Fundamental Rights, Accountability and Transparency in European Governance of Migration: The Case of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency Frontex

This report analyses and interrogates the accountability and transparency regime of the European Union’s border agency Frontex. Frontex was established as a European Union agency in the field of border, migration and asylum policies in 2004 and began operating in 2005. Over the last 15 years, the mandate of the agency, originally tasked with coordinating the operational management of the European Union’s external border through support to the EU’s member states, has expanded significantly. Through a series of reforms, most notably in 2007, and 2016 and 2019, the agency has become a pivotal actor in what is referred to as ‘European Integrated Border Management’.  Since the creation of the agency and its first operations, there has been significant concern, both from the European Parliament as well as NGOs and other civil society organisations that the executive mandate of the agency has not been counterbalanced by effective mechanisms for accountability, particularly with respect to fundamental rights. To an extent, the Frontex monitoring and accountability regime has improved since 2011 through legislative change, thus strengthening the above mechanisms. The findings of the report however show that despite the continued expansion and strengthening of monitoring and accountability mechanisms since 2016, these efforts have again not resulted in an effective system for monitoring, investigating, addressing, and preventing fundamental rights violations at Europe’s external borders

Europa als Grenze: Eine Ethnographie der Grenzschutz-Agentur Frontex

Mit der Europäischen Grenz- und Küstenwachagentur Frontex hat die Europäische Union erstmalig eine uniformierte und bewaffnete Polizeieinheit geschaffen. Der Autor legt eine detaillierte Analyse der Entstehung und Entwicklung der Agentur vor. Durch eine Genealogie der europäischen Grenze und eine ethnographische Rekonstruktion der Krise Schengens untersucht er das lange Projekt der Europäisierung des Grenzschutzes. Im Zentrum steht die Analyse sich wandelnder Rationalitäten, die sich in politischen und technischen Programmatiken niederschlagen. Dabei wird deutlich, dass das Regieren der Grenze und der Migration gleichzeitig die Frage nach dem Regieren Europas bedeutet

Residenzpflicht

Die Abschaffung der Residenzpflicht war ein wichtiges Anliegen des Protestmarsches der Flüchtlinge, die Anfang September 2012 in Würzburg aufbrachen, um ihren zu dem Zeitpunkt schon Monate dauernden Kampf gegen ihre Lebensumstände und die Nicht-Anerkennung als Flüchtlinge nach Berlin zu tragen. Wie einschneidend dieses Ausnahmegesetz sich auf politische Aktivitäten der Flüchtlinge auswirkt wurde schon während des Marsches klar. Je näher die Protestierenden der bayerisch-thüringischen Grenze kamen, umso mehr stellten sich alle Beteiligten die Frage, wie die Polizei auf den Grenzübertritt reagieren würde. Denn die bayerisch-thüringische Grenze, die seit 20 Jahren nicht mehr als Grenze existiert und an deren damalige Bedeutung nur ein kleines Museum erinnert, diese Grenze stellte für den Protestmarsch durchaus eine nicht zu unterschätzende Hürde dar

De- and Restabilising Schengen. The European Border 1Regime After the Summer of Migration

The migrations of the year 2015 and the slow and inadequate responses of the European Union has led to a political crisis in the European Union. The institutions and policies of the European Border and Migration Regime that have evolved since the Schengen Treaties of 1985 and 1990 and the inauguration of the Common European Asylum System with the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) were not able to formulate, let alone to implement, a timely and appropriate answer. We argue that despite the current public perception of a “refugee crisis”, the EU is indeed dealing with a deep and systemic crisis of its migration and border policies, which is rooted less in the migrations of 2015, but date back to the collapse of the Mediterranean border regime in the wake of the Arab Spring 2011 and the ensuing controversies around issues such as the perceived partiality of the refugee distribution mechanism of the Dublin system as well as the mounting public outcry given the repeated instances of tragedies in the Mediterranean, epitomised by the Mare Nostrum operation launched by the Italian state in late 2013. Currently, we observe heterogeneous approaches to solving this crisis. Not all of them may be compatible with the Schengen system as the re-institution of national border controls is often at their core. Other suggestions involve a —at times— radical move towards a deepened europeanisation of migration and border policies, such as the creation of a European Asylum Office and a European Border and Coast Guard. Based on ethnographic research in the EU’s South-East, we will discuss these developments around the ongoing dynamics of de- and restabilisation of Schengen. Received: 18 January 2017 Accepted: 16 March 2017 Published online: 02 May 201

Under Control? Or Border (as) Conflict: Reflections on the European Border Regime

The migrations of 2015 have led to a temporary destabilization of the European border and migration regime. In this contribution, we trace the process of destabilization to its various origins, which we locate around the year 2011, and offer a preliminary assessment of the attempts at re-stabilization. We employ the notion of “border (as) conflict” to emphasize that crisis and exception lies at the very core of the European border and migration regime and its four main dimensions of externalization, techno-scientific borders, an internal mobility regime for asylum seekers, and humanitarization

The Post-2015 European Border Regime. New Approaches in a Shifting Field

Against the background of our recent ethnographic research project on the European border regime in South-East Europe in 2016, the article calls for a re-visiting of established paradigms and approaches in border studies. The article assesses established theoretical conceptualisations of border studies, such as securitisation, externalisation, digitalisation, but also internal mobility regimes and humanitarian rationales. Focussing especially on the vast encampment within Europe, the inner-European buffer zoning, shifting legal foundations as well as new infrastructures of migration control, the authors argue for an extension of theoretical and methodological perspectives of border studies by drawing on insights from legal anthropology and camp and infrastructural studies.Ancorandosi a un recente progetto di ricerca etnografica sul regime di confine europeo, svoltosi con un focus sull’Europa sud-orientale nel 2016, l’articolo invita a un ripensamento degli ormai consolidati paradigmi e approcci nell’ambito dei border studies. Più precisamente, l’articolo si focalizza dapprima su un’analisi critica delle più consolidate concettualizzazioni teoriche dei border studies, come quelle concernenti la securitizzazione, l’esternalizzazione, la digitalizzazione, ma anche i regimi di mobilità interna e le “ragioni umanitarie”. Concentrandosi in particolare sul vasto accampamento “dentro” l’Europa, la cosiddetta zona “tampone” europea interna, come anche sui mutevoli fondamenti legali e le infrastrutture del controllo delle migrazioni, gli autori propongono un’estensione delle prospettive teoriche e metodologiche dei border studies, riferendosi alle conoscenze dell’antropologia legale e degli studi sui campi e le infrastrutture

New Keywords: Migration and Borders

“New Keywords: Migration and Borders” is a collaborative writing project aimed at developing a nexus of terms and concepts that fill-out the contemporary problematic of migration. It moves beyond traditional and critical migration studies by building on cultural studies and post-colonial analyses, and by drawing on a diverse set of longstanding author engagements with migrant movements. The paper is organized in four parts (i) Introduction, (ii) Migration, Knowledge, Politics, (iii) Bordering, and (iv) Migrant Space/Times. The keywords on which we focus are: Migration/Migration Studies; Militant Investigation; Counter-mapping; Border Spectacle; Border Regime; Politics of Protection; Externalization; Migrant Labour; Differential inclusion/exclusion; Migrant struggles; and Subjectivity