Normalization, Legalization, and Equalization: Toward a Sustainable and Humane EU Border Policy

Abstract

In this chapter, we analyze the systemic mismatch between the EU's selfaggrandizing promise of sustainable and humane migration policies and the actual practices characterizing its border regime. The EU's discriminatory border regime (which we dissect into a pre-border visa regime, the in-situ land and sea borders, and the post-border camps) has set in motion a recurrent demarcation of increasingly inhumane, unlawful and deadlier borders. We contend that, in its self-proclaimed attempt to protect its foundational values through a selectively permeable border regime, the EU has triggered an autoimmune disorder that has become the Union's most formidable threat. We conclude by discussing three possible paths out of this downward spiral: normalization, legalization and equalization. This, we believe, is the urgent turn that the EU needs to take in order to escape this suicidal paradox. Keywords EU border regime• Human migration • Sustainable and humane border policy H. van Houtum (B)