks a significant escalation of the EU’s violent border policies and discuss the wider political context of increased hostility to migrants in Ireland and across Europe.
The escalating hostility towards migrants, particularly asylum seekers, in Europe over the past decade has been fuelled not only by the far right, but also by mainstream EU institutions and governments. The most recent intensification of Fortress Europe policies has been the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, a legislative package to reform the EU’s migration and asylum system, adopted by the European Council in May.
In Ireland, the Pact has been opposed by the far right and by the right-wing Rural Independents on opportunist, racist grounds. However, the Pact constitutes a major attack on the rights of asylum seekers. Though proponents of the Pact promise it will signify a ‘fresh start’, a break from the policy failures associated with Europe’s ‘refugee crisis,’ in reality it will ensure the further normalisation of human rights abuses that have been taking place within Europe, at its borders, and beyond – in so-called transit countries where the EU has pursued policies of border externalisation – over many years.
Ireland has the option to opt in or out of the Pact’s individual legislative instruments. With migration becoming an increasingly contentious issue in Irish politics, the Irish government announced its plans to opt in.
The decision comes as record numbers of international protection applicants have been forced to sleep rough on Dublin’s streets—a situation which has already led the State to be found in breach of its legal obligations. The images of asylum seekers’ tents lining the periphery of the international protection office and the nearby canal have been exploited by the political establishment to further the narrative of a ‘crisis’ of undeserving economic migrants abusing the asylum system — deflecting from what is a symptom of a much deeper and far-reaching housing crisis that the Government has failed to address.
The portrayal of the situation as a crisis has been used to justify the need for the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum. The Pact has been sold in Ireland, as elsewhere in the EU, as an antidote to the crisis, promising to provide “a more sustainable framework to manage migration.”
Despite being couched in language of fundamental rights, it is clear that what the Pact offers is just a “more procedural fortress Europe.” Existing structural flaws in EU asylum policy, such as the notorious Dublin system, which determines the member state responsible for processing an asylum claim and traps many in the country of their first arrival, are left largely intact. Meanwhile, access to asylum is narrowed.
Before the Migration Pact
The Pact is a continuation of the EU’s decades-long project of migration management, based on deterring asylum-seekers and containing racialised migrants outside its territory. The origins of this system go back to the Schengen Agreement of 1985, which tied the ‘free movement’ of European citizens and capital within the Union to robust, securitised external borders. This same thinking is clear in the EU Commission’s migration policy portfolio: ‘Promoting our European Way of Life’.
Current EU visa rules impose financial barriers and disproportionately restrict the movement of citizens from Africa, the Middle East and Asia, forcing more and more people to take irregular, often dangerous routes. At the same time, an increasingly militarised border regime prevents those fleeing persecution, violence, and insecurity, who are most likely to be excluded from obtaining visas, from accessing EU territory.
Fortress Europe’s borders are enforced by a specialised Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex. The agency deploys law enforcement officers to assist national authorities in ‘managing’ the EU’s external borders with surveillance on land, sea, and air.
Since its establishment in 2004, narratives of crisis have paved the way for Frontex’s expansion. The agency’s mandate and budget have grown enormously while its presence outside the EU has increased considerably. This expansion has coincided with the increasing brutalisation of border violence at the land and sea borders of the EU: pushbacks, violent and illegal returns of asylum seekers without a paper trail, are an everyday occurrence.
In the Central Mediterranean, surveillance by Frontex planes and helicopters has facilitated ‘pull-backs’ of migrants to Libya, where they face arbitrary detention, torture, sexual violence, and forced labour. In the Aegean Sea, Frontex has been complicit in systematic, life-threatening abuses carried out by the Greek Coast Guard, who routinely abduct newly arrived asylum seekers from islands, and expel asylum seekers–denying them access to asylum–by abandoning them to drift in rafts–usually after robbing them of their belongings and in some cases, beating them.
EU border policy and practices have shifted from deadly abandonment, characterised by the withdrawal of EU search and rescue missions in the Mediterranean and the criminalisation of civil search and rescue actors, to the normalisation of more direct forms of border violence against asylum seekers. As shown by a recent BBC documentary, which reported the deaths of 43 asylum seekers as a result of these practices between 2020 and 2023, asylum seekers have even been thrown directly into the sea by Greek officials, in some cases with their hands zip-tied.
The EU’s externalisation policies have enabled the normalisation of such extreme violence. EU deals with so-called ‘transit countries’ like Turkey or Tunisia, which outsource migration management, have been used to cast doubt on the deservingness of asylum seekers to justify denying them access to asylum in Europe. The Pact expands the applicability of the ‘safe third country concept’, opening up the possibility to refuse protection to a larger number of people on the grounds that they could have sought protection outside the EU.
The EU Migration Pact
The Pact not only fails to remedy the structural flaws in EU asylum policy—particularly the disproportionate responsibility placed on member states at the external borders. Instead, it prioritises containing asylum seekers at the external borders and preventing their movement further into the EU.
The Pact codifies into law some of the most harmful border policies and practices in place at the external borders. Drawing inspiration from the notorious ‘hotspot approach’, which transformed Greek islands into ‘open air prisons’, the Pact introduces mandatory pre-entry screening for all unauthorised third-country nationals, including asylum seekers, to determine whether the individual is referred to asylum, return or relocation procedures. These screening procedures will not only apply to new arrivals at the border but also to unauthorised migrants apprehended anywhere within EU territory. During screening, migrants are deemed “not authorised to enter” despite their physical presence, a legal fiction of non-entry.
