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The EU and migration in the Mediterranean: EU borders’ control by proxy

ABSTRACT The year 2015 is often labelled as the year of the Mediterranean migration crisis, with the Central Mediterranean route heavily weighting the humanitarian crisis in terms of victims. Migration and border control have then become a highly politicised issue both at European and national level entrapping the European Union (EU) in contradictory political strategies. On the one hand, the duty to protect people on the move puts the humanitarian dimension at the centre of the crisis management. On the other, the border control argument brought about by European leaders assumes defence of state frontiers as the main goal to be achieved, irrespective of individual needs. Closing the borders to protect EU member states’ (EUMS) sovereignty and their supposed national homogeneity has become a prevailing political argument conducive to the externalisation of the migration management. This article investigates the contradictions of the EU response to address migration in the Mediterranean and focuses on the burden-shifting of the Mediterranean migration management which involves non-EU actors as migration crisis managers to provide EU borders’ control. This political process has exploded in the EU since 2015 favouring the upward spiralling of the securitisation of migration which is explored in this SI.