As two civil society networks representing together more than 330 organisations across Europe, the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM) and the European Network Against Racism (ENAR) aim to ensure that everyone can fully enjoy their human rights, regardless of migration status. Addressing structural racism and discrimination, including the role of migration policies in perpetuating them, is central to this mission.

We commend the initiative of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and the
Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (CMW) to issue a joint General Comment/Recommendation on State Parties Obligations on Public Policies for Addressing and Eradicating Xenophobia and its impact on the rights of migrants, their families, and other non-citizens affected by racial discrimination. We have been closely engaged in the process leading to its adoption, sharing our collective expertise¹ and co-organising the Europe Expert Consultation which took place in Brussels on 30-31 October 2024.

The adoption of this Joint General Recommendation/Comment is now more important than ever. Since the launch of this process in late 2023, we have seen a wave of both proposed and negotiated legislative changes at the EU level that stand in direct contradiction to international human rights standards, including those enshrined in the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. Key examples include:

• November 2023 – The proposed revision of the EU Facilitators’ Package further criminalises migration and human rights defenders;²
• February 2024 – The adoption of the Schengen Border Code reform, which legitimises racial profiling in border checks, embedding discrimination in border enforcement.³
• May 2024 – The adoption of the Pact on Migration and Asylum, which:⁴
  • Normalises the arbitrary use of immigration detention, including for children and families.
  • Increases racial profiling.
  • Introduces “crisis” procedures that enable pushbacks.
  • Expands returns to so-called “safe third countries,” where individuals risk violence, torture, and
    arbitrary imprisonment.
• March 2025 – The European Commission’s proposal for a new EU regulation on return, which:⁵
  • Establishes deportation as the default option for people in an irregular migration situation.
  • Massively expands immigration detention, including of children (despite international human rights standards as well as global level commitment to work to end immigration detention).⁶
  • Introduces specific derogations from fundamental rights for migrants deemed a “risk” to national security and public order, further blurring the lines between criminal law and migration.

These policies are unfolding in a broader context of shrinking space for civil society, where organisations
working to uphold fundamental rights face growing restrictions and reduced funding, as well as judicial and other forms of harassment towards migrants and those providing them humanitarian assistance.⁷

At this critical juncture, CERD and CMW have a crucial role in holding states accountable. We urge you to:

• Prioritise the finalisation and adoption of the Joint General Recommendation/Comment to provide clear and binding guidance on addressing xenophobia in migration governance.
• Ensure strong language on state obligations to prevent racial discrimination in migration policies, in line with international human rights standards.
• Monitor state compliance and issue follow-up recommendations to prevent further erosion of migrant rights under the guise of security and border control.

We remain fully committed to supporting this process in any way necessary. Your leadership on this issue is critical in sending a strong global message that xenophobia and racial discrimination in migration governance cannot be tolerated.

Signatories:

• Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM)
• European Network Against Racism (ENAR)

1. Our initial contributions are available on the website of the United National Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner. A direct link is available here: PICUM and ENAR. ↩︎
2. Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament of the Council laying down minimum rules to prevent and counter the facilitation of unauthorised entry, transit and stay in the Union, and replacing Council Directive 2002/90/EC and Council Framework Decision 2002/946 JHA; PICUM, 2024, How the New EU Facilitation Directive Furthers the Criminalisation of Migrants and Human Rights Defenders ↩︎
3. Regulation (EU) 2024/1717 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 June 2024 amending
   Regulation (EU) 2016/399 on a Union Code on the rules governing the movement of persons across borders; PICUM Press Release of 7 February 2024 Racial profiling key element in the new deal on the Schengen Borders Code; PICUM, 2024, PICUM Analysis How will the new Schengen Borders Code affect undocumented migrants? ↩︎
4. Regulation (EU) 2024/1717 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 June 2024 amending
   Regulation (EU) 2016/399 on a Union Code on the rules governing the movement of persons across borders; Regulation (EU) 2024/1356 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 May 2024 introducing the screening of third-country nationals at the external borders and amending Regulations (EC) No 767/2008, (EU) 2017/2226, (EU) 2018/1240 and (EU) 2019/817; Regulation (EU) 2024/1349 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 May 2024 establishing a return border procedure, and amending Regulation (EU) 2021/1148; Regulation (EU) 2024/1358 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 May 2024 on the establishment of ‘Eurodac’ for the comparison of biometric data in order to effectively apply Regulations (EU) 2024/1351 and
   (EU) 2024/1350 of the European Parliament and of the Council and Council Directive 2001/55/EC and to identify illegally staying third-country nationals and stateless persons and on requests for the comparison with Eurodac data by Member States’ law enforcement authorities and Europol for law enforcement purposes, amending Regulations (EU) 2018/1240 and (EU) 2019/818 of the European Parliament and of the Council and repealing Regulation (EU) No 603/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council; Regulation (EU) 2024/1359 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 May 2024 addressing situations of crisis and force majeure in the field of migration and asylum and amending Regulation (EU) 2021/1147; PICUM has developed a series of publications analysing the different parts of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, with a focus on their impact on detention, return, access to regular pathways and the rights of undocumented adults and children.
   See: Analysis of the Asylum Procedure Regulation and Return Border Procedure Regulation, Analysis of the Screening Regulation, Children’s rights in the 2024 Migration and Asylum Pact. See also, ENAR’s analysis on the racialisation of migration in the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum. ↩︎
5. Proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing a common system for the return of third-country nationals staying illegally in the Union, and repealing Directive 2008/115/EC of the European Parliament and the Council, Council Directive 2001/40/EC and Council Decision 2004/191/EC; PICUM Press release 11 March 2025 New Returns Regulation ushers in dystopian detention and deportation regime ↩︎
6. Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families and Committee on the Rights of the Child, 2017, Joint General Comment No. 3 of the CMW and No. 22 of the CRC in the context of International Migration: General principles; Global Compact on migration, 2018, Global Compact for safe, orderly and regular migration ↩︎
7. PICUM, 2024, Cases of criminalisation of migration and solidarity in the EU in 2023 ↩︎

EU lawmakers have reached a political agreement on the revision of the Schengen Borders Code that would de facto legitimise racial profiling in border checks.

