Olivier MARIE–CONSIDÈRE
This project focuses on the EU’s migration policy at the Euro-Mediterranean border regarding the management of illegal migrants. Migration flows punctuated by human tragedies in the Mediterranean Sea which have forced the EU to put in place arrangements for the protection of migrants, namely the interception of migrants smuggling boats and the reception of migrants in camps. The management of illegal migrants is done through an EU policy known as the “hotspot approach”. It was designed to create management zone of illegal migration on isolated Greek and Italian islands: “hotspots”.
The notion of hotspots is analysed from three angles to show how Mediterranean hotspots are specific.
Hotspots were first created to externalize the management of the migration crisis to the margins of the European continent, making hotspots the embodiment of the European border.
The violence of the migration crisis is expressed in these hotspots through a tough EU security strategy, however, coupled with a concern for the protection of refugees. This paradox, called the politics of “care and control”, reveals itself in the mobilization of key antagonistic actors such as the EU and states’ border security agencies and humanitarian associations.
The growing refusal of member states to welcome irregular migrants and the slowness of asylum demand system make these hotspots places of congestion where overpopulation and human misery are combined.