The recent application of European Union Neighborhood Policy to the emerging geopolitical and economic geographies of the Euro-Mediterranean region is creating new institutions to manage the relationship between the European Union (EU) and its neighbors after accession and enlargement. This research project will address the question "What are the consequences of EU border and economic integration policies where accession and EU enlargement are NOT a goal?" The central hypothesis is that two aspects of European Neighborhood Policy collectively are transforming the geographies of Europe's "neighborhood" and creating new geographies of regional integration and different kinds of spaces in which borders are being made more malleable. Furthermore, the jurisdiction of EU and state agencies are being extended, and new social actors, institutions, and ways of thinking are emerging to manage these border transactions. These new actors have profound implications for basic understanding of sovereignty, citizenship, and the territorial expression and exercise of rights. The research will take place in five cities where institutions involved in creating and implementing these policies are located: Brussels, Belgium; Warsaw, Poland; Vienna, Austria; Madrid, Spain; and Rabat, Morocco. The investigator also will focus on Moroccan national and local government agencies, on businesses and international buyers involved in cross-border development, and on migrants and migrant support groups in Morocco. In North Africa, the research will center primarily on Ceuta; Melilla; Nador; Fnideq; and Tanger. These locations are key sites where new bordering processes are being implemented. The investigator will explore how these programs are affecting local institutions and practices, reconfiguring the scalar dynamics, and generating social responses among bureaucrats, businesses, workers, local governments, and migrants. Field research will follow the management practices along migration routes, focusing on the most important of these; the trans-Saharan routes between West Africa and Morocco.
This project will explore the ways in which new institutional innovations in European Union Neighborhood Policy are changing the relationship between the European Union and its neighbors. The project will investigate the extension of border management beyond traditional nation-state borders into neighboring and additional third country territories (border externalization)., and it will focus on cross-border economic development aimed at job creation and regional development (economic integration). Morocco and the Moroccan-Spanish border are particularly important sites where the development and implementation of these new policies of border externalization and cross-border economic integration have occurred most quickly and have had the greatest impact. The EU sees Morocco as a test case for these post-accession regional strategies. These are important programs not only for their effects in producing new geographies and opportunities for the Euro-Mediterranean countries, but also because they form a natural experiment to test how alternative paths to regional economic development, regional stability, and migration policy in the EU-North Africa context differ from those carried out in Central and Eastern Europe in the past decade and current U.S. efforts to address similar challenges with Mexico and other Central American countries. This project therefore will make significant contributions to broader research and policy questions relating to other regional integration and stabilization projects.
The project investigated the emerging architectures of bilateral and multilateral border and migration management in the Euro-Med region. Central to this emerging architecture are a series of collaborative prototype initiatives of the European Commission and related border and migration authorities focused particularly on Spain and Morocco. The result is what the participants refer to as a process of 'border externalization' in which the understanding and practices of border management are being reconfigured. In this process joint policing, customs, and visa authorities extend their influence and areas of operation beyond the Shengen border of Europe and into West Africa. The project documents this process, locates it within the broader geo-economic and geo-political goals of economic integration and political partnership, and analyzes the changing role of European Neighborhood Policy, the Global Approach to Migration, and Migration Routes Management in this context. Research involved a comprehensive analysis of EU policy documents, reports, and other materials relating to European Neighborhood Policy, the Global Approach to Migration, and Commission funding patterns for Euro-Med border initiatives. It also involved interviewing policy makers at the European Commission, European Council, International Labor Organization (Brussels), International Centre for Migration Policy Development (Vienna and Brussels), migrants rights organizations (various cities), the former assistant director of FRONTEX (London), Ministry of Interior and Civil Guard (Spain), and the Ministry Interior, Ministry of External Affairs, King Hassan III Foundation, UNICEF, and several other academic and policy centers (Rabat). Part of our research has focused on the expanded use of mapping technologies in border and migration management. We have investigated three specific forms; the I-map created by the International Centre for Migration Policy and Development (funded by the European Commission and several member and partner states), migration support group mapping projects in West Africa and Spain, and Project Seahorse (organized and coordinated by the Spanish Ministry of Interior and Spanish Civil Guard). T At the core of our analysis has been the changing geography of border management, as new actors, collaborations, and practices put in place the architectures of the European Neighborhood Policy. These were quickly implemented after 2005 along with the new European Security Strategy, the formation of FRONTEX (the EUs integrated border management authority), and with trade agreements leading to the recent Deep and Comprehensive Trade Agreement with Morocco. The result has created new practices of border and migration management that extend the geographical range of the organizations involved. The ‘border’ is now effectively defined as ‘where the migrant is’. Border externalization this generates the demands for new investments in multilateral coordination of operations across an ever larger array of state authorities. At the same time, the ability of national state authorities to operate –even collaboratively with partners – in territories beyond their own borders has generated some challenges for border management. In this process, humanitarian organizations have emerged as vital partners in the border externalization process in what one researcher has called the ‘humanitarian borer regime’. As border externalization deepens and as risk analysis, information sharing, and policy harmonization among European and African states continues, EU authorities are turning to the third leg of the European Neighborhood Policy –‘development in origin countries’ – and with the Global Approach to Migration, are now pushing the border management architecture into new practices of regional economic development. Morocco has been a particular focus of our research. It was chosen because of its leading status in economic integration, trade access, labor market visa regularizing, and internal reforms of migration management practices. These have continued to deepen during the course of the research project, with special status having been accorded Morocco by the European Commission, and more recently Deep and Comprehensive Trade Agreements having been signed. But Morocco is not merely a recipient of EU policies; it is analytically important because of the ways in which the monarchy has strategically responded at different times, and in different ways, to these on-going initiatives for regional harmonization and economic integration. It has systematically dug in its heels on its demands for visa regularization for Moroccan workers and the stabilization of the rights of Moroccans in Europe. In 2014 it also awarded amnesty to irregular transit migrants in Morocco, granting them residence and work permissions; a singular move that has not been modeled anywhere else to date. In this sense, the initiative in the broader project of Euro-Med border externalization has now been seized by Morocco, posing a fundamental challenge to the ways in which Shengen rules and visa regulations are likely to be written in the coming years.
