Deterrence policies and climate migration: Barriers to the right to access to asylum in the EU

This article examines the often overlooked impact of asylum barriers established by the EU and its Member States, in cooperation with strategic third countries, on the right of climate migrants to seek protection in the EU. This contribution provides a critical analysis of the deterrence paradigm embedded in EU and Member State policies. In particular, three main barriers are examined. These are 1) departure prevention measures associated with development cooperation; 2)non-admission policies, with a focus on the expanded use of safe country concepts as revised by the Asylum Procedures Regulation; and 3) externalization arrangements with specific attention to the Italy-Albania Protocol. The analysis demonstrates that deterrence policies, increasingly employed in the EU to address perceived irregular migration, represent a significant obstacle to the identification and recognition of protection needs of climate migrants. Indeed, deterrence makes it harder, if not totally unlikely, not only for climate change to be recognized, but even identified as a cause of migration. On the contrary, deterrence policies are contributing to perpetuating its invisibility in asylum adjudication.