Introduction

The politics of migration in the European Union (EU) is a topic that attracts increasingly scholarly attention, but is also subject to violent diatribes. The reasons are easy to understand; on the one hand, international migration produces a significant impact on the organisational and conceptual structures of European welfare systems, calling for a substantial redefinition of the main welfare functions, normative foundations, distributive priorities and key institutional features of existing national welfare arrangements, while on the other hand, and in a highly globalised environment, international migration also produces a significant impact on the governance structure of European member states, partially shifting the locus of authority from national to transnational institutions (see Chapter Three, this volume). Despite pragmatic considerations on the real possibility of EU member states to absorb a potentially increasing number of EU and non-EU migrant workers, the politics of migration in the EU also entails an international human rights dimension, often neglected by national and EU institutions. On the 60th anniversary of the United Nations (UN) Declaration of Human Rights (1948), a different, more inclusive and human rights-aware ‘politics of migration’ in the EU is needed. This ‘new politics of migration’ should look beyond the ‘politics of regulation’ as the current leading national and EU discourses seem to emphasise, but it should also involve a ‘politics of integration’ of non-EU citizens and the respect of their basic and inalienable human rights (such as the right to seek and find asylum).

As shown by the Berlusconi government's decision in May 2009 to refuse entry to Italian territorial waters of 227 ‘illegal’ immigrants from Africa, sending them immediately back to Libya to inevitable further suffering (several other rejections have followed in the subsequent months) (BBC News, 2009; UNHCR, 2009a, 2009b; Amnesty International, 2010), the security dimension to migration policies chosen by the EU and its member states to ensure a ‘manageable’ and ‘sustainable’ migration within European borders raises several important ethical and moral questions. These questions concern the potential human rights violations that can be committed in the name of ‘Fortress Europe’. In the 21st century, should the randomness of birth still dictate access to human rights, with citizens of the EU member states granted extended ‘democratic benefits’ (see Offe, 2003), while many asylum-seeking, ‘illegal’ or ‘undocumented’ migrants are left to an unfortunate destiny?