This edited volume examines the extent to which the various authorities and actors currently performing border management and expulsion-related tasks are subject to accountability mechanisms capable of delivering effective remedies and justice for abuses suffered by migrants and asylum seekers. Member states of the European Union and State Parties to the Council of Europe are under the obligation to establish complaint mechanisms allowing immigrants and/or asylum seekers to seek effective remedies in cases where their rights are violated. This book sheds light on the complaint bodies and procedures existing and available in Austria, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Poland, and Romania. It assesses their role in overseeing, investigating, and redressing cases of human rights violations deriving from violent border and immigration management practices, and expedited expulsion procedures. This book therefore provides an assessment of the practical, legal, and procedural challenges that affect the possibility to lodge complaints and access remedies for human rights violations suffered at the hands of the law enforcement authorities and other security actors operating at land, air, and sea borders, or participating in expulsions procedures – in particular, joint return flights. The volume will be of key interest to students, scholars, and practitioners working on human rights, migration and borders, international law, European law and security studies, EU politics, and more broadly, international relations.

Mediterranean in Dis/order reveals the connection between space and politics by examining the role that space has played in insurgencies, conflicts, uprisings, and mobilities in the Mediterranean region. With this approach, the authors are able to challenge well-established beliefs about the power structure of the state across different disciplines (including political science, history, sociology, geography, and anthropology), and its impact on the conception, production, and imagination of space in the broader Mediterranean. Further, they contribute to particular areas of studies, such as migration, political Islam, mobilization, and transition to democracy, among others. The book, infusing critical theory, unveils original and revelatory case studies in Tunisia, Libya, Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, Morocco, and the EU Mediterranean policy, through a various set of actors and practices—from refugees and migrations policies, to Islamist or students’ movements, architectural sites, or movies. This multidisciplinary perspective on space and power provides a valuable resource for practitioners interested in how space, context, and time interact to produce institutions, political subjectivities, and asymmetries of power, particularly since the turning point of the Arab uprisings. The book also helps readers understand the conditions under which the uprisings develop, giving a clearer picture about various national, regional, and international dynamics.

More than 30 years after its birth, the Schengen area of free movement is under siege in Europe: new barriers are being erected along land borders, military assets are increasingly deployed to patrol the Mediterranean, while sophisticated surveillance tools are used to keep track of the flows of people crossing into European space. Bringing together perspectives from political geography, critical criminology and legal theory, Policing Mobility Regimes offers a systematic analysis of the impact that Frontex is having on migration control strategies at the EU level and offers a detailed empirical description of the agency’s organization and operational activities. In addition, this book explores the meaning behind the attempt at developing a post-national border control strategy and what effect this might have on the geopolitics of Europe’s borders. It contributes to the wider theoretical debate on the relationships among migration, security and the transformation of borders in contemporary Europe. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to all those engaged with criminology, sociology, geography, politics and law as well as all those interested in learning about Europe’s changing borders.

This insightful book analyzes the evolution of the operational tasks and cooperation of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (FRONTEX), the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) and the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (EUROPOL). Exploring the recent expansion of the legal mandates of these decentralized EU agencies and the activities they undertake in practice, David Fernández-Rojo offers a critical assessment of the EU migration agencies.

This book assesses data protection rules that are applicable to the processing of personal data in a law enforcement context. It offers the first extensive analysis of the LED and Regulation (EU) 2018/1725. It illustrates the challenges arising from the unclear delineation between the different data protection instruments at both national and EU level. Taking a practical approach, it exemplifies situations where the application of data protection instruments could give rise to a lowering of data protection standards where the data protection rules applicable in the law enforcement context are interpreted broadly. The scope of data protection instruments applied by law enforcement authorities impacts processing for purposes of border control, migration management and asylum because there is an unclear delineation between the different data protection instruments.

