A criminological reading of the new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum

• In Event: The EU Pact on Migration and Asylum: Why Criminologists Should Care? (I)

Abstract

The approval of the new European pact on migration and asylum is expected to mark the dawn of a new epoch in the history of EU migration policies. In this paper, I will attempt to offer an initial interpretation of the measures approved at the EU level through the lens of criminology of mobility. The entire framework of the new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum appears to revolve around the dual imperative of containing, to the greatest extent possible, the mobility of migrants and asylum seekers within the European space, and obstructing the efforts of those who might facilitate it. This objective is pursued through both explicit strategies of criminalization and subtler forms of containment and control of mobility that do not necessarily involve detention. While awaiting to understand how the measures approved with the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum will be implemented at the level of individual member states, what emerges is a scenario in which the use of coercive measures to control mobility will become increasingly pronounced, and forms of solidarity in support of migrants and asylum seekers will be explicitly criminalized.

Author

• Giuseppe Campesi, University of Bari ‘Aldo Moro’