The challenge posed by migration to European crisis management: Some thoughts in light of the ‘Arab spring’

Abstract

For centuries-and for most of the twentieth-the countries which constitute the European Union were not used to being immigration countries, unlike America or Australia. Thus, their approach to migrations has long focused upon forced migrations with both Human rights-for the persecuted-and Humanitarian relief-for the ones forced by general unrest out of their dwellings or countries. In this respect, the EU has gained consideration. It discovered migration to its common space-the "Schengen area"-in the 1990s. It then drew lines for a common policy in the generous Tampere document (1999), which triggered the adoption of a common asylum system. The latter offers guarantees, though it was criticized at some points. Problems arise when it comes to mixed migrations, nowadays massive at the EU’s Eastern and Southern borders. Previous strategies for managing legal migrations seem derisory; and Humanitarian relief is only a mitigation response.