The following is the first of a two-part series. It was originally published in issue 22.1 of the Journal for Cultural and Religious Studies.
Introduction
Today, nationality is still among the most important justifications of political rule. Many modern national states have been created through the application of the following two principles of international law, that take nationality as their decisive criterion: Since 1918 the “Principle of Nationality” became operational in dividing former multiracial states into national states. According to this principle, applied after the end of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires as well as for states created after decolonization, a nation-state should contain one to three ethnic groups
A more recent update of this principle is a person’s right to self-determination, anchored in the UN Charter of 1945, Article 1,2. A supranational union like the EUropean[1] Union challenges this paradigm. Why do we consider a national government’s decisions to be normative for us, even if this government might be distant or not even represent us in terms of gender or ethnicity? Why do we feel bonds of nationality with some people, while we perceive others as strangers? If nationhood has replaced prior justifications of political rule based on religious belief, the legitimacy of claims to govern pronounced by supranational structures like the EUropean Union is not evident.
On the contrary, migration challenges nationhood and demarcates its limits. The latter becomes tangible through the perception of foreign people within the country, which can reinforce a feeling of national unity between an ingroup and at the borders. Borders are brought into existence by those who struggle to cross them. It is they who experience the border as such, at least for many EUropeans, which would otherwise just be a theoretical concept. The aim of this paper is to investigate how the actual physical border and the politics that constitute it interact with the theoretical concept understood as political faith.
In this view, borders are not only physical but get reinforced by faith in a sacred unity, protected from perceived dangers. In the case of the EU, the experience of seemingly unsurmountable borders is frequently created by people on the move[2] trying to cross its external borders. In order to explore the dynamic between borders and belief in the case of the EUropean Union as it currently exists, asylum rights and their violation will first be given as important context. Then, religion will be discussed in the framework of EUropean border and asylum politics. Next, the importance of the Christian religion will be examined in the history of the union. Finally, the notion of political faith and its embodiment in the case of the EUropean Union will be discussed.
Rights Violations of Refugees by the EU
Different kinds of international law conventions bind countries in the European Union to respect refugees’ right to asylum. First, on the level of the international community there is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948, that is as such not legally binding, but has a great moral value since it serves as foundation of modern human rights law.[3] Article 14,1 states that “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution“ (UN 2022), whereupon Article 25,1 adds the “ right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.[4]
A legally binding convention is the 1951 Refugee Convention that is ratified by all 27 EU member countries.[5] Article 33,1 contains the principle of non-refoulement: “No Contracting State shall expel or return (“refouler”) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”.[6] Since 1995, the EUropean borders[7] are administered according to the Schengen agreement that abolished checks at internal frontiers and homogenized external border controls.[8]
The elimination of internal border control puts focus on the external borders, which are hence the crucial obstacle for refugees to cross that wish to enter a Member State. In Article 18 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the right to asylum is guaranteed in line with the 1951 Refugee Convention.[9] It is mandatory to follow this charter for all EU organs, as well as for member states, insofar as they implement union law. As an answer to the specific challenges created by the Schengen zone, the Dublin III convention assigns the responsibility of examining the asylum application to the first country where the demand is lodged, whereby exceptions, e.g., family reunifications, are allowed for.
Member states shall examine any application for international protection by a third-country national or a stateless person who applies on the territory of any one of them, including at the border or in the transit zones. The application shall be examined by a single member state (…); Where it is impossible to transfer an applicant to the Member State primarily designated as responsible because there are substantial grounds for believing that there are systemic flaws in the asylum procedure and in the reception conditions for applicants in that Member State, resulting in a risk of inhuman or degrading treatment within the meaning of Article 4 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, the determining Member State shall continue to examine (…) whether another Member State can be designated as responsible. Where the transfer cannot be made (…), the determining Member State shall become the Member State responsible“.[10]
These obligations, however, are broken on a regular basis. Thränhardt, for example, described the EUropean asylum regime[11] in 2021 as “Lotteries,” even as countries that are not overwhelmed by refugees and have traditionally effective governance exhibit an “organized ambivalence towards the acceptance of refugees”[12] According to the political scientist, this ambivalence is the result of legal principles on the one side and political impetus to constrain migrant inflows on the other side. The deciding asylum officers are left to deal with this tension, which can lead to long, uninformed procedures that have strongly diverging results in different countries or different parts of the same country about the same situation.[13]
A more drastic violation of the seemingly binding obligations, especially against the principle of non-refoulement, is the ongoing practice of pushbacks. The Border Violence Monitoring Network defines pushbacks as “informal expulsion (without due process) of individuals or groups to another country”.[14] Chain pushbacks” are pushbacks that happen inside the EU and transport people back outside of the external borders, often through multiple stops in different countries. Since both kinds of pushbacks are illegal, according to international law, and often include violence or humiliation their documentation is poor, and the number of unreported cases is likely high.