This open access short reader provides an introduction to the theoretical debates regarding irregular migration and aims to bridge these theoretical debates to current empirical developments. It defines irregular migrants and irregular migration by discussing the wide variety of definitions and highlights the reasons for the presence of irregular immigrants in developed countries. The book provides an overview of the variation in policies regarding irregular migrants and elaborates on how irregular migration is facilitated and supported. It discusses the trends and dynamics between border enforcement, human smuggling/trafficking, and on the support irregular migrants obtain by citizens and civil society while residing in the EU. Last but not least, the book also focuses on the agency and political mobilization of irregular migrants. As such, it provides a great resource for everyone interested in learning more about irregular migration.

The EU is currently facing multiple crises, ranging from democratic backsliding to migration, and its so-called “rule-based order” is challenged by both internal and international circumstances. Nevertheless, the EU is an evolving international actor and, despite the shortfalls, it has provoked the hopes of being a normative international actor which defends multilateralism and rule-based order. This edited volume re-examines the EU as an international actor and power in the context of recent challenges both in the EU and in international politics, and addresses the following questions: Does the EU make a difference in various regions and issue areas? Is it influential and visible? What kind of a power is the EU regarding these regions? How is the EU perceived by other powers? What are the main threats perceived by the EU and how will the EU address these threats? How will the EU defend its values under current circumstances? This research focuses on the migration and asylum policies of the EU as a key area, and examines the EU’s role as an international actor in neighbouring regions and in Africa and China. The book provides a context in current international circumstances and will be useful for students and practitioners.

While the EU agencies that have been granted the power to adopt binding decisions are a diverse group, they at least share one feature: in all of them an organisationally separate administrative review body, i.e. a board of appeal, has been established. The review procedures before these boards must be exhausted before private parties can seize the EU courts and the boards therefore all fulfil a similar function: filtering cases before they end up before the courts and providing parties by expert-driven review. Sharing this common function as well as some common features, the boards of appeal of the different agencies remain heterogenous in their set up and functioning. This raises a host of questions from both a theoretic and practical perspective which this volume analyses in depth: how do the boards function, which kind of review do they offer, and how should they be conceptualized in the EU's overall system of legal protection against administrative action? To answer these questions, the volume's first part presents a series of case studies, covering all the EU boards of appeal currently in existence, while a second part looks into the horizontal issues raised by the phenomenon of the boards of appeal.

This edited collection sheds light on the complex nature of migratory movements through the lens of economic and social history. It addresses a variety of migration issues involving Europe and the Americas in order to offer new insights on past and future migration and integration policies. The volume comprises multi-disciplinary research from both continents dealing with the economic, political, demographical and sociological impact of migration. This interdisciplinary approach aims to stimulate intellectual dialogue on the migration phenomenon among the international community of scholars in Europe and North and South America. It is divided into three parts, which offer an essential contribution to the issue of migration and aim at better understanding the effect that different forms of migration have had and will continue to exert on economic and social change in receiving countries. This book is a valuable resource for a wide audience including academics, students in the economic and social sciences, and government and EU officials working with migration topics.

This book challenges the common European notions about African migration to Europe and offers a holistic understanding of the current situation in Africa. It advocates a need to rethink Africa-Europe relations and view migration and borders as a resource rather than sources of a crisis. Migrant movement from Africa is often misunderstood and misrepresented as invasion caused by displacement due to poverty, violent conflict and environmental stress. To control this movement and preserve national identities, the EU and its various member states resort to closing borders as a way of reinforcing their migration policies. This book aims to dismantle this stereotypical view of migration from Africa by sharing cutting-edge research from the leading scholars in Africa and Europe. It refutes the flawed narratives that position Africa as a threat to the European societies, their economies and security, and encourages a nuanced understanding of the root causes as well as the socioeconomic factors that guide the migrants’ decision-making. With chapters written in a concise style, this book brings together the migration and border studies in an innovative way to delve into the broader societal impacts of both. It also serves to de-silence the African voices in order to offer fresh insights on African migration – a discourse dominated hitherto by the European perspective. This book constitutes a valuable resource for research scholars and students of Border Studies, Migration Studies, Conflict and Security Studies, and Development Studies seeking specialisation in these areas. Written in an accessible style, it will also appeal to a more general public interested in gaining a fuller perspective on the African reality. Chapter 13 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.