The reform of the Schengen Borders Code aims at reducing the amount of temporary generalised internal EU border checks. However, it would escalate checks on specific groups of people. In particular, the deal would allow police authorities in joint patrols to carry out “random” document checks near internal EU borders with the aim of apprehending people without valid travel or residence documents. Research has already shown that police tend to stop people for checks based on racial, ethnic, or religious characteristics. It is clear that these checks will depend on police’s decisions about who “looks like” a person without valid papers.

Silvia Carta, Advocacy Officer at PICUM, said: “This agreement embraces a very harmful narrative which assumes that people crossing borders without valid documents are a threat to the EU and proposes to address it by increasing policing, while de facto encouraging racial profiling”.

The deal would also legalise the violent practice of ‘internal pushbacks’, which consists in apprehending and detaining people caught without a valid document near an internal border, and transferring them to the member state the police think the person came from without conducting an individual assessment. It is still unclear which ‘safeguards’ have been introduced to protect children, who are not explicitly excluded from such transfer procedures.

The deal would most likely escalate the use of monitoring and surveillance technologies that do not apply relevant safeguards and would be at odds with existing EU data protection legislation and fundamental rights.

Lastly, the deal would also allow internal checks and increased policing in situations of so-called “instrumentalisation of migration”, that is when a member state claims that a non-EU country or ‘hostile non state actor’ is pushing migrants towards external EU borders for political reasons. This is an extremely problematic concept, whose codification into EU law would introduce broad derogations to fundamental rights, including the right to asylum and freedom of movement.

On 29 and 30 November 2023, PICUM jointly organised with Equinox a legal seminar on racial profiling, policing and migration control, bringing together advocates, community organisers and legal practitioners working on racial justice, migrant justice, prison abolition and related movements. This blog shares some highlights of our discussions.

“Migration frameworks all over the world are mechanisms through which racial subordination is achieved.”

These words from former UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Tendayi Achiume, who opened our legal seminar, were a  reminder of how migration and racism are deeply interlinked.

Across Europe, policing and immigration enforcement are increasingly interconnected, disproportionately harming communities of colour. The growing use of technology and AI as a tool for border management compounds existing discriminatory practices against people with an irregular migration status and communities of colour. Racialised communities on either side of border crossings and within our communities bear the brunt of these trends.

Racism and migration in the EU

Moderated by Emmanuel Achiri, European Network Against Racism

We heard from Karin de Vries, Associate Professor of Constitutional Law at Utrecht University, about how racism plays a critical role in the EU migration policy. This includes visa policy, conditions for long term residence, state discretion in treating people with different countries of origin differently, and the very inequality underlying many of the choices, opportunities and experiences of migration. Alyna Smith, Deputy Director at PICUM, further highlighted how race and racism are embedded in the very language of EU laws about “deterrence” and the “fight against irregular migration”, in criminalisation frameworks, in counter-smuggling measures that tend to make crossings and journeys more dangerous for people.

Vida Beresneviciute, Equality Project Officer at the Fundamental Rights Agency, shared key findings from the Agency’s recent research on the discrimination experience of black people in Europe. Racial discrimination increased in key areas of life, with 45% of respondents reporting racial discrimination in 2022 – marking a significant increase from 39% in 2016. Police stops continue to be particularly problematic, as 58% of them are characterised as racial profiling by people who experienced them.

The EU equality frameworks largely fail to address these realities, and the various manifestations of racism more broadly. For instance, the 2000 Racial Equality Directive does not apply to law enforcement. The 2020 Anti-Racism Action Plan, quickly adopted in response to the murder of George Floyd in the US and the ensuing Black Lives Matter protests across the world, fails to address racism in EU migration policies. In fact, within days of adoping the Anti-Racism Action Plan the European Commission released a ‘New Pact on Migration and Asylum’ that further criminalises and targets undocumented people, leading to discrimination, violence against migrants and racialised people, whether at the borders or already living in the EU.

Blurring the line between criminal law and immigration law

Moderated by Laurence Meyer, Digital Freedom Fund, and Laure Baudrihaye, Independent expert

On the contrary, many EU migration policies, including recent and ongoing reforms, perpetuate systemic racism through measures that blur the lines between immigration and criminal law.

Ulrich Stege, a lawyer collaborating with the Italian Association for Juridical Studies on Immigration (ASGI), illustrated key trends in this conflation between immigration and criminal law – denoted as “crimmigration”. These include the use of administrative detention for security-related purposes, the use of criminal law as a deterrent against migration, the criminalisation of irregular entry and of solidarity with people in an irregular situation, as well as the use of technology to enhance immigration enforcement. On this latter point, Chloë Berthelemy, Senior Policy Advisor at European Digital Rights (EDRi), discussed the expansion of the Eurodac database to collect more personal data of asylum seekers, including children, and cooperation between Frontex and Europol in collecting and sharing personal data.

Silvia Carta, Advocacy Officer at PICUM, outlined how current EU migration reforms, such as the revision of the Schengen Borders Code and the Migration Pact, would likely lead to more racial profiling as border guards and police are encouraged to stop and search anyone who looks ‘foreign’ to detect people in an irregular situation.

At the national level, such trends and policies are already having dramatic effects on racialised people and people in an irregular situation. In particular, we heard about the criminalisation of people steering boats with migrants in Italy (Sara Traylor, Alarm Phone), violent police operations that led to the murder of a two-year old in Belgium (Selma Benkhelifa, Progress Lawyers), and border control technology in Greece in the form of biometric police gadgets, surveillance systems and social media monitoring apps (Lamprini Gyftokosta, Homodigitalis).

Racial profiling for immigration control across borders and within Europe

Moderated by Adla Shashati, Greek Forum of Migrants

Racial profiling in the name of migration control has long been present at Europe’s borders. As Parvin Abkhoudarestani, a refugee from Iran who experienced multiple violent pushbacks at the Greek-Turkish border, said: “Who can move depends on your skin colour, it’s decided by your race. My movement is illegalised”. Laure Palun of French NGO Anafé, discussed how racial profiling in border checks and migration and visa policy in France is leading to pushbacks, refusals of entry, detention of children, police violence, the militarisation of borders with Italy and Spain, and the criminalisation of those who help people in an irregular situation.

Racial profiling has already quickly moved beyond the confines of border crossings and transit hubs into mainstream policing and broader civil administration. Ting Chen, coordinator of Roses d’Acier, a group that provides support to undocumented Chinese sex workers, spoke of the police targeting Chinese women in Paris with repeated identity checks in specific districts.