However, the Border Violence Monitoring Network tries to document pushbacks mostly along the Western Balkan’s Trail and published together with “The Left,” a group in the EUropean Parliament, the “Black Book of Pushbacks.”[15] This report, that had been first publicized in December 2020 and updated on the 8th of December 2022, contains in its latest version 1635 testimonies that affected more than 24,990 people and 16 states, thereof 10 EU member states.
These numbers display pushbacks from 2017 to 2022. While mostly national border guards are operating the pushbacks, FRONTEX, the EUropean Border and Coast Guard Agency, has also been proven to be indirectly and directly involved in human rights violations against refugees. Despite multiple investigations, a change of the Agency’s executive director, and official rebranding that includes a tendency to call their operations “life-saving,” the BVMN exposes that more pushbacks and more violence against refugees in FRONTEX’ operational areas have been recorded in the last two years. At the same time, FRONTEX has doubled in size in between 2019 and 2021, augmented their operational area to non-European countries, and gained influence over the Union’s border security technologies, e.g., it oversees EUROSUR[16] and the forthcoming EES (Entry-Exit System), that should automatically monitor border crossings of third-country nationals.[17]
Religious Narrative in EU Asylum and Border Politics
Due to the specific political structure of the EU, it is not possible to speak of one coherent system of asylum and border politics. In fact, the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) serves in large part as a set of merely minimal standards that member states are free to interpret in their national law. However, in terms of border politics, the EU could agree on common standards as on the Dublin or the EURODAC Regulation, a fingerprint database of asylum seekers and people crossing the border irregularly. On the 23rd of September 2020, the commission proposed the “New Pact on Migration and Asylum”, a corpus of drafts to amend the existing laws and directives.[18] On the homepage of the commission, this proposal is titled: “New Pact on Migration and Asylum, setting out a fairer, more European approach”.
The question is: What is a “more EUropean approach”? Which values or practices are being referred to here? This reform proposal seems to take distance from the current practices even if human rights violations are not explicitly mentioned as its motivation. Instead, the reconstruction of trust amongst the member states and in the “capacity of the European Union to manage migration”[19] are its indicated goals. In order to realise this, efficiency, fair share of responsibility and solidarity, cooperation with countries of origin, and transit as well as successful integration and returns are aspired strategies. A main idea of the pact is the harmonisation of asylum procedures in all EU member states, that are as Thränhardt showed, currently vastly diverging.[20]
Therefore, trying to answer the question of religious narratives in EU policies on multiple levels is necessary. In a first step, within the framework of aspired and factual EU jurisdiction. In a second step, in national discourse and measures. In a third and final step, on the level of intergovernmental conferences serving as preparation for EU summits. Due to the limited space of this essay, the aim is not to do an exhaustive analysis but rather to give an impression that can serve as a basis for the further discussion of the connection between EUropean border and asylum politics and religion.
