TY - JOUR
T1 - The external dimension of EU migration policy as region-building? Refugee cooperation as contentious politics
AU - Fakhoury, Tamirace
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - The EU has drawn on its migration policy in the Middle East and North Africa as a method of region-building set to reconfigure a broader EU Mediterranean Neighborhood. At the same time, EU migration policy as a region-building initiative has had contentious, albeit understudied, effects. We know little about either variation in states’ responses to the EU or the contextual dynamics and motives pushing them to challenge EU migration policy as a vector for regulating regions ‘from beyond’. Building on the case of displacement from Syria, the article targets the EU’s refugee approach in its ‘neighborhood’ as a site of contention whereby states, rather than being policy borrowers, dispute the EU’s attempt to regulate regions. The article employs insights from EU refugee cooperation with Lebanon, one of the key regional host states. It shows how Lebanon has sought to contest and adapt the EU’s script of resilience-building, which consists of strengthening governments’ capacity to host refugees ‘within the region’ and at a distance. Looking at EU neighbors as policy agents rather than vessels helps to unravel the tensions underlying the external, regional, and bilateral dimensions of EU migration policy and delineate how these overlapping dimensions play out on the ground.
AB - The EU has drawn on its migration policy in the Middle East and North Africa as a method of region-building set to reconfigure a broader EU Mediterranean Neighborhood. At the same time, EU migration policy as a region-building initiative has had contentious, albeit understudied, effects. We know little about either variation in states’ responses to the EU or the contextual dynamics and motives pushing them to challenge EU migration policy as a vector for regulating regions ‘from beyond’. Building on the case of displacement from Syria, the article targets the EU’s refugee approach in its ‘neighborhood’ as a site of contention whereby states, rather than being policy borrowers, dispute the EU’s attempt to regulate regions. The article employs insights from EU refugee cooperation with Lebanon, one of the key regional host states. It shows how Lebanon has sought to contest and adapt the EU’s script of resilience-building, which consists of strengthening governments’ capacity to host refugees ‘within the region’ and at a distance. Looking at EU neighbors as policy agents rather than vessels helps to unravel the tensions underlying the external, regional, and bilateral dimensions of EU migration policy and delineate how these overlapping dimensions play out on the ground.
KW - European Union
KW - Migration Policy
KW - Lebanon
KW - Syrian displacement
KW - norm contestation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85114510166&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/1369183x.2021.1972568
DO - 10.1080/1369183x.2021.1972568
M3 - Journal article
SN - 1369-183X
VL - 48
SP - 2908
EP - 2926
JO - Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
JF - Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
IS - 12
ER -