Politicisation and depoliticisation of the EU migration policy: a fragile balance for the human rights of migrants

Migration and asylum are a political priority both at the European and at the national level. The politics of asylum and migration are deeply securitised. The fight against irregular migration is the number one priority, but the underlying objective of all policies in this field is actually to prevent migration to the EU. This objective is primarily implemented via an externalisation of migration policies, which is defined by the outsourcing of the management of migration flows to countries outside of the external borders, or externalisation of the EU borders and by a focalization on returns of irregular migrants. This securitisation of the EU migration and asylum policy, often disguised with humanitarian discourses is the main threat to the fundamental rights of migrants, as the securitisation in practice involves practices such as detention, violation of the principle of non-refoulement with push and pull-backs and forced returns and the violation of the right to life with the containment policies. Despite the general agreement of Member States on this approach, the Council is deeply divided when it comes to the adoption of new legislation. According to Ripoll Servent and Zaun, this deadlock can be tracked down to the use of ‘unpolitics’by populist governments which aim at rejecting institutional norms and procedures to keep the issue in a state of permanent political crisis and instrumentalising it to gain popular support at the national level. Despite the legislative deadlock in the EU asylum and migration field, this policy area is extremely prolific when it comes to non-legislative acts, or alternative policy frames, such as international agreement, the development of agencies, or the increasing use of EU funds to govern the area. Those alternative policy frames are frequently adopted by the Commission and the Council, with little involvement from the European Parliament, in a depoliticisation strategy. Building up on the research I am currently conducting for my PhD, this paper aims at exploring the impact of the politicisation/depoliticisation dynamic during the decision-making process on the human rights dimension of the EU return policy. Through a comparative analysis of the decision-making process of different EU acts including return policy elements, (the Recast Return Directive Proposal, the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument – Global Europe, and the Status Agreements for the deployment of Frontex in third countries), the research will focus on the role of the Commission in the policy-making, based on the theoretical lens of actor-centred constructivism.