La politica migratoria dell’U.E. e la depersonalizzazione dei migranti: una strategia consapevole?

Abstract

The essay takes as its starting point a brief survey of the different meanings of the concept of crisis in the history of political doctrines and of the European Union for an evaluation of its use, as far as recent landings of migrants on European coasts are concerned. The fact that in scientific research the plight of migrants is not considered as a crisis in itself but rather as the signal of a real crisis in related policy areas leads to a broadening of analysis to EU documents on migration and asylum. It emerges that EU institutions are undertaking a gradual but inexorable process of depersonalization of migrants, that is the slow cancellation of their identity and individuality. This is achieved through the progressive tightening of the criteria for the recognition of refugee status or of the international protection regime in the EU. This is even more evident if we compare modifications in EU definitions of "refugee" with those of socially-excluded people formulated by the EU Commission in the period 1985-1995. What emerges is that hesitancy to apply the notion of crisis with regard to migrants can be the flip side of the evolution of EU norms on the subject, i.e. the depersonalization of migrants could be functional in avoiding questions being raised about the compatibility of their rejection with the values of solidarity the EU declares itself to be founded on.