Migration Power Dynamics: Algeria, Morocco and the European Union

Taking into account the "migration power" framework developed by Fernández-Molina and Tsourapas (2024) and also the work of the Paris School of Critical Security Studies (Bigo, 2002), with this contribution we want to study the migration practices and also to apply the direct forms of migration power (compulsory migration power and structural migration power) to two case studies. The aim of this paper is to apply the "migration power" framework to two cases that will be compared: Algeria-EU and Morocco-EU relations. We will show how migration power plays a crucial role and largely defines the EU’s relations with third countries. Furthermore, we will analyze how migration power reconfigures traditional North-South power relations, highlighting the similarities and differences in the migration power exercised by countries in the Global South, in this case Algeria and Morocco. The EU would exert, with some effectiveness, a structural migration power (trough the attribution of migration state roles, funding and capacity-building) over Morocco and Algeria. However, the level of intensity is different in each case. It should be added that the EU would also exert compulsory migration power (through political conditionality), with little success in both cases. Morocco would exert compulsory migration power (through coercive engineered migrations) over the EU, achieving many of its objectives. Algeria would also exert compulsory migration power over the EU, but with much lower results, frequency and intensity than in the case of Morocco . We will attempt to demonstrate that the exercise of migration power is indeed asymmetrical, but bidirectional between the North and the South. Unlike other dimensions of power (e.g., economic power or military power), where the asymmetry clearly favors the Global North, in the case of migration power the relationship is partially rebalanced in favor of the Global South. If we situate this in the general context of North-South power relations, it seems quite exceptional.