Monish Bhatia, Lecturer in Sociology at the University of York, discussed his research on immigration raids in the UK and described them as racist state violence and kidnappings that exist to instill fear among impacted communities. Raids are sometimes triggered by citizens’ calls to the police, which are grounded on racist assumptions as to the potential presence of people in an irregular situation.

The way forward – How can we challenge racial profiling in the immigration context?

Moderated by Sarah Chander, European Digital Rights

Different strategies are needed to challenge these trends, and to anchor them in a shared frame of racial and migrant justice. In our last panel, we heard from Jennifer Kamau from International Women Space about the need for Europe to recognise its historical responsibilities around colonialism, conflict, climate change, and ongoing colonialist approaches, which all have an impact on global migration today and driving harmful policies and practices. She also invited everyone to recognise the power of words in shaping reality and to change the way we talk about this reality to fight against systemic oppression.

Saskia Bricmont, Member of the European Parliament, addressed the political struggle in the European Parliament and between EU institutions in resisting harmful migration policies, such as the EU Migration Pact, as well as in promoting fairer trade deals with third countries.

Sarah Chander, co-founder of Equinox, encouraged groups who share transformative goals to connect our different strategies and struggles, from grassroots to political levels. In closing, Alyna Smith invited social change actors to reflect on how we can work across movements, how we are perpetuating structures of oppression through our language and work, and how we can dismantle systemic oppression while reimagining a different world.

Watch the recordings of the legal seminar on our YouTube channel:

In final negotiations around the EU Migration Pact, EU lawmakers are considering a provision that would increase the risk of racial profiling in Europe.

The provision is Article 5 of the Screening Regulation, an instrument that regulates security and identity checks (screening procedures) of third country nationals at the EU’s external borders.

Article 5 would extend the application of these checks not only to people apprehended at the borders, but to everyone who cannot prove to have entered the territory of the member states with a valid travel document. This means that police or other officials would be able to stop people on the street and bring them to designated locations. There, people would likely be detained while they undergo security and identity checks, to establish if they can apply for asylum.

Widespread discriminatory profiling

The very action of stopping anyone who is suspected of being undocumented carries with it enormous risks of racial profiling, as law and immigration enforcement are already found to rely on racial, ethnic, national, or religious characteristics in their operations.

Research published in October 2023 by the EU Fundamental Rights Agency shows that it is already often the case that people of colour and of African descent are subject to discriminatory and arbitrary checks, regardless of citizenship or residence status. In fact, over half of people of African descent surveyed felt that their most recent police stop was a result of racial profiling.

Article 5 raises concerns around other potential human rights violations too.

Arbitrary apprehension

Expanding the scope of the screening outside border areas could justify the arbitrary apprehension of anyone perceived by the police as having entered the country in an irregular manner, in any place and at any time.

This provision is very broad and does not clarify how nor whether an individual assessment will be conducted to determine if the person in question has crossed external borders in an authorised manner, especially in cases where the crossing took place a long time before or where people entered through another member state.

Arbitrary deprivation of liberty (de facto detention)

Undocumented people, including families and children, could be apprehended in any place and at any time and potentially detained for up to five days in designated facilities within the territory of the member states. The mandatory nature of the screening at external borders combined with the lack of safeguards in terms of judicial review, access to a lawyer and reception conditions will likely entail arbitrary deprivation of liberty (de facto detention). This is particularly problematic as de facto detention does not meet the same basic safeguards underlying formally recognised immigration detention. De facto detention is already used in some member states and the proposed regulation could trigger a wide increase across the EU.

Non-refoulement and other human rights grounds

Under the proposed regulation, people who do not apply for international protection should be subject to return or refusal of entry once the screening procedures are over. But screening procedures do not assess reasons why people may not be subject to deportation, such as the principle of non-refoulement, health, protection of family and private life, or the best interests of the child. These are all valid reasons that could apply to many undocumented people who have been living in the EU, sometimes for years.

Proportionality

Whether Article 5 would be proportional to serve the objectives of the Screening Regulation is also questionable. This is evident in the opinion issued by the European Parliament legal service, which found that this measure would not serve the objective of better managing the external border, as the geographical and temporal links between the people intercepted and the checks would be too weak. At PICUM, together with leading European civil society networks and national organisations, we call on EU lawmakers to remove Article 5 from the draft Screening Regulation, and uphold human rights and equality throughout the Pact.

Read our joint statement here.

Ahead of an EU Justice and Home Affairs Ministers meeting on 9-10 June to discuss the reform of the Schengen Borders Code, a coalition of almost 40 NGOs, in a joint statement, denounces the risk of more racial profiling and other fundamental rights violations under the proposed new rules.

The Schengen Borders Code regulates border controls at the internal and external borders of the Schengen area, and essentially prohibits internal checks as a rule, with some limited exceptions. The reform – proposed by the Commission in December 2021 and currently being discussed by the EU Council and the Parliament – maintains this general prohibition on internal checks on paper, but at the same time allows police to carry out checks at internal border areas to “prevent irregular migration” (Recitals 18 and 21 and Article 23).

Since systematic checks are prohibited, it is clear that “random” document checks will depend on police’s decisions about who “looks like” a person without valid papers. Research (see Notes) has already shown that police tend to stop people for checks based on racial, ethnic, or religious characteristics: the new Schengen Borders Code will exacerbate this trend of racial profiling.

The new Code also introduces the possibility for joint police patrols to apprehend people caught without a valid document at internal borders, detain them for up to 24 hours and transfer them to the EU state they think the person came from, without any individual assessment. This “internal pushback” and the ensuing detention would also apply to children, even though this has been deemed illegal by courts and despite international consensus that child detention constitutes a human rights violation.

The proposal escalates the use of monitoring and surveillance technologies like biometric identification technologies and AI-based automated decision-making systems that do not apply relevant safeguards and would be at odds with existing EU data protection legislation and the currently debated Artificial Intelligence Act.

Lastly, the new Code introduces measures that would limit the possibility for people to seek asylum in the EU in situations of “instrumentalisation of migration”. In particular, the reform steps up Frontex’s involvement and allows member states to limit the number of border crossing points and their opening hours, and to intensify border surveillance including through drones, motion sensors and border patrols.

According to Marta Gionco, Advocacy Officer at the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM), “As it stands now, the new Schengen Borders Code would turn the Schengen area into a tech-controlled space where racial profiling gets de facto legitimised, access to asylum is curtailed and freedom of movement is undermined”.

Stephanie Pope, EU Migration Policy Advisor, Oxfam International: “For years, European leaders have shut their eyes to pushbacks. Now the EU is going one step further with an attempt to legalise and legitimise them and other human rights violations happening at Europe’s borders. Where is the condemnation? Where is the commitment to human rights? Pushbacks cannot be accepted as the norm and cannot be legalised.”

Hope Barker, Senior Policy Analyst from the Border Violence Monitoring Network: “In conjunction with other legislative documents of the New Pact, such as provisions for pre-screening procedures that rely heavily on the arbitrary detention of POM and the failed attempts at implementing an IBMM in Croatia and Greece, the SBC reform contributes to the emergent paradigm in European migration policy that frames movement as a security concern in order to justify disregard for fundamental human rights provisions”.

NOTES TO THE EDITORS:

• EU Justice and Home Affairs Ministers are meeting on 9-10 June to discuss various issues related to their portfolios, including the new Schengen Borders Code. The provisional agenda can be read here.
• The full civil society joint statement, including key recommendations, can be read here.
• 2021 research from the EU Fundamental Rights Agency shows that people from an ethnic minority are disproportionately affected by police stops, both when they are walking and when in a vehicle. 2014 research also from the EU Fundamental Rights Agency showed that 79% of surveyed border guards at airports rate ethnicity as a helpful indicator to identify people attempting to enter the country in an irregular manner before speaking to them.
• PICUM is a Brussels-based network of over 160 NGOs working to advance the rights of undocumented people.
• For interviews and other media requests, please contact PICUM’s Communications Officer Gianluca Cesaro at gianluca.cesaro@picum.org

Cover: Alexander Lupin – Adobe Stock

In December 2021, the European Commission proposed new rules on internal borders, codified as a reform of the Schengen Borders Code, that aim to further increase surveillance and controls over non-EU citizens crossing internal and external borders. These proposals would increase the use of technology and would practically legitimise ethnic and racial profiling. More broadly, the proposals reinforce the narrative that irregular migration is a threat to the EU and that it needs to be fought with more policing.

The Schengen Borders Code regulates border controls at the internal and external borders of the Schengen area. The amended Code proposed by the Commission expands EU member states’ powers to carry out checks at the internal borders to prevent undocumented migrants from crossing them, and escalates the use of monitoring and surveillance technologies at the internal and external borders-1-.

The proposed revisions to the Schengen Borders Code set a new procedure to “transfer people apprehended at the internal borders” . According to the proposed new rules, if a third country national crosses the internal borders in an irregular way (e.g. from Germany to Belgium, or from Italy to France), if the police manages to apprehend them “in the vicinity of the border area,” they could be directly transferred back to the competent authorities in the EU country where it is assumed they just came from without undergoing any individual assessment (Article 23a and Annex XII). This provision is very broad and can potentially include people apprehended at train or bus stations, or even in cities close to the internal borders, if there is an indication that they have just crossed the border (for instance through documents they may carry on themselves, their own statements, or information taken from migration or other databases).

Practically speaking, people “transferred” from one EU member state to another would be handed to the police in the receiving member state. The only requirement to carry out this procedure is to for the authorities of the “transferring” state to fill out a simple form which states  the person’s identity, the way the person’s identity was established, the grounds for refusal and the date of the transfer. If the undocumented person refuses to sign, it will be enough for the authorities to indicate this in the comments section.  The undocumented migrant will be then deported back within 24 hours (during which they can be detained without any safeguards). They would have the right to appeal the decision, but without suspensive effect, which means that they would only be able to appeal from another country, with all the difficulties this entails. The receiving Member State must then issue a return decision to deport them to their country of origin or a third country.

In practice, these procedures would legalise an extremely problematic practice of “internal pushbacks” which has been broadly criticised by civil society organisations across the EU and even sanctioned by higher courts. The new procedures would also apply to children, even though this has been deemed illegal by courts.

Even though the new Schengen Borders Code reiterates that internal border controls are prohibited in the Schengen area, it nonetheless clarifies that police and other powers can lawfully carry out checks in the internal border areas to prevent irregular migration (Recitals 18 and 21 and Article 23).  Such provisions will in practice legalise systematic border controls which target people only based on their racial, ethnic, national, or religious characteristics, all of which is in clear violation of European and international anti-discrimination law. In fact, it is clear that the new procedure allowing for internal transfers of people crossing borders irregularly will depend, for its implementation, on the borders police’s practice of deciding who will be subject to document checks based on racial, ethnic, national, or religious characteristics instead of individual behaviour or objective evidence.

2021 research from the EU Fundamental Rights Agency shows that people from an ethnic minority are disproportionately affected by police stops, both when they are walking and when in a vehicle. In addition, another study from 2014 showed that 79% of surveyed border guards at airports rated ethnicity as a helpful indicator to identify people attempting to enter the country in an irregular manner before speaking to them. The new provisions introduced in the amended Schengen Borders Code are likely to further increase the discriminatory and illegal practice of ethnic and racial profiling, which stands at odds with the European Commission’s commitments under the recent Anti-Racism Action Plan.

While the new Schengen Borders Code indicates that internal border controls are prohibited in the Schengen area, it also foresees a provision (Article 25) for a member state to temporarily introduce border controls at all or specific parts of its internal border if it faces “serious threats”. Problematically, the code introduces a definition of “serious threat” which includes, alongside terrorism or organised crime, “a situation characterised by large scale unauthorised movements of third country nationals between member states, putting at risk the overall functioning of the area without internal border control” (Article 25). Even though the Schengen Borders Code (both in the 2016 and the amended versions) foresees that the temporary reintroduction of internal border controls should only be a measure of “last resort”, this has been done in more than 300 cases since 2006.

Furthermore, the new Code introduces measures which member states can apply in case of “instrumentalisation of migrants”, which is defined as “a situation where a third country instigates irregular migratory flows into the Union by actively encouraging or facilitating the movement of third country nationals to the external borders” (Article 2). In such cases, member states can limit the number of entries and the opening hours of crossing points, and intensify border surveillance including through drones, motion sensors and border patrols (Articles 5(4) and 13(5)).

The proposal also expands the use of monitoring and surveillance technologies to prevent irregular migration including when states have not formally reintroduced internal border controls (Article 2 and 23), despite broad criticism over the lack of transparency and the risks of technologies replicating biases against specific communities.

In short, the new Code would turn the Schengen area into a tech-controlled space in which ethnic and racial profiling is likely to be further exacerbated to identify potentially undocumented people and facilitate their immediate deportation to another member state, in complete absence of any safeguards.

-1- Besides the amendments analysed in this blog, the amended proposal introduces further provisions on health-related challenges, amends the procedure for the unilateral reintroduction of internal border controls and introduces the possibility or the Council to reintroduce temporary border controls, on initiative of the Commission.

This blog is the second in a two-part series looking at the intersection between racism and migration policy, and was authored by Abigail Cárdenas Mena, former Advocacy Trainee at PICUM.

On 25 May 2020, George Floyd, an African-American man, was killed by police in the US. The recording of his last moments and words travelled the world, sparking mass protests against police brutality and racial injustice around the globe. Four months later, on 18 September, the European Commission presented the EU’s first Anti-Racism Action Plan as a response to the ever-growing demands for racial equality and justice in Europe.

EU’s commitment to anti-racism: ambitious but still fragile

The new EU Anti-Racism Action Plan is meant to be the strategy for the next five years to step up action to counter racial discrimination and racism within the EU. It sets a clear goal: ensuring equal treatment and rights for all to “make a racism-free EU a reality”. The plan is ambitious in its scope and has been welcomed by anti-racist organisations in Europe. It is the first time structural, institutional and historical racism have been acknowledged by the EU. This is a key step towards recognising, understanding and tackling the different ways in which racism operates. Colonialism, slavery and the Holocaust are explicitly mentioned in the Action Plan when addressing the need to acknowledge and teach the historical roots of racism, as is the need to mainstream racial equality and anti-racism in EU and national policies, from digital technologies to migration. Consistent with the motivation behind its publication, the Commission specifically addresses discriminatory policing towards racialised communities in Europe, including racial or ethnic profiling, recognised as unlawful and damaging for reporting of crimes.

“Progress on fighting racism and hate is fragile – it is hard won but very easily lost”, said president Ursula von der Leyen during the State of the Union Address when announcing the Anti-Racism Action Plan. Unfortunately, she could not be more right. Only a few days later, the Commission released a new Pact on Migration and Asylum that has a strong focus on increasing the number of migrants to be returned and setting border procedures that will increase their detention. This document shows the EU’s focus on increasing its protection of borders as the key component of its new migration strategy.

The end of 2020 saw political reactions from European governments and the EU targeting migrants and the Muslim community in the wake of the attacks that took place between October and November 2020 in Austria and France. As highlighted by Statewatch, the statement adopted by the EU Justice and Home Affairs ministers on 13 November “single out migrants (explicitly) and Muslims (implicitly) as a problem”. Measures proposed to fight terrorism linked extremism to the failure of migrants to integrate, and to the need to strengthen protection of the EU’s external borders and increase policing, security and surveillance. Despite NGOs’ concerns about the conflation of counter-terrorism and integration, prevention of radicalisation and extremism finally made its way into the Action Plan on Integration and Inclusion of migrants and EU citizens with a migrant background, published on 24 November. Two weeks later, the EU Counter-Terrorism Agenda was published following the same narrative on Muslims and migrants. Human rights organisations have warned about the discriminatory impact of these policies and discourses and underlined that “Europe’s top-down counter-terrorism measures are reminiscent of a colonial approach to ‘managing’ Muslims often perceived as a problem in Europe, including through migration.”

The EU Migration and Asylum Pact: losing progress on fighting racism

“It’s very painful for me that in the 21st century, we the Black people are just like nothing. to matter, like seriously, it has to be in the Central Mediterranean, it has to matter in Libya. (…) For me, Europe has to do more to prove that Black life really matters”. These are the words of Souleman, a man from Cameroon rescued from the Central Mediterranean last summer after a long and harsh journey to Europe. The testimony of Souleman is a powerful cry for anti-racist demands to reach migrants, especially black Africans, and migration issues.

The Pact on Migration and Asylum came with five legislative proposals and four recommendations to be discussed by the European Parliament and the Council. The results of their agreements will have an immense impact on migrants trying to reach Europe and already present in Europe. Although the Pact stresses the need for a comprehensive European framework on migration that provides “decent conditions for the men, women and children arriving in the EU” and that “allow Europeans to trust that migration is managed in an effective and humane way”, it does not honour its own words. Instead, another sentence better summarises the Pact’s main motivation: “EU migration rules can be credible only if those who do not have the right to stay in the EU are effectively returned”. Around this idea, the Pact builds a whole system intended to identify who has the right to stay and who does not, and increase the deportation of those left without the right.

Furthering the race-making impact of migration policies

Bordering is always a way of race-making. It determines who is eligible for citizenship and political membership, maintaining historical hierarchies of belonging, but also creating new ones. “As people concerned with challenging racism and defending people’s right to move around, we have to be alert to how movement and controls on movement produce and reconfigure racial distinctions and hierarchies in the present (even if they are not named in racial terms)”, says researcher de Noronha.

The Pact is predominantly about preventing irregular migration, the type of migration that is left for people who cannot access regular pathways to Europe. Access to permits and regular pathways are not available for all migrants  and depend to a large extent on their country of origin. The racial impact is clarified by the UN Special Rapporteur (UNSR) on Contemporary forms of Racism: “States regularly engage in racial discrimination in access to citizenship, nationality or immigration status through policies and rhetoric that make no reference to race, ethnicity or national origin, and that are wrongly presumed to apply equally to all”. In Europe this is clear: “especially in former colonial territories, long-standing citizenship and nationality laws often discriminate against indigenous peoples or persons belonging to racial and ethnic minorities, in ways that reinforce ethno-nationalist conceptions of political membership.” The border procedures proposed in the Pact apply only to those who cross borders irregularly, setting the first filter and (racial) distinction. A further distinction based on nationality is also included here, as the border procedures only apply to people coming from a country with a rate of positive asylum decisions below 20%, which will lead to discrimination on the grounds of nationality.

After a pre-entry screening procedure where these migrants will be automatically detained, the Pact introduces a binary approach where everyone who does not apply for asylum should be forcefully returned, thus leaving no room for other pathways to regularisation and access to permits. The decision on asylum then determines the right to stay. But the asylum system is poorly adapted for addressing the many reasons people might seek protection, leaving some people outside, not to mention all the people who are not seeking protection but just decent labour opportunities.

People who are considered to pose a threat to national security or public order will be sent to the asylum border procedure – an accelerated procedure where people are likely to be returned and could be detained for up to three months. The construction of certain communities as a threat – to which counter-terrorism narratives have contributed – raises questions about the risk of discriminatory targeting of racialised communities.

Exacerbating discriminatory policing, racial profiling and police violence

The Pact foresees the pre-entry screening procedure to be applied also to people already in the EU when “there is no indication” that they crossed the border regularly. Thus, undocumented people will be apprehended inside the European countries where they are residing and might be detained for up to three days to be “screened” – identification, registration in databases, security checks and that will determine their status and their fate.

This poses serious concerns about increased discriminatory policing and racial profiling targeting communities of colour in Europe. Racial profiling is a widespread reality in Europe and works under the ethnonationalist conception that equates belonging to racial or ethnic minorities with being a foreigner. A FRA study from 2014 showed that 79% of surveyed border guards at airports rated ethnicity as a helpful indicator – alongside the way people behave when approaching a checkpoint and during the check (96% and 98%), destination (85%) and nationality (90%) – to identify people attempting to enter the country in an irregular manner before speaking to them. There is ever-growing evidence that discriminatory policing is accompanied by the excessive use of force and violence against racialised – including undocumented – people, including incidents leading to death.  The Pact’s proposed return sponsorship creates the possibility for EU member states to provide mutual support for the deportation of migrants, rather than for relocating them. To do so, member states can “choose the nationality of people to be supported for return, based on the readmission agreements signed and the highest possibility of expulsion”. Besides the inequalities this will create based on origin, this will contribute to discriminatory stops and searches and racial profiling according to nationality and will exacerbate existing practices of raids based on racial and ethnic criteria to fill charter flights for deportation to those countries.

Unequal external relations to ensure forced returns

At the time Spain was removing the razor wires from its fences with Morocco to make them more “humane”, Morocco was adding razor-wired fence on its side of the border with EU funds. The externalisation of borders has moved responsibility and accountability for the consequences of the EU’s own migration control policies away from the EU, culminating in the impunity of the system. “We have been crying over years that Libya is not a ground for people, but Europe pretends as if it’s not hearing”, said Souleman. “Tackling the issues we see today – the loss of life first and foremost, but also shortcomings in migration management – means working together so that everyone assumes their responsibilities”, states the Pact. It is hard to see how the EU is assuming its own.

And yet one area where there seems to be major consensus within the Commission and the Council is the external dimension of the Pact. The proposal gives a strong push to bilateral agreements and partnerships with third countries (though the main focus is on African countries, underlined over and over by different EU leaders) to cooperate on migration control, forced returns and readmission of migrants. These countries often have to be coerced or pressured into accepting “double win for Europe” partnerships where their interests on regularisation or mobility are excluded from the discussion, says the European Council on Refugees and Exiles. As a way to pressure them, the EU subordinates policy priorities related to visas, development aid, financial support, regular pathways and others, on collaboration on readmission – indispensable for the EU’s goal to enforce returns. Such conditionalities do not speak to the “mutually beneficial” relations that the Pact claims to pursue, but instead confirms once again that “EU migration policy is a one-way affair”.

International relations with the global South (former colonies) and its inhabitants are central to the fight for racial justice globally and to overcoming historical relationships of dominance. The EU’s insistence on setting top-down agendas with predefined objectives raises questions about the expansion of EU sovereignty over other territories, attempting to manage the mobility of people not only within its territory but far beyond. This has been evidenced by the expansion of the EU’s borders in Africa, which comes with a high cost for human rights and the lives of African people. Impediments to the free movement of Africans can only remind us of their forced mobility during slavery. Similarities like these are not unique to the African continent. How Europe controls the migration of people from the global South today is very much rooted in its colonial past. Not only the EU’s commitment to global justice and reparation is missing in the Pact, but solidarity is invoked between EU countries (to enforce deportations) and not with the global South and its people.

How to ensure rights for all, including migrants: building on the Anti-Racism Action Plan

Migration and (the fight against) racism cannot be compartmentalised. To live up to its commitments on racial justice, the EU cannot carry out two parallel agendas on migration and anti-racism, respectively; instead, it should bring both policy areas into dialogue so that decisions about migration contribute to the fight for racial justice and actions on anti-racism contribute to a fair system of migration for all. There are several steps that the EU can take, building on the new Anti-Racism Action Plan.

1. Mainstream anti-racism in migration policies, integrating the racial equality dimension throughout the legal and policy EU framework on migration. This will also involve looking at the specific ways structural, institutional and individual racism are faced by migrants in Europe (including at the borders) and devising concrete measures to fight against it.
2. Counter discriminatory policing and racial profiling. The EU must tackle police brutality and racist abuses by law enforcement to protect those who are most likely to experience it, regardless of migration status. “Everyone should feel safe in Europe” and migration and border controls cannot be put before the safety, rights and lives of people. Strong accountability measures and access to justice are key to address this problem and the EU should make them available within the EU, at its borders and beyond – wherever its migration policies are implemented.
3. Ensure “real mutually beneficial” partnerships with third countries. Moving forward, the EU’s relationship with the global South cannot replicate the unequal arrangements rooted in past colonial ties to impose its own agenda and goals – an agenda that harms the very people concerned. To avoid perpetuating neo-colonial dominance, the EU must mainstream anti-racism in its foreign policy (across all areas), instead of mainstreaming migration control, and work on global justice and reparation measures. Further recommendations on how to ensure “real mutually beneficial” partnerships with third countries have been put forward by migrant rights advocates.
4. Teach the past to understand the present. Acknowledge and teach the historical roots of racism to foster a better understanding of migration in the present and counter ahistorical and race-blind approaches to migration policies.
5. Promote narratives consistent with the dignity of all. In addition to combatting disinformation and racist and xenophobic messages in the media, EU institutions should promote the same regarding political discourse targeting migrant and racialised communities. This will help to fight against ethnonationalist rhetoric that fosters discrimination of such groups.

A real commitment to anti-racism implies ensuring rights for the whole community: from EU citizens from racial or ethnic minorities to migrants from the same minorities, regardless of their status and the way they cross borders. As stressed in the Anti-Racism Action Plan, “everyone in the EU should be able to enjoy their fundamental rights and freedoms”. But citizenship, nationality and immigration status remain the first formal – and racialised – barrier to the full enjoyment of human rights that states have at their disposal. For this reason, it is essential to understand how the EU is shaping irregularity, who is made “irregular” and the racial impact of this, and to continue to demand rights for all, irrespective of status, and regular and accessible pathways to Europe.

The statement was published three days after a mini-summit with key EU leaders to respond to the attacks where Islam was directly targeted. It also underwent several modifications to remove references to Islam and Muslims before the final version, but there is still a strong focus on religious extremism and the explicit mention of the so-called “islamist” attack in France.

People who do not apply for asylum are immediately deported or denied entry, while those who apply are sent to asylum (border or normal) procedures where, if their application is refused, will also be forcefully returned.

Cover image: Amy Elting- Unsplash

This blog is the first in a two-part series looking at the intersection between racism and migration policy, and has been written by PICUM’s Advocacy Trainee Abigail Cárdenas Mena.

The Tarajal Massacre

Seven years ago, on the 6th February 2014, fourteen people died in the Mediterranean sea after the Guardia Civil (one of the Spanish police forces) shot rubber bullets, detonator blanks and smoke canisters (anti-riot materials) against them as they were trying to reach Spain. To understand how an incident like this could happen and how seven years after there has been no accountability and no justice for the victims, we should know who they were.

The victims were (at least) fourteen young black men from West and Central Africa, mainly from Cameroon, who were trying to cross the Moroccan-Spanish border by swimming through the Tarajal Beach, which is located in Ceuta. Ceuta together with Melilla are two Spanish cities on the African continent, separated from Morocco by fences. The brutal response of the Guardia Civil was intended to prevent them from crossing the border. Twenty-three other people who were able to reach the Spanish side were returned to Morocco as soon as they arrived at the beach but were not given any due process. Their return to Morocco is otherwise known as a pushback. Testimonies collected by the NGO Caminando Fronteras document, with pictures and medical reports, the use of violence by the police and the injuries caused to the survivors, who didn’t receive any assistance for their injuries.

Europe’s approach to managing borders perpetuates discrimination and violence

An incident like this, unfortunately, is not unique to the Spanish context. The EU’s aim to control irregular migration has led to a system of border management with few guarantees of human rights compliance for migrants. European borders – both external and internal – have been operating as spaces of impunity with little control and supervision over law enforcement agencies and their conduct, leading to situations of violence, mistreatment and abuse against migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. As the Danish Refugee Council has stated:

Tacitly accepting the trade-off between ensuring human rights compliance and limiting the number of irregular arrivals opens a wide space for multiple forms of abuse. (…) There is an ever-growing need to recognize that human rights violations are taking place at the borders, and particularly at the EU’s external (and internal) borders.

However, police violence against migrants not only happens at borders, but throughout the whole migration control system. This takes place in the context of identity checks, detention and deportations, on the EU territory and in other countries involved in protecting the EU’s borders through bilateral agreements and the externalisation of borders.

Episodes of police brutality against migrants in Europe have been extensively documented and denounced by different NGOs, activists and organisations. In 2018, an Afghan man who was being deported from Germany was restrained by six police officers who taped him to his seat in the plane and placed him in handcuffs, leg restraints and a helmet, and made him wear a mouth guard. One officer squeezed his genitals several times for prolonged periods and another choked him by pushing his arm against his neck to the point he struggled to breath. This happened during a charter flight monitored by the Committee for the Prevention of Torture of the Council of Europe, which reported the incident. Far from being isolated cases, violence against migrants is inherent to the migration enforcement system as a whole.

Spain’s migration enforcement especially targets people of colour  

The “accident of birth” – namely, where a person was born in the world – is a major factor in determining how freely they can travel to Europe. Citizens of 104 countries are required to obtain a visa before entering the EU. This includes every country on the African continent (only the islands Seychelles and Mauritius are exempted from this requirement). “Accessible and decent labour migration pathways across various occupations remain very limited, despite labour market demand”. As scholar Luke de Noronha wrote: “Race cannot be dispensed with so briskly when the principal target of immigration restrictions, the ‘global poor’, corresponds so closely with those ‘formerly colonised’ and those racialised as ‘non-white”. As analysed below, Spain provides an example of how racism underlies migration policies.

One year after the Tarajal massacre, Spain passed a law creating a special regime applicable in Ceuta and Melilla to allow the “rejection at borders” of people found crossing the border irregularly. The special rule aimed at legalising pushbacks. In doing so, Spain not only refused to acknowledge and redress the tragic consequences of Tarajal and pushbacks in general but furthered the exemption of rights and impunity in a place where the majority of migrants come from African countries without safe and regular pathways to come to Europe.

As a consequence of this law, Spain has the highest number of “refusal of entry” in Europe by far. Eurostat data shows that “in 2019, more than two thirds of the total number of non-EU citizens who were refused entry into the EU-27 were recorded in Spain“ with 493,500 refusals of entry (68.8% of the total). This was only followed by Poland with 65,400 and France with 56,600 refusals of entry, with a notable difference of more than 400,000 cases with Spain. According to the same source, “the overwhelming majority of non-EU citizens who were refused entry into Spain were Moroccan citizens (484,800; 98.3 % of all refusals in Spain)”.

While Moroccans are overwhelmingly refused at the border by the Spanish police, Sub-Saharan Africans are subjected to discriminatory and violent raids and forcibly displaced from the north to the south of the country by the Moroccan police in an attempt to prevent them from even approaching the border. This is part of Morocco’s agreement with Spain (Morocco has claimed to have stopped more than 70,000 people from crossing into Spain in 2019). This practice of forced displacement has been pointed out as one of the reasons behind the decrease in arrivals by sea to Spain in 2019 compared to 2018, as well as for the diversion of the route towards the Canary Islands in 2020, which led to the death of 1,851 people in what is known as the Atlantic route, currently the deadliest route in Europe.

Moroccan police has also been preventing black Africans from claiming asylum at the border crossing points, thus leaving no options for regular entry procedures, as proven by Forensic Architecture: “According to witness testimony, the consulate in Nador is not accessible to Black Sub-Saharan nationals and there were no applications by Sub-Saharan nationals at any Spanish embassies in Morocco between 2015 and 2018”. This reality was not taken into account in N.D. and N.T. v. Spain, a case concerning the pushback of two men from Mali and Ivory Coast, where the European Court of Human Rights recently found no violation of the prohibition against collective expulsion, placing the responsibility on the migrants for climbing the fences rather than using the allegedly available means to seek asylum. This judgement contrasts with the case M.K. and Others v. Poland where the same Court found a violation of the prohibition of collective expulsion of Chechens crossing from Belarus to Poland, suggesting racially discriminatory assumptions by the Court, depending on who is crossing the borders and how, to the detriment of African people. “The case of ND and NT reveals the mechanisms of structural racism embedded in Europe’s border policies.”

Once in Spain, migration enforcement continues to disproportionally target the African community, together with other racialised communities, who are more likely to be surveilled and feel the violence of the law enforcement. Incidents leading to the death of black Africans have occurred at every stage of the migration control system: Mame Mbaye (Senegal) in the context of an identity check, Samba Martine (Democratic Republic of Congo) in a detention centre, and Osamuyia Aikpitanyi (Nigeria) during deportation, are only some of the names representing the lethal effect of systematic violence targeting undocumented people originating from Africa. Each of them reveals one side of this system: the criminalisation and police harassment of manteros (street vendors from Senegal) and the constant fear and stress they live with for being undocumented; the lack of effective health care in detention centres and the neglect of the government through poor institutional reception and detection of vulnerability of people who just cross the borders; and police brutality to enforce a forced deportation by any means. Only in the case of Samba, the government (after nine years) acknowledged its responsibility, while there has been no accountability for Mame and Osamuyia.

Racial profiling plays a key role in the disproportionate impact of migration enforcement on such communities. For undocumented people, being subjected to an identity check for migration enforcement purposes (or, in fact, any other purpose) is one of the main gateways to detention and, eventually, to deportation. The fact that racial and ethnic profiling, although being illegal under European and international law, is a widespread practice in Europe, makes race an important factor correlated with the likelihood of ending up identified and detained.

This, consequently, leads to an overrepresentation of people of colour in immigration detention centres. One study revealed that, in 2016, 90% of the people in Spain’s detention centres (CIEs) were from Africa (55% from Sub-Saharan Africa, 35% from North Africa). According to the same study, this far exceeded the actual proportion of African people in the migrant population in Spain (Africans represented 20% of migrants and less than 10% of the estimated undocumented population in Spain). This share has been changing over the last years with a higher rate of detained people from North Africa, mainly Morocco and Algeria, representing up to 70% of total immigration detainees in 2018 and 2019. This can be explained to a large extent by the criminalisation of black and Arab men in particular, leading to racial profiling with a significant impact on this part of the population, as data show in Spain and across Europe.

The Tarajal massacre: What have we learned?

The Tarajal massacre led to a court challenge by civil society, without any success for the claimants. Although sixteen Guardia Civil officers were prosecuted, the case was filed and reopened three times in six years with different arguments and irregularities in the process, including the refusal to the parents’ victims to participate in the judicial process. The Minister for Home Affairs at the time never acknowledged any misconduct by law enforcement officers and instead defended their behaviour. The incident remains un-investigated and justice and reparation have not been granted for the victims and their families, pointing to the total impunity that operates at borders. To date, the families of the victims buried on the Spanish side of the border have not been able to identify their bodies because the Spanish government has not provided them with the required visas to enter Ceuta.

This year, as every year, “la Marcha por la Dignidad” (March for Dignity) took place in Ceuta and many other cities (in Spain and beyond) on the anniversary of the Tarajal tragedy to remember the victims and denounce the effects of a deadly migration policy that still does not offer safe and regular pathways for migration for many people.

Of the 2,170 people who died in the Euro-African Western Border while trying to reach Spain in 2020, 95,8% disappeared at sea and their bodies were never recovered. To achieve a “racism-free” and “united in diversity” Europe, the EU should take seriously and value equally all lives by ensuring the safety and access to justice for all people, regardless of racial or ethnic origin, religion, nationality, citizenship and migration status, including those on their journey to Europe. Effective measures must be taken to tackle racism in national and European migration systems and black lives should be at the centre of any action to reverse a system that systematically directs violence towards them and carries out a practice of laisser mourir (allowing people to die) at the borders.

Migrants, black and, more broadly, racialised voices must be heard. As Marra Junior, anti-racist and Pan-Africanist activist and one of the organisers of the Tarajal commemoration in Bilbao, says: “ça suffit” (it’s enough). Watch the video below to hear what the Tarajal massacre means for him as an African migrant in Spain.JTNDZGl2JTIwc3R5bGUlM0QlMjJiYWNrZ3JvdW5kLWNvbG9yJTNBJTIzZmZmZmZmJTNCJTIwcGFkZGluZyUzQTEwcHglM0IlMjIlMjBjbGFzcyUzRCUyMmNvb2tpZWNvbnNlbnQtb3B0b3V0LW1hcmtldGluZyUyMiUzRSUwQSUyMCUyMFBsZWFzZSUyMCUzQ2ElMjBocmVmJTNEJTIyamF2YXNjcmlwdCUzQUNvb2tpZWJvdC5yZW5ldyUyOCUyOSUyMiUzRWFjY2VwdCUyMG1hcmtldGluZy1jb29raWVzJTNDJTJGYSUzRSUyMHRvJTIwd2F0Y2glMjB0aGlzJTIwdmlkZW8uJTBBJTNDJTJGZGl2JTNF

The term pushback refers to the practice carried out by law enforcement “when a person is apprehended after an irregular border crossing and summarily returned to a neighbouring country without assessing their individual circumstances on a case-by-case basis.” Pushbacks are an increasing phenomenon at Europe’s borders and entails the violation of “the right to seek asylum and the protection against refoulement, which are at the core of international refugee and human rights law”.

PICUM (forthcoming), Designing labour migration policies to promote decent work.

The Euro-African Western Border includes the routes that migrants take from Africa to Spain, namely: Canary Islands or Atlantic route, “Estrecho” (the Strait of Gibraltar) route, Alboran route and Algeria route.

Cover image: MarcoAlla – Adobe Stock