Social Europe

  • EU Forward Project
  • YouTube
  • Podcast
  • Books
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

Apprehend, detain, deport—towards a securitised EU?

Felix Bender 21st February 2022

Pushbacks at Europe’s borders have not been compliant with the Refugee Convention. Nor would internal ones.

securitised,securitisation,borders,refugees,pushbacks
Does Europe really want to be a Europe of fences? (Ajdin Kamber / shutterstock.com)

Pushbacks have become the ‘new normal’ on the European Union’s external borders. What they entail, in the absence of legal due process, has become readily apparent.

Refugees are being apprehended and detained in containers or camps surrounded with barbed wire. They are being beaten, robbed, insulted, humiliated and debased, marked like cattle and forced blindly through razor-wire fences to countries where the right to claim asylum is effectively denied.

Where individuals can be so apprehended, detained and deported without due process, the right to asylum—indeed any legal protection—dies. In light of what we have observed at the EU’s external borders, would one really want pushbacks to be legally endorsed within the EU?

New rules

The recent proposal from the European Commission for amendments to the Schengen Border Code suggests that the commission does. The proposal would not only allow member states to implement temporary border controls during public-health emergencies, such as the pandemic, but would also introduce two new sets of rules with regard to people on the move.

The first concern new surveillance and response mechanisms, to battle what the commission interprets as an ‘instrumentalisation of migrants’ aimed at ‘destabilising’ the EU or its member states. Such language flared up in the aftermath of the Belarussian regime’s attempt to funnel individuals in transit into the EU at the Polish border last year. But it fell short of explaining exactly how a few thousand of them could summon the power to destabilise the union—or even what that might mean exactly.

While the commission remains vague as to the mechanisms which would be employed to stop such instrumentalisation, this discursive sleight of hand steers the public away from thinking about refugees as individual human beings with rights under the Refugee Convention—including the right to non-refoulement and to make an individually adjudicated asylum claim—towards viewing them as non-European ‘others’ comprising collective security threats.



Don't miss out on cutting-edge thinking.


Join tens of thousands of informed readers and stay ahead with our insightful content. It's free.



‘Shifting borders’

The ‘securitisation’ of migration is thus in full swing and it does not stop there. The second set of rule changes would address internal EU borders. They seek to legalise pushbacks of irregular migrants from one member state to another, largely without offering the opportunity to claim asylum or even to challenge detention and deportation.

According to the proposed changes, the police would be allowed to apprehend irregular migrants anywhere ‘in the vicinity of borders’—not just at the borders themselves. Such ‘shifting borders’, as they have been called, would allow states to implement a regime of search and control well within their territory—at bus and train stations and within certain cities. Individuals so apprehended could be detained without legal safeguards for up to 24 hours, before being pushed back to the member state they had left.

Though pushbacks at the EU’s internal borders are nothing new, this proposal would legalise and legitimise them. What we already witness at the external borders of the union would be replicated within.

This would not only threaten the rights of new arrivals but would introduce more controls and surveillance for EU citizens. This is the inevitable consequence of attempting to monitor everyone who crosses a border, to categorise whether they belong to a wanted or unwanted group and to pursue associated enforcement measures.

The alternative to universalised surveillance in border-neighbouring zones would be targeted intervention by the authorities—which could only mean racial profiling. The suggestions by the commission would then support discriminatory search-and-apprehend strategies in transport installations and cities across Europe—a frightening alternative which would fly in the face of anti-discrimination regimes and foment generalised suspicion towards non-white people.

Negative signal

Yet the gloomy outlook for protection of the rights of people on the move would be only one consequence of legalising internal pushbacks, were the commission proposal to be endorsed—it has yet to come before the European Parliament. The other is the negative signal it would send: European-wide responsibility-sharing on asylum would remain an ever-receding horizon, amid the further securitisation of the EU’s external borders.

The legalisation of intra-EU pushbacks would displace responsibility for hosting refugees—even moreso—from the centre to the member states at the external borders, where asylum-seekers have already been largely corralled by the Dublin convention (requiring that they normally make a claim in the state of arrival). Rather than signalling inter-state solidarity on the part of the union’s wealthy core, in the humane offering of asylum to individuals meeting the convention criteria, the message to the peripheral states would be: you are on your own.

This would undoubtedly not lead to a greater readiness to admit refugees. Rather it would bring higher walls, more fences and further attempts to ward off new arrivals—at whatever price.

Felix Bender
Felix Bender

Felix Bender is a postdoctoral fellow at KU Leuven. He  worked at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity and at Central European University. He held visiting positions at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, the University of Amsterdam and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC.

Harvard University Press Advertisement

Social Europe Ad - Promoting European social policies

We need your help.

Support Social Europe for less than €5 per month and help keep our content freely accessible to everyone. Your support empowers independent publishing and drives the conversations that matter. Thank you very much!

