Normative Elusiveness of Europe in Terms of Refugee Crisis
Normative Elusiveness of Europe in Terms of Refugee Crisis

Author(s): Sinem Bal
Subject(s): Law, Constitution, Jurisprudence, EU-Accession / EU-DEvelopment, Asylum, Refugees, Migration as Policy-fields
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: Migration Series; EU; European Union; immigrants; international policy; migration policy; refugee crisis; refugee law; refugee policy; refugees;
Summary/Abstract: What makes the EU different from other actors is its use of a catalogue of values and principles that are shaped, shared, and diffused by Europe around the world. By expanding these values beyond Europe, the EU constitutes its self-identification and reflects a particular kind of actorness in international affairs. These performances have ontologically been designated within specific role conceptualizations, such as a ‘civilian power’1, ‘structural power’2, ‘normative area’3, and ‘normative power’.4 Among these scholars, Ian Manners, in most of his works5, coins the concept of Normative Power Europe (NPE) and describes the EU as a norm promoter that conditions universal norms to third countries in order to consolidate the moral consciousness in international politics. Although this approach of Manners was ground-breaking approximatively two decades ago, the EU has yet continued to include universal values as criteria in its external relations or in its constitutive documents and makes the scholars to elaborate the NPE role conception through case studies. However, the EU’s stance on refugee crisis manifests itself with noncompliant practices that cause myriad political challenges; such as the rise of nationalist parties in member states’ parliaments, breaking of the Dublin Regime, the lack of coordination between nation states and failure in the common protection policies for refugees, all of which undermine the NPE image and unravel the fact that the EU pulls between human right norm promoter and security dichotomy.

• Details
• Contents