PRIN 2022 “Legal Pathways for Refugees in the Euro-Mediterranean Context: The Feasibility of Processing Asylum Claims outside the EU”
Head Unit: University of Tuscia
Scientific Coordinator: Prof. Mario Savino
Partner Unit: University of Pavia, coordinated by Prof. Antonio Maria Morone
Grant awarded: 224.100,00 €
Description and main goals of the project: The project explores the possibility to establish Protected Entry Procedures (PEPs) to provide access to asylum systems in the EU. The securitization and externalization of border controls, coupled with the lack of a credible common system of organized entry procedures, render unauthorised arrivals the exclusive avenue to asylum in Europe. The resulting paradox is that the strictly territorial paradigm, on which the CEAS rests, feeds the very same phenomenon (irregular, mixed flows) that the broader EU migration policy intends to curb. The expansion of externalisation techniques, moreover, affects the sustainability of cooperation with third countries. The reluctance of Mediterranean partners to cooperate will increase in the long run, unless the EU establishes a credible mechanism of responsibility-sharing, based on both financial support and the admission of protection seekers. Against this background, the project intends to assess whether and under what legal and contextual conditions the offshore processing of asylum claims may contribute to a safer and more orderly, human-rights-compliant migration management. To achieve this, it focuses on the conditions under which the various types of legal pathways to asylum in Europe (resettlement, humanitarian visas, and other complementary pathways) could be established in selected Northern-African countries. The Northern-African perspectives on EU border externalization and securitization will be explored, so as to incorporate into the academic and institutional debate on the subject the decisive point of view of potential partners in offshore processing experiments, such as Libya and Tunisia.
Main deliverables:
