Commentary: After Ceuta, Europe is once again mired in migration chaos of its own making

IMPACT ACROSS EUROPE

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, perhaps the EU’s leading right-wing immigration restrictionist, latched onto the Ceuta episode. She claimed that “uncontrolled illegal immigration poses a real threat to the security of Europe’s borders”. Italy, along with Finland, Austria, Sweden, Denmark and the Czech Republic, called for Spain to be suspended from the Schengen zone. 

Meloni also reintroduced border checks with Spain, even though Ceuta is not part of the free movement zone, and Spain and Italy do not share a land border.

The emergency summit on Aug 4 continued the pattern of the 2015 political crisis, after which the EU held more than 20 summits on migration, attempting to corral member states into coordinated actions.

Ahead of the latest summit, European leaders argued that Spain’s plan to provide residency and work permits to 500,000 undocumented migrants had incentivised last week’s sudden increase in arrivals.

That would buck historical precedent, however. Both Italy and Greece had large campaigns to grant legal status to undocumented migrants in the 1990s and 2000s, and researchers found no evidence that so-called regularisation processes led to further undocumented migration. US President Ronald Reagan also oversaw an amnesty programme that legalised nearly 3 million people in 1986 and decreased the number of undocumented migrants for decades afterward.

Following the EU summit, member states appeared to be placated, and the European Commission promised to double down on funding for border security, cooperation with African governments and increased deportations.

Realistically, however, as long as Europe continues using aid to enhance border security without addressing underlying issues such as economic disparities and poor governance in neighboring countries, there will likely be more incidents of sudden, chaotic, large-scale migration, not less.

Kelsey Norman is Fellow for the Middle East at Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University. Nicholas R Micinski is Assistant Professor of Human Rights and Cultural Relations at American University School of International Service. This commentary first appeared on The Conversation.