The Relocation of Refugees in the EU: a Relational Approach

This paper deals with the relocation of refugees in the European Union (EU); it explores its implementation through a relational approach. Relocation is a policy instrument that aims to select and transfer asylum seekers from one EU member state to another. For the past decade, it has been one of the most controversial issues at the heart of EU migration policies. In 2015, it was adopted as a plan by the European Council. Its goal was to remove 160 000 asylum seekers from Italy and Greece to the other member states. The paper focuses on the cases of Malta and Luxembourg. Unlike the other member states, Malta and Luxembourg have been strongly supportive of relocation. The few existing studies on relocation have been carried out in the field of European studies (Niemann & Zaun 2018). The literature has highlighted the resistance of member states towards relocation (Zaun 2017). Scholars have shown that the reluctance to relocation raised by the so-called Visegrád group (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia) has dominated the EU agenda on relocation (Karolewski & Benedikter 2018). Therefore, relocation has been framed in the scholarship as a failure (Bauböck 2017). In this regard, the number of people relocated has been actually very limited (less than 30 000 out of the target-commitment of 160 000). As such, scholars have argued that relocation symbolises the inability of the EU to tackle the ‘migration crisis’ (Menendez 2017). However, the analysis has not provided an understanding of how relocation works empirically. Indeed, it has concealed the fact that relocation has nevertheless happened. As such, scholars have not examined the daily work activities of civil servants responsible for relocation (Lemaire 2020). Likewise, they have not looked at the everyday lives of relocated refugees. The paper suggests moving forward by exploring the way relocation operates and what effects it produces on the lives of refugees. To do so, it draws on governmentality studies. Relocation is understood as a form of government: a set of discourse, techniques, norms, funds, and persons aiming to direct where and how refugees can move within the EU, how long they have to wait before departure, where they have to stay after or before moving. In the continuity of Foucault's work on governmentality, the paper follows a relational approach to power. Indeed, it examines the power relations between state and non-state actors, such as European civil servants or NGO employees. It also examines the power relations between those who govern – state and non-state actors – and those who are governed, namely the refugees. In fine, the paper intends to demonstrate that the network of power relations that relocation implies contributes to governing refugees through mobility. It argues that relocation is a form of governmental mobility (Gill 2009; Michalon 2012). The empirical side of this paper involves multi-sited fieldwork in Brussels, Malta and Luxembourg which is based on qualitative interviews with state and non-state actors as well as with refugees.