Such extraterritorial processing limits the rights of migrants and asylum seekers in practice. Australia’s excision of islands from its “migration zone” and the US’s use of Guantanamo Bay to detain Cuban and Haitian refugees are examples of this. Under the Pact, this practice will likely result in mass detention, including detention of children, as individuals are obliged to ‘remain available to the screening authorities during the screening’, to prevent any risk of absconding.
The Pact allows Member States to rely on border procedures, traditionally used in exceptional cases–in airports, transit zones, and for “abusive” claims––as the default procedure for processing asylum applications. These procedures will now be mandatory in the case of applicants whose claims are considered unfounded or ‘abusive’, as well for those from a country with a recognition rate of under 20%. This subjects a wider range of asylum seekers to border procedures, where they may be detained for up to 12 weeks (16 weeks in the case of relocation) during which they will not be considered as being present on EU territory.
Proponents of the Pact have advanced a vision of a streamlined system, centred around efficiency. They claim that this new system will be “fair to those who genuinely need our help” while being “firm to those who don’t”, as Minister for Justice Helen McEntee stated. Those “who don’t” , importantly, encompasses not only those who fall outside the scope of the narrow legal definition of a refugee, but also those who have protection needs who engage in “secondary movement”—in other words, those who seek asylum in Ireland after applying for asylum in another EU member state.
In the most recent Dáil debate, McEntee argued that the Pact benefits not only for Ireland and the EU but also international applicants themselves. Echoing the managerialist speak of the European Commission, a narrative of ‘humanitarianism’ is being used as a pretext to harsher border policies. Under the guise of upholding the ‘rule of law’ and fundamental rights, the Commission has tried to appease xenophobic and racist opposition to migration while maintaining a facade of moral legitimacy. EU Commissioner Ylva Johansson, celebrated the Pact as a ‘true compromise’: far-right restrictionism, cloaked in the ostensibly neutral language of migration management.
Political Context
The political backdrop to this is a significant shift to the right across Europe. The Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), a party with their political roots in Mussolini’s fascism, took power in Italy in October 2022 under the leadership of Giorgia Meloni. The European elections last weekend resulted in major gains for the far right in France and Germany. Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (National Rally) won the popular vote in France with 31.5%. Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) finished second in Germany, ahead of the SPD, which is leading the German government.
The European establishment has also been making moves to accommodate the far right or to adopt some of their policies and rhetoric. French business leaders are reportedly making links with Le Pen in the face of the New Popular Front created by left parties to confront both the French government and the far right.
In Ireland, while the Government has criticised the far right’s ‘divisive’ rhetoric, Taoiseach Simon Harris has seized on immigration as a wedge issue to distract from his government’s multiple failures on housing, the cost of living and healthcare. Harris has spoken of the need to stop asylum seeker encampments “festering” in the city centre: tents of asylum seekers made homeless on arrival in the state have been destroyed and removed, and barriers have been put in place by the canal to prevent new tents from being erected.
The Government has also used the opportunity to push forward its neoliberal agenda. In the same week that it announced a business package that will see a pause on a promised increase to the minimum wage and increased sick days, Harris appeared on Newstalk to speak about the need for “workplace inspections” to make sure that “people are working legally”. His statements obscure the reality that, at a time of full employment, asylum seekers are prevented from working for a long period of time after they arrive. They want to work, but “face barrier after barrier”, as a piece in the Dublin Inquirer explained.
The Challenge Ahead
There are a number of factors underlying the rise of the far right and the shifts to the right in Ireland and across Europe. The neoliberal policies of the past few decades have allowed European corporations to reap massive profits, at enormous cost to ordinary people. The misery of austerity, of artificial housing scarcity, low wages and deep inequality has created demoralisation, desperation and anger that the far right has been able to seize upon and redirect against immigrants and, in particular, asylum seekers.
Contrary to the mainstream narrative that racism arises naturally in working class communities due to some innate bigotry or a lack of education, racism comes from the top of society. It has, both historically and in the present day, been used to dehumanise Black and Brown people and justify their subjugation by European imperialism and colonialism. It also serves to divide ordinary people at home. Instead of allowing people to unite based on their own material class interests, racism is used to rally ordinary people against “outsiders” in the “national interest” – which, in reality, are the interests of the profiteers and their political representatives.
The Left is faced with two crucial, interrelated challenges. Firstly, we must build movements from below that fight on economic issues such as housing, healthcare and the cost of living. Included in this must be a fight on the climate crisis, one that puts forward a programme that targets the major polluters and protects and improves the lives and living standards of ordinary people. A particular focus must also be put on building in the more deprived and demoralised working class areas where the far right has managed to gain some purchase. This ought to prioritise a fight on housing but also be prepared to take on the arguments around immigration that the far right is using to divide people
Secondly, addressing economic issues alone is not enough. We must also confront racism and the far right. We must also build united fronts including left political parties and organisations, trade unions and community groups in order to unite workers, immigrants, LGBT people, students and anti-racists against the far right and their poison. This must tackle their anti-immigrant arguments but crucially must be willing to oppose them on the streets.
We must also challenge the mainstream right’s attack on asylum seekers, including the treatment of thousands of asylum seekers who have been made homeless, and many more who are languishing in the direct provision system. Opposition to the wider racist Fortress Europe policies which have been fortified by the EU Migration Pact is an essential part of this.
