Unpacking the Safe Third Country Concept in the European Union: B/Orders, Legal Spaces, and Asylum in the Shadow of Externalization

This article aims to comprehend the legal/social construction of the safe third country (STC) concept as a bordering practice and deconstruct its implications on access to asylum (procedures). A great deal of literature analyzes the legality of this concept, of the associated returns, or of the safety criteria as per international law and EU law. However, the impact of this concept when used with informal agreements for its activation in third countries, particularly on access to asylum (procedures), remains to be underinvestigated. The article contextualizes this question in the context of the EU’s external borders, mainly in view of STC returns from the Greek hotspots to Turkey. The STC principle constructed by EU law in the last three decades has evolved into a bordering practice for excluding “irregular” migrants from protection in the EU. A combination of hard law, such as the recast Asylum Procedures Directive, and soft law, including the EU-Turkey Statement of March 2016 and the progress reports issued in the form of non-binding Communications by the Commission, produces a category of “inadmissible” migrants not eligible for asylum in the EU and incentivizes a trend of the return of migrants who do not fit in this category to a third country. Drawing on the qualitative analysis of these documents with perspectives from critical border studies, the article addresses how the STC concept in its current form leads to a mechanism that excludes the migrants in the Greek-Turkish context to asylum (procedures) in the EU, and overall, from being a “genuine” refugee.