Social Europe Membership

Click here to become a member

Most Recent Articles

u4219834676 bcba 6b2b3e733ce2 1 The End of an Era: What’s Next After Globalisation?Apostolos Thomadakis
u4219834674a bf1a 0f45ab446295 0 Germany’s Subcontracting Ban in the Meat IndustryŞerife Erol, Anneliese Kärcher, Thorsten Schulten and Manfred Walser
u4219834dafae1dc3 2 EU’s New Fiscal Rules: Balancing Budgets with Green and Digital AmbitionsPhilipp Heimberger
u42198346d1f0048 1 The Dangerous Metaphor of Unemployment “Scarring”Tom Boland and Ray Griffin
u4219834675 4ff1 998a 404323c89144 1 Why Progressive Governments Keep Failing — And How to Finally Win Back VotersMariana Mazzucato

Most Popular Articles

u4219834647f 0894ae7ca865 3 Europe’s Businesses Face a Quiet Takeover as US Investors CapitaliseTej Gonza and Timothée Duverger
u4219834674930082ba55 0 Portugal’s Political Earthquake: Centrist Grip Crumbles, Right AscendsEmanuel Ferreira
u421983467e58be8 81f2 4326 80f2 d452cfe9031e 1 “The Universities Are the Enemy”: Why Europe Must Act NowBartosz Rydliński
u42198346761805ea24 2 Trump’s ‘Golden Era’ Fades as European Allies Face Harsh New RealityFerenc Németh and Peter Kreko
startupsgovernment e1744799195663 Governments Are Not StartupsMariana Mazzucato
u421986cbef 2549 4e0c b6c4 b5bb01362b52 0 American SuicideJoschka Fischer
u42198346769d6584 1580 41fe 8c7d 3b9398aa5ec5 1 Why Trump Keeps Winning: The Truth No One AdmitsBo Rothstein
u421983467 a350a084 b098 4970 9834 739dc11b73a5 1 America Is About to Become the Next BrexitJ Bradford DeLong
u4219834676ba1b3a2 b4e1 4c79 960b 6770c60533fa 1 The End of the ‘West’ and Europe’s FutureGuillaume Duval
u421983462e c2ec 4dd2 90a4 b9cfb6856465 1 The Transatlantic Alliance Is Dying—What Comes Next for Europe?Frank Hoffer

ETUI advertisement

HESA Magazine Cover

With a comprehensive set of relevant indicators, presented in 85 graphs and tables, the 2025 Benchmarking Working Europe report examines how EU policies can reconcile economic, social and environmental goals to ensure long-term competitiveness. Considered a key reference, this publication is an invaluable resource for supporting European social dialogue.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Ageing workforce
The evolution of working conditions in Europe

This episode of Eurofound Talks examines the evolving landscape of European working conditions, situated at the nexus of profound technological transformation.

Mary McCaughey speaks with Barbara Gerstenberger, Eurofound's Head of Unit for Working Life, who leverages insights from the 35-year history of the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS).

Listen to the episode for free. Also make sure to subscribe to Eurofound Talks so you don’t miss an episode!

LISTEN NOW

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Spring Issues

The Summer issue of The Progressive Post is out!


It is time to take action and to forge a path towards a Socialist renewal.


European Socialists struggle to balance their responsibilities with the need to take bold positions and actions in the face of many major crises, while far-right political parties are increasingly gaining ground. Against this background, we offer European progressive forces food for thought on projecting themselves into the future.


Among this issue’s highlights, we discuss the transformative power of European Social Democracy, examine the far right’s efforts to redesign education systems to serve its own political agenda and highlight the growing threat of anti-gender movements to LGBTIQ+ rights – among other pressing topics.

READ THE MAGAZINE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

WSI Report

WSI Minimum Wage Report 2025

The trend towards significant nominal minimum wage increases is continuing this year. In view of falling inflation rates, this translates into a sizeable increase in purchasing power for minimum wage earners in most European countries. The background to this is the implementation of the European Minimum Wage Directive, which has led to a reorientation of minimum wage policy in many countries and is thus boosting the dynamics of minimum wages. Most EU countries are now following the reference values for adequate minimum wages enshrined in the directive, which are 60% of the median wage or 50 % of the average wage. However, for Germany, a structural increase is still necessary to make progress towards an adequate minimum wage.

DOWNLOAD HERE

S&D Group in the European Parliament advertisement

Cohesion Policy

S&D Position Paper on Cohesion Policy post-2027: a resilient future for European territorial equity

Cohesion Policy aims to promote harmonious development and reduce economic, social and territorial disparities between the regions of the Union, and the backwardness of the least favoured regions with a particular focus on rural areas, areas affected by industrial transition and regions suffering from severe and permanent natural or demographic handicaps, such as outermost regions, regions with very low population density, islands, cross-border and mountain regions.

READ THE FULL POSITION PAPER HERE

Social Europe

Our Mission

Team

Article Submission

Advertisements

Membership

Social Europe Archives

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Miscellaneous

RSS Feed

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

BlueskyXWhatsApp