Martin Geiger & Antoine Pécoud (eds.), Disciplining the Transnational Mobility of People, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 271 pp., (ISBN 978-1-137-26306-3).In the last decades a very diverse range of initiatives have been undertaken in order to intensify and diversify the ways human mobility is managed and restricted. This trend towards a ‘diversification’ of the migration control strategies stems from the increased awareness by the nation-states of the profoundly controversial nature of the migration management enterprise because of its political, economic, social and moral implications.
This chapter presents the subject matter under scrutiny and provides a historical account of the development of extraterritorial strategies of migration management in Europe, coinciding with parallel changes in refugee movements and the composition of migratory flows on the global scale. The objective and research questions the study seeks to address are also introduced, together with a description of the methodology underpinning the research. In particular, the ‘cumulative standards’ or ‘integrated interpretation’ model employed to construe EU Charter of Fundamental Rights standards is canvassed. The concept of ‘jurisdiction’ and the alternative ‘Fransson paradigm’ applicable to interpret the scope of application of EU law is also briefly defined. The structure of the book is outlined at the end, providing an overview of the different chapters and their interrelation.
Abstract
The externalization of migration management to third countries is becoming a recurrent phenomenon in international migration management. Soft law instruments emerged as an important strategy to externalize migration management to third countries through international migration agreements. In particular, in the last years the European Union and some member states have adopted bilateral and multilateral migration agreements in order to diminish the arrival of migrants in Europe. These agreements in the form of soft law instruments are problematic because do not follow the ordinary process of law making and thus it is difficult to assess their legal effectivity. The memorandum of understanding signed in February 2017 between Libya and Italy represents an illustrative case of the process of externalizing migration management through soft law. From a critical discussion of the memorandum, many problems in relation to its legal and material validity follow. In particular, the protection of migrants’ human rights in Libya is not guaranteed as the many international organization and NGOs reports indicate.
Externalizing Migration Management through Soft Law: The Case of the Memorandum of Understanding between Libya and Italy
