Twenty-five years after the Barcelona process, has the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership delivered on its promises? Scholarly consensus prevails that the EU’s attempt to create a Euro-Mediterranean partnership has had mixed results [1]1 — Luiza, Bialasiewicz, Paolo Giaccaria, Alun Jones, Claudio Minca (2013). “Re-Scaling ‘EU’ Rope: EU Macro-Regional Fantasies in the Mediterranean.” European Urban and Regional Studies 20 (1): 59‒76. . In the light of complex geopolitical, historical and cultural dimensions, states and societies have diverged rather than converged around the EU’s proposed norms and policies in areas such as governance, security and migration management [2]2 — Michael Collyer (2016). “Geopolitics as a Migration Governance Strategy: European Union Bilateral Relations with Southern Mediterranean Countries.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42 (4): 606‒624. Dimitris Bouris & Dimitris Papadimitriou (2020) The EU and Contested Statehood in its Near Abroad: Europeanisation, Actorness and State-building, Geopolitics, 25:2, 273-293, DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2019.1643162. Christina Boswell (2003). The external dimension of EU immigration and asylum policy. International Affairs, 79 (3), 619–638. Larbi Sadiki (2004). The search for Arab democracy. Discourses and Counter-Discourses. New York: Columbia University Press. . The EU’s attempt to diffuse scripts and narratives of democracy and democratization has been criticized for branding a “one size fits all approach” [3]3 — Federica Bicchi, (2006). “Our Size Fits All’: Normative Power Europe and the Mediterranean”. Journal of European Public Policy 13 (2): 286‒303. Andrea Teti (2012), “The EU’s First Response to the ‘Arab Spring’: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Partnership for Democracy and Shared Prosperity”, Mediterranean Politics 17/3. . Turning points such as the 9/11 watershed, the so-called Arab Spring and the 2015 “refugee challenge” have moreover contributed to the proliferation of policies and partnerships that have securitized conceptions and imaginings of the “Mediterranean” [4]4 — Bialasiewicz et al. (2013). “Re-Scaling ‘EU’ Rope: EU Macro Regional Fantasies in the Mediterranean”. European Urban and Regional Studies 20 (1): 59‒76. Tamirace Fakhoury, (2016). “Securitising Migration: The European Union in the Context of the Post-2011 Arab Upheavals”. The International Spectator 51 (4): 67–79. . With the outbreak of the so-called Arab Spring, the EU adopted an initially enthusiastic rhetoric in 2011/2012, hinting that governance could evolve into a shared and deliberative project across both shores of the Mediterranean. Yet this rhetoric would soon fade away. As the Middle East has been grappling with collapsing social contracts and ill-defined trajectories of state-building, the EU has reverted to its longstanding focus on security and stability.

Migration management has evolved into a polarizing matter at the heart of Mediterranean spaces. Securitized borderzones, erected razor-wire fences, suspended sea rescue operations and remote control measures have shattered the Mediterranean vision of “the two shores”

In this setting, the issue of migration management has evolved into a particularly polarizing and divisive matter at the heart of Mediterranean spaces. Securitized borderzones, erected razor-wire fences, suspended sea rescue operations and remote control measures have shattered the Mediterranean vision of “the two shores” that authors such as Jacques Berque have once imagined. Scholars have increasingly used phrases and expressions such as “refuge beyond reach” [5]5 — David Scott Fitgerald (2019). Refugee Beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers, Oxford University Press. , “governing migration through death”[6]6 — Vicky Squire (2017) “Governing migration through death in Europe and the US: Identification, burial, and the crisis of modern humanism”, European Journal of International Relations, published online. September 2016. Available online. and “open arms behind barred doors” [7]7 — Kelly M Greenhill. (2016). “Open Arms Behind Barred Doors: Fear, Hypocrisy and Policy Schizophrenia in the European Migration Crisis.” European Law Journal 22 (3): 317–332 to describe the various ways mobility and refugee displacement have been regulated in Mediterranean land- and seascapes. Within this climate, as Judith Tucker writes, the Mediterranean has emerged as “ a problematic space […] —a political, economic, cultural, and psychological barrier, a place of danger, inhumanity, and death” [8]8 — Interview with Judith Tucker, Al Jadiliyya. Available online. .

Against this backdrop, scholars, policymakers and practitioners have long debated what approaches could reconfigure entrenched asymmetries of power, “desecuritize” migration deals and partnerships, and bridge understandings and conceptions of governance and democracy [9]9 — Daniela Huber and Maria Cristina Paciello. (2020). “Contesting ‘EU as Empire’ from Within? Analyzing European Perceptions on EU Presence and Practices in the Mediterranean,” European Foreign Affairs Review 25:109 – 130.   Judith E. Tucker (ed.) (2019). The Making of the Modern Mediterranean: Views from the South (University of California Press, 2019). Available online. .

The Barcelona Process: twenty-five years later

A quarter century after the adoption of the 1995 Barcelona process (also called the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership), this special issue of IDEES takes both an alternative and alternate view of the Mediterranean from both the southern and northern shores as a dynamic space in which socio-political power, norms, and borders are constantly questioned, reconfigured and readapted along an open continuum of entanglements, encounters and fractures. In so doing, it attempts to answer the following questions:

  • How can the Euro-Mediterranean partnership become more attuned and responsive to shifting dynamics and realities?
  • Policy approaches of regionalization and homogenization have so far failed to capture the extremely fluid temporalities and spatialities of the Mediterranean. Still what partnerships could envision this region as a “shared space of connection and intertwined communities of land and sea” [10]10 — Interview with Judith Tucker, Al Jadaliyya. Available online. while safeguarding its complexity?


To gain an insight into such questions, we take stock of three levels of analysis: first, forms, dynamics, and trajectories of contentious politics, second, plural conceptions of governance and citizenship, and third, the politics of mobility, migration and borderlands in the Mediterranean. We analyze intersectional entanglements as well as divided spatialities and fault lines. We also account for recent socio-political dynamics that are remaking the “Mediterranean” quarter a century