The eu’s miGrATion relATions wiTh menA counTries 155
enhanced maritime surveillance; the return of irregular migrants
(return arrangements and readmission agreements) and for enhancing
the capacity and abilities of law enforcement authorities to effectively
f ight trans-border organised crime and corruption (CEC 2011a: 7).The Commission has proposed to seek mobility partnerships with Egypt,
Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia in the f irst instance (see also Fargues &
Fandrich 2012). Such partnerships would seek to facilitate and organise
legal migration, address irregular migration and focus on the potential
development outcomes of migration. Both visa facilitation and readmission
agreements were seen as part of these partnerships (CEC 2011a). As a step to
their development, the Commission identif ies the facilitation of mobility for
students, researchers and business people, but sees the building of border-
control capacity as also being integral to developments in the shorter-term.
Notions of danger and risk can now be explored in the context of the
migration effects (both perceived and actual) of the Arab Spring. The most
immediate effect was to signif icantly increase the focus on border control
and security. In the wake of arrivals on the Italian island of Lampedusa,
there were polemics in Italy about the absence of EU-wide solidarity.
This was followed by a dispute with France when Italy issued permits to
migrants – mainly from Tunisia – which were then used to cross the border
into France. There was even talk of Schengen provisions being suspended.
This, in turn, ref lects a general hardening of attitudes to immigration in EU
member states that has also involved questioning of the EU free-movement
framework. In an inversion of the gap hypothesis developed by Cornelius,
Martin and Hollif ield (1994) and Cornelius, Martin, Tsuda and Hollif ield
(2004), we see a gap not between a rhetorical commitment to control and
higher levels of immigration, but between the very strong rhetorical com-
mitment to control and relatively low levels of immigration. In their analysis
of migration f lows after 2010, Fargues and Fandrich (2012) show that, of the 1
million or more people who f led Libya, only around 25,000 moved to Europe.
In their analysis of the ongoing Syrian crisis they identify 100,000 displaced
people, but put the numbers moving to Europe in the hundreds. They argue
that the EU response was to focus on border controls and security.
4.6 Conclusion
At the core of the debate about ‘danger’ and ‘dialogue’ is the tension between
the EU’s ‘f ight against illegal immigration’ and all the attendant concerns