November 8-15, 2021 Mixed Migration Update

Welcome to MMU! Here—in the time it takes to read one feature—you get a global sweep of the last week's most relevant migration policy developments, & links to all the articles you need to dig deeper.

Nov 15, 2021

Spotlight

With the Polish-Belarussian border on fire, there is already quite it a bit of commentary out there denouncing a hybrid attack carried out by Minsk and orchestrated by Moscow—with even sympathetic writers characterizing asylum seekers as weapons, or ammunition, in this asymmetric attack.

If our debate reduces to whether asylum seekers are deliberate or unwitting participants in a supposed attack on Europe, then we are asking the wrong question and need to go back to the basics. Helpfully, the European Center on Countering Hybrid Threats published, early this year, an excellent report on the subject, setting definitions and conceptualizing its scope. Its 58 pages are well worth your time. As far as this week’s events are concerned, the tl;dr is in the quote below:

So the question remains: What turns an action into Hybrid Threats? Ostensibly, it is when a hostile actor deliberately combines and synchronizes action, specifically targeting the systemic vulnerabilities in democratic societies in ways that have roots in tactics with which authoritarian states, revisionist powers, rogue states and non-state networks that are seeking to undermine democratic state system have been trying to maintain their power, exert control and weaken opponents.

EU migration policy making—and as a result European migration policy—are broken. This brokenness allows states at Europe’s periphery to manipulate the EU and its member states, as numerous authors have argued convincingly, this week and in prior occasions. In this particular hybrid attack, the weapon is not the asylum seeker at the EU’s external border, but rather member states’ disregard for European asylum law. In this particular hybrid attack, the ammunition are not asylum seekers’ attempts to cross the EU’s external borders, but rather the discord sown across EU institutions and member states by the ferrying of a few thousand asylum seekers to those very borders.

Referring to asylum seekers as weapons or threats is problematic at an ontological level: it dehumanizes them in public discussions and reduces their standing in policymaking and policy implementation. But it is also problematic, in a more direct way, at a policymaking level. The present threat is the fragility of Europe’s policies and the incapacity of Europe’s agencies to deal with deviations from the norm at EU external borders with anything short of a Leviathan donning riot gear. It is in the form of security forces at the border by the thousand—and not that of asylum seekers—that this hybrid attack manifests. And it is in our power to counter this threat differently, preserving our humanity and our values and denying Moscow and Minsk the propaganda coup they seek.