Before starting the inquiry, the question of what exactly a religious narrative could be must be addressed. The most obvious understanding would be any explicit reference to either religion itself or to one of its forms, as Christianity or Islam. This however seems too superficial to grasp the whole realm of the adjective “religious.” In the early debate around the etymology of the word “religion,” two famous accounts have been presented: On the one hand, Cicero saw relegere as its origin, and on the other hand, Augustine traced it back to religare. Translated as “to review,” relegere differentiates the motivation of religious people to practise their religion in contrast to people performing the same acts out of superstition. While the latter do them out of fear that something bad could happen to them, the religious scrupulously rehearse their rituals in the worry of doing them correctly because of their choice to.[21]
Augustine interprets the verb religare (to connect, to bind) as an etymological origin of religion in two ways: In his early work “De vera religione” Augustine speaks about binding the soul to,[22] whereas in “De civitate Dei” he describes how the word “religion” has been (wrongly) used to refer to “human ties, (…) relationships, and affinities”. Despite Augustine’s worry that this last sense creates undesirable ambiguities within the meaning of the word “religion,” it is highly interesting to our project. If religion can create social groups, it must also be able to install differentiations between an in- and an outgroup. The erection of invisible borders is hence one of its inherent capacities.
Therefore, statements that refer to the identity of the ingroup (EU citizens; inside the external borders) and the outgroup (people on the move; outside the external borders) will be examined. Furthermore, the statements concerning the danger that is given as the reason for protection, as well as explicit references to religion will be presented. On the level of EU politics, only the introduction to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and two legal proposals of the “New Pact” will be reviewed. The declaration of the conference “Managing Migration Together” will be discussed to represent the intergovernmental sphere. Finally, in national discourse, two examples of right-wing positioning toward the EU and migration will be examined.
As required, legal documents of the EU that treat issues of asylum or migration always refer to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and guarantee that their proposal will respect these. Interestingly, this catalogue of human rights that was proclaimed in 2000 and entered into force from 2009, starts off by ascribing a common spiritual identity to EUrope:
The peoples of Europe, in creating an ever closer union among them, are resolved to share a peaceful future based on common values. Conscious of its spiritual and moral heritage, the Union is founded on the indivisible, universal values of human dignity, freedom, equality and solidarity; it is based on the principles of democracy and the rule of law. […] The Union contributes to the preservation and to the development of these common values while respecting the diversity of the cultures and traditions of the peoples of Europe as well as the national identities of the member states […]..[23]
On the one hand, the values of the EU are presented as rooted in a common “spiritual and moral heritage,” which reads as quite an explicit reference to Christianity. On the other hand, an undeniable diversity amongst cultures, traditions, and identities is mentioned. Overall, it seems like this tension should be overridden by the cited values that are founded in a common history of Christianity. But is this really the case? Can the centuries of war between religions in Europe and religious groups be harmonized as simply into one overarching “spiritual heritage”? In the 2020 “New Pact on Asylum and Migration” one striking aspect within the narratives of the legislative proposals is the technical language that is used to describe the migratory movements. For instance, common terminology to describe migration movements are “pressure”[24] or “flows”[25].
This leads into another feature of the examined proposals. In the proposal introducing a screening for third country nationals at external borders, as well as in the Commission’s recommendation on cooperation among member states concerning search and rescue activities, the term “stakeholder” is used. On the one side, this gives the impression of migration as economical enterprise (along with the term “management”), and on the other side, it indicates that the perspectives of people on the move are not considered in the process.
For instance, the term “pressure” always addresses pressure on the member states or border regions, but not on the migratory pressures, the reasons that force people to leave their countries despite strategies of deterrence. An interesting contrast to this one-sidedness in discourse is the handling of the refugee movement from Ukraine. In the case of the launch of the EU Talent pool, not only is the perspective of refugees considered, but also their presence: two Ukrainian Women got invited and presented within the launch of the program (“Launch of the EU talent pool”, 2022).[26] This shows a different sensibility to the refugees’ situation.[27]
Also, the stated goals aim to give the EUropean organs more control over migration and to increase their legitimization by reestablishing trust in them, as well as amongst the member states (European Commission 2020, “New Pact”). This practice finds an expression in the proposal to do the screening “pre-entry,” to not authorize people on the move to enter the EUropean territory[28] and therefore to potentially coerce them to stay in these zones as well as bordering countries that are not (yet) member states to provide their territory as a “buffer” (Fitzgerald 2020, 11-12).
On the level of conferences between member states that prepared consequent EU policy decisions on migration, the closure of the Balkan’s trail in 2016 is an interesting example. One conference that was held in its preparation, “Managing Migration Together,” happened on the 24th of February 2016 in Vienna between the ministers of Foreign and Inner Affairs of Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia, and Bulgaria as an observer. The wording of its declaration is in line with the technical vocabulary of the EU proposals mentioned before, e.g., migration in the western Balkan being described as “high pressure.”
These descriptions add to one of the claims of this declaration, which is that irregular migration is dangerous. One of the first lines of the preamble, “AWARE of the risks of crime, violent extremism and terrorism, which may spread as a consequence of irregular migration” [29] is directly followed by “RECALLING the Vienna Declaration ‘Tackling Jihadism Together’ of 20 March 2015 […]: ”Irregular migration is hence not only linked to a risk of crime and extremism, but specifically to Islamist terrorism. Later in the declaration, this reading gets affirmed within the agreed approach of the declaration: “In view of the increasingly visible connections between illegal migration and extremism, relevant measures agreed in the Vienna Declaration ‘Tackling Jihadism Together’ of 20 March 2015 will be swiftly implemented.”[30]
It is clear to observe that Islamist extremism is seen here as an inherent feature of “illegal”[31] migration that is hence perceived as a criminal phenomenon that must be.[32] This impression gets intensified by the technical language used in the declaration that speaks about the impact of migration on member states and countries that want to join the European union but does not consider the situation of people on the move.
The wish to stop people not in need of international protection in “misusing the route” makes it easy to assume bad motives of people on the move wanting to enter the EU. It leaves the challenge of a legal entry unmentioned. [33]A phrase as “It is not possible to process unlimited numbers of migrants and applicants for asylum, due to limited resources and reception capacities, potential consequences for internal security and social cohesion as well as challenges with regard to integration” introduces the prospect of an endless stream of people that want to enter the EU, while stating the evident fact that this impossible scenario would not be manageable.
Furthermore, a differentiation is made between the in- and the outgroup in speaking about “potential consequences for social cohesion.” It is assumed that the refugees/immigrants are sufficiently different from the populations inside the EU borders so that the existing unity within the EU would get disrupted. What constitutes this unity or difference is not explicitly stated, an interpretation in terms of religion or phenomena inspired by religion as moral values or culture, however, suggests itself considering the pronounced allusions to refugees/immigrants being Muslims.
Anna-Maria Edlinger is a doctoral candidate in in Philosophy at École Normale Supérieure, Paris. Her main interest is in political philosophy, where she is trying to combine social sciences methods with philosophical reflection. This publication allows her to further explore the philosophy of religion and embodiment and to draw attention to the situation of refugees at EUropean external borders.
[1] In the following text, E and U are written in capital letters to highlight the difference between “european” as “relating to the continent Europe” and “EUropean” as “relating to the EU”. This practice is copied from Beznec and Kurnik 2020.
[2] „People on the move” does not differentiate between refugees and immigrants, that are oftentimes moving together in migration movements. In a wider sense, the term describes the situation that people are in, and does not comment on its legitimacy. The term is for example suggested by Pijnenburg and Rijken (Pijnenburg and Rijken, 2021). In the present text however, the term “refugee” will be used in order to talk about the legal situation, that is different for immigrants and refugees.
[3] United Nations. n.d. “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” Accessed January 25th, 2023. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights.
[4] The last information seems especially important considering the still missing criteria for flight because of climate change developments (Climate Refugees, 2022) and arguments against the legitimacy of migration based on economic aspirations.
[5] UNHCR. n.d. “States Parties to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol.” Accessed January 25th, 2023. https://www.unhcr.org/protect/PROTECTION/3b73b0d63.pdf.
[6] UNHCR. n.d. “Convention and Protocol relating to the status of refugees.” Accessed January 25th, 2023. https://www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10.
[7] Today, 26 countries participate in the agreement. Romania, Croatia and Bulgaria are not yet part of the Schengen zone, but in the process of joining. Ireland and Cyprus have not joined the agreement, whereas Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein as non-EU countries are members of the Schengen zone (“Schengen Area”, 2022).
[8] European Commission. n.d. “Home Affairs. irregular migrant.” Accessed January 29th, 2023. https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/networks/european-migration-network-emn/emn-asylum-and-migration-glossary/glossary/irregular-migrant_en.
[9] European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. n.d. “EU Charter of Fundamental Rights” Accessed January 25th, 2023. https://fra.europa.eu/en/eu-charter.
[10] Ibid.
[11] The “EUropean Asylum Regime” consists to a big extent of the countries sovereign policies that are subject to EUropean decisions. Regarding the deviating asylum policies of e.g.,Hungary, the EUropean decisions seem more like guidelines.
[12] Thränhardt, Dietrich, “Lotteries. The Ambivalent European Asylum Regime and How to Fix It. Credibility and Effectiveness of Asylum Decisions in Europe.” Zeitschrift für Flucht- und Flüchtlingsforschung 5 (2021): 326.
[13] Ibid., 330-1.
[14] Border Violence Monitoring Network. n.d. “How does the database work?” Accessed January 25th, 2023. https://www.borderviolence.eu/how-does-the-database-work/.
[15] The Black Book of Pushbacks, vol. 1, Hope Barker and Milena Zajović, eds. (Brussels: The Left in the European Parliament, 2022), 2-4.
[16] EUROSUR is in charge of surveilling EUropean borders and migration movements over these and of sharing this information with Schengen States and relevant agencies. It was already established in 2013 (“Eurosur”, 2023, which makes the unpreparedness of EUropean States in the “long summer of migration” 2015 seem surprising.
[17] Black Book, op. cit., 26-8.
[18] European Council. 2022. “EU asylum reform.” Last reviewed December 5th, 2022. Accessed January 25th, 2023. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-migration-policy/eu-asylum-reform/.
[19] European Commission 2020, “New Pact”, op. cit.
[20] European Council 2022, “EU asylum reform”, op. cit.
[21] Cicero, The Nature of the God, trans. P.G. Walsh (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 72.
[22] Saint Augustine., The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (New York: The Modern Library, 1999), 111.
[23] EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, op. cit., preamble.
[24] “Make the system more efficient and resistant to migratory pressures” (European Council 2022, “EU asylum reform”).
[25] “[…] management of mixed migration flows” (European Commission 2022, “Proposal for a regulation introducing a screening of third country nationals”.
[26] This launch also mentions the first activation of the Temporary Protection Directive ever for hosting refugees of Ukraine. This program, aimed to provide immediate protection when a high number of refugees potentially overcharges the national capacities of member states, was created in 2001 and has not been activated in 2015 (“Temporary Protection”, 2023).
[27] In the scope of this paper, no account about why there is such a difference between Ukrainian refugees and those coming through the Mediterranean or the Balkans can be given. With what is developed in the section “Borders and faith”, it only can be said that the first get integrated into the political faith of the EU, while the latter get confronted with a border. Von der Leyen describes the war in Ukraine as “war against our values” (“State of the Union” 2022, 3) and Ukrainians as “European heroes” (“State of the Union” 2022, 4).
[28] European Commission 2022, “Proposal for a regulation introducing a screening of third country nationals”, 5.
[29] Republic of Austria, Federal Ministry of the Interior. 2016. “Managing Migration Together. 24February 2016. Declaration,” 1. Accessed 29th January 2023. https://www.bmeia.gv.at/fileadmin/user_upload/Zentrale/Aussendungen/2016/Westbalkankonferenz_Draft_Declaration_Letztfassung.pdf.
[30] “Managing Migration together”, op. cit, 4.
[31] Earlier in this declaration, the word “irregular” was used instead of “illegal”. The EU Commission defines the difference as follows: “The term ‘irregular’ is preferable to ‘illegal’ migrant because the latter carries a criminal connotation, entering a country in an irregular manner, or staying with an irregular status, is not a criminal offence but an infraction of administrative regulations. Apart from this, juridically and ethically, an act can be legal or illegal but a person cannot“ (“irregular migrant”, 2023).
[32] “Managing Migration together”, op. cit, 4.
[33] Op. cit.
