Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Recognising people on the move

Andrea Mammone 27th May 2021

Europe cannot continue to treat those who arrive on its margins—as in Ceuta—as mere flotsam and jetsam to be repelled.

Ceuta,migrants,refugees,asylum-seekers
Andrea Mammone

Spanish authorities have returned most of the 8,000 people, who included huge numbers of unaccompanied children, who fetched up this month from Morocco in its north-African exclave of Ceuta. Officials suggested they were pawns in a political dispute between the two nations over the presence in Spain of the leader of the Polisario Front, the group demanding independence for the part of the western Sahara ruled by Morocco.

The swift expulsions raised worries about compliance with proper procedures for asylum-seekers, given the non-refoulement requirement of the United Nations refugee convention to which Spain is a signatory. And many of the youngsters not expelled are now sleeping rough or crammed in warehouses.

Additional burden

Comparable images of aspiration and suffering are reaching us from the central and eastern Mediterranean as well as the western Balkans. The warm weather could support the beginning of a new ‘exodus’ from Africa.

More than 2,000 people recently landed on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa. Two hundred slept outdoors in poor sanitary conditions. ‘A shame,’ a local priest called it.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

Covid-19 provides an additional burden. Lampedusa is a small place with very few doctors and social distancing is impossible in the camps for those who arrive. ‘Probably not everyone realised we are left alone in dealing with an unprecedented situation—including Covid, economic crisis as well as a continuous humanitarian emergency,’ the mayor declared.

In early 2020, residents of the reception centres in Bologna, with help from the organisation Coordinamento Migranti, wrote an open letter on their overcrowded living conditions, complaining that ‘more than 200 of us live and sleep in dormitories …. with beds very close, one on top of the other’. Similar stories of those living on the edge could be told from Paris to Istanbul, Spain to California. Yet when they leave such places as Lampedusa these go unheard.

Particularly neglected

On May 9th last year, Europe Day, the European Union institutions honoured those helping communities to fight the coronavirus crisis. Of these ‘heroes’, there is a particularly neglected group, non-EU migrants, who are among the most vulnerable and least protected in societies.  

Although as workers many have played essential roles during the pandemic, their efforts have often not been recognised. They have not enjoyed the protections of intra-EU migrants or asylum-seekers who have secured refugee status. They continue to suffer from discrimination and strict border controls. Many have not been considered worthy of state support or anti-virus safeguards.

Even if migrants are essential to the European economy, they face an exploitation which has been aggravated by the pandemic. In sectors such as agriculture or logistics, the workload has increased greatly. This comes with a shortage of manpower, because border closures have reduced seasonal workers.

This year, the organisation Transnational Migrants Coordination (TMC) called on immigrants to make International Workers’ Day a moment of ‘transnational struggle’. TMC is a web of collectives from Europe, Lebanon, Morocco and Turkey, born out of recent struggles for rights and seeking to ‘overcome isolation in times of pandemic’.

Its main goal is a European unconditional-residence permit—as distinct from asylum—which would be ‘valid in all Europe, detached from employment contract, income, wage and family’. Could this be a solution to the low salaries and inhuman conditions which are often accepted to obtain or renew a frequently precarious authority to remain?

Fundamental rights

The European Commission last year proposed a New Pact on Migration and Asylum. But what is really new here? It still mentions co-operation with countries of origin or transit and promotes the strengthening of border control, including screening procedures and detention of asylum-seekers. Some members of the European Parliament questioned if these measures could ensure respect for fundamental rights, although some wanted an even tougher stance on asylum access and people-smugglers.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

The paradox is that ‘co-operation’ means dealing with countries where human rights are not necessarily the priority. And supporting return to countries of origins looks different through a wider lens.

Not everyone on the move is a migrant pursuing employment or a refugee escaping persecution or wars. Some flee from poverty. Some come from areas politically destabilised by western powers or economically exploited by multinationals.

In some ways, these are outcomes of colonisation or neo-colonialism. In a sense, places such as Ceuta are symbols of Europe’s contradictions—being a north-African exclave of an EU member state experiencing the rise of the far-right Vox party, with its anti-Muslim as well as anti-Moroccan rhetoric.

Considering Europe’s historic exploitation of their own nations, the legacy of slavery, the obligations of international treaties and the many lives of their fellow human beings lost in the Mediterranean, those on the move should not then be subject to systemic racism by the EU. And some member states in particular have to show more solidarity and respect for ‘our’ European values—including human dignity, democracy, equality and the rights of members of minorities.

These values envisage communities in which ‘pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance …. must prevail’. Closing borders or considering movement only as a challenge, without solving exploitation or global inequalities—never mind exploiting the ‘diversity advantage’ recognised by the Council of Europe—cannot be the solution.

The coming years are central to the ‘Future of Europe’ and European citizens can try to shape the union’s priorities. Establishing a day to recognise people on the move might be a first—even if symbolic—step towards more inclusive societies.

Ceuta,migrants,refugees,asylum-seekers
Andrea Mammone

Andrea Mammone is a visiting fellow in the Robert Schuman Centre at the European University Institute and a historian of modern Europe at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is an expert on the far right, nationalism and European politics.

You are here: Home / Politics / Recognising people on the move

Most Popular Posts

Visentini,ITUC,Qatar,Fight Impunity,50,000 Visentini, ‘Fight Impunity’, the ITUC and QatarFrank Hoffer
Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic

Most Recent Posts

Pakistan,flooding,floods Flooded Pakistan, symbol of climate injusticeZareen Zahid Qureshi
reality check,EU foreign policy,Russia Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: a reality check for the EUHeidi Mauer, Richard Whitman and Nicholas Wright
permanent EU investment fund,Recovery and Resilience Facility,public investment,RRF Towards a permanent EU investment fundPhilipp Heimberger and Andreas Lichtenberger
sustainability,SDGs,Finland Embedding sustainability in a government programmeJohanna Juselius
social dialogue,social partners Social dialogue must be at the heart of Europe’s futureClaes-Mikael Ståhl

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The EU recovery strategy: a blueprint for a more Social Europe or a house of cards?

This new ETUI paper explores the European Union recovery strategy, with a focus on its potentially transformative aspects vis-à-vis European integration and its implications for the social dimension of the EU’s socio-economic governance. In particular, it reflects on whether the agreed measures provide sufficient safeguards against the spectre of austerity and whether these constitute steps away from treating social and labour policies as mere ‘variables’ of economic growth.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The winter issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The sequence of recent catastrophes has thrust new words into our vocabulary—'polycrisis', for example, even 'permacrisis'. These challenges have multiple origins, reinforce each other and cannot be tackled individually. But could they also be opportunities for the EU?

This issue offers compelling analyses on the European health union, multilateralism and international co-operation, the state of the union, political alternatives to the narrative imposed by the right and much more!


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube