Shame on EU? Europe, RtoP, and the Politics of Refugee Protection

Abstract

The EU's politics of protecting refugees through deals such as that struck with Turkey in 2016 have been vilified by human rights campaigners. This article asks whether a full engagement with the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) could offer the EU a way out of its current ethical and political malaise. It argues against such a proposition for two reasons. First, the EU already proclaims a long list of values that it asserts both contributed to its founding and continues to guide its actions; the addition of RtoP, which contains no obligations to protect refugees in other territories, would add little. Second, when the logic underlying the EU and RtoP's politics of protection are examined, a similarity emerges which would make such supplementation redundant. Both primarily entail a solidarity with, and a bolstering of, the sovereign capacity of the modern state. All that is offered to refugees, and other suffering populations, is a minimalist humanitarian solidarity through the “outsourcing” of protection. Neither the EU's ethos nor RtoP can therefore provide the firm ethical grounds from which to build protection for the figure most clearly failed by modern states—the refugee.

Europe's Triple Crisis and the Uneven Role of Institutions: the Euro, Refugees and Brexit

“…Perhaps the EU still has some cards to play regarding both refugees and impending UK exit. However, the UK will soon be outside the EU and many refugees will have suffered years of needless hardship (Bully, ). The Brexit outcome can feature either a soft or hard landing and there is still time to make a difference regarding refugees, with or without the help of the least co‐operative EU members.…”

(Not) Hosting Refugees in the EU. Philosophical Perspectives on the 2015-2016 Crisis

“…In fact, the 2016 EU-Turkey agreement has been considered by many as "shameful" (Bulley 2017;Gogou 2017). Strategically, it was successful: it reduced drastically the arrivals of migrants from Turkey to Europe and it can be said to be one of the most effective responses to the high rise in refugee flow.…”

(Im)moral Borders in Practice

“…The theme of hospitality, for example, has mostly been explored, in connection to migration, through the lens of ethics and philosophy (Boudou 2017;Derrida and Dufourmantelle 1997). Studies integrating the concept in anthropology (Agier 2016, 41-42), political geography (Pallister-Wilkins 2015) or in IR (Bulley 2017;Mavelli 2017) have been more recent. The exploration of hospitality in localised settings leads us to diversify our understandings of humanitarianism.…”