Externalizing border management and refugee rights

The ISRF Grant would help completion of a publication, which aims to investigate the new and different forms of “contactless” external migration control that have been employed by the EU and its Member States to eliminate any physical contact with migrants and refugees in transit, delegate to African countries the management of migratory flows, and thus limit onwards movements to Europe. It will focus on key partners of the EU in border management cooperation (in particular Tunisia) and achieve an assessment of the impact of these containment policies on the rights of refugees in transit. We will investigate the notion of ‘place of safety’ for disembarkation of migrants intercepted/rescued at sea, critically discussing current proposals for disembarkation arrangements under the New EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, and the funding lines under the EU Trust Fund for Africa.