European border controls: Revisiting the balance between humanitarianism and security

The question of how EU countries should protect their external borders is a very contentious issue. While the humanitarian approach is prevalent in official political debates, the practice is very different. Border-patrolling; push-back strategies; detention centres; forced deportation to unsafe countries; and the militarisation of EU borders are hardly in line with EU traditional values of human dignity, equality, and respect for human rights and international obligations. The aim of the paper is to revisit the concept of humanitarianism in relation to EU borders. Although much has been written on the humanitarian perspective, there is little clarity on how to interpret humanitarianism when dealing with life and death scenario. In this article, I am not interested in investigating questions of suffering alleviation, charity, biopolitical racism, or the inequality of human life, on which much has been written. The question is not how to make border controls more humane but whether the securitarian and the humanitarian might coexist when rescue operations are involved. SAR operations do not seem to allow for any negotiation: either rescue or adrift, either life or death. There cannot be any option of balancing between the humanitarian and the securitarian. In other words, the dilemma of security vs humanitarianism should not be approached in the same way of the (Hobbesian) liberty vs security in which the reduction of the former results in the expansion of the latter, and vice versa. Rescue operations do not allow for any balance: it is an either/or choice. Either we rescue people in distress, or we let them die. And if we let them die, how are we to name this approach? Is it still a security approach? Or shall we talk of an inhumane approach?