4 The European Union’s international-
migration relations towards Middle
Eastern and North African countries
Andrew Geddes
4.1 Introduction
This chapter examines the impact of European Union (EU) migration poli-
cies on Mediterranean ‘partner countries’. This involves relations between
the EU and its 28 member states and the ten Middle Eastern and North
African (MENA) countries that have entered into an agreement with the
EU within what is known as the European Neighbourhood Policy (Algeria,
Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria and Tunisia).
The chapter develops its analysis in what has recently been described as
a ‘Partnership for Democracy and Shared Prosperity’ (CEC 2011a). This
‘partnership’ was developed by the EU in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings
and its highly uncertain effects for reform in MENA partner countries.
The chapter provides analysis and examples of the past role played by
migration within this proposed partnership and explores the underlying
conceptualisation of migration both as a ‘danger’ to be guarded against and
as a ‘risk’ to be managed. The EU’s plans to create ‘mobility partnerships’
are seen as central to this approach, although there is still a high level of
ambiguity about the meaning of mobility within these agreements.
Hollif ield (2004) has shown how debates about immigration as ‘danger’
and ‘risk’ have tended to unfold within what he calls the ‘migration state’.
This observation about the centrality of the state is now questioned in the
contemporar y European context by assessing the development of Europe’s
international migration relations, which see international migration be-
come part of the relations between the EU as a supranational governance
system and non-member states (Geddes 2005). Its member states still play a
key role in these international migration relations, but the EU is a complex
system of power-sharing between member states and across governance
levels. International-migration relations are assessed according to what
have been characterised in the context of US-Mexico relations as strategies
of ‘boundary build-up’. The chapter considers how this relationship between
risk and danger has been affected by the perceived and actual migration