Multilevel inter-regional governance of mobility between Africa and Europe: towards a deeper and broader externalisation

Abstract

This paper analyses the dynamics of the multilevel governance of migration flows between West Africa and Europe. Firstly, I examine bilateral, multilateral and interregional frames of cooperation on human mobility. Secondly, I analyse the type of governance emerging from the cooperation, focusing on his main axis -readmission and externalisation of control- and on the tools used to prompt the negotiation, and particularly on the linkage with development and the subsequent emergence of a ‘migratory conditionality’ in this field. Thirdly, I underline how, during the last decade and more clearly after the recent La Valletta’s EU-Africa summit on migration, a hegemonic European securitarian approach of human mobility had spread and has produced a de facto displacement of the Euro-African border. Finally, I consider the consequences of this rise of the immigration issue between Africa and Europe, from the point of view of States as well as people on the move.