The Migration Crisis and the European Union Border Regime

This chapter is concerned with the various ways in which the migration crisis since the Arab Spring of 2011 has reshaped the reach of the EU border control regime. Within the EU framework, Frontex has acquired a greater role, while Schengen states have new powers to reintroduce internal border controls. In the external sphere, the EU now cooperates with a broader range of third states—Libya and Turkey most prominently—while developing more extensive forms of cooperation with them. The chapter will argue that this pattern—incremental internal changes and hyperactivity in the external sphere—is a product of intergovernmental constraints upon EU policy in a core area of member state sovereignty. The avoidance by EU Member States of legal responsibility for asylum applicants and other migrants is a further reason for the preference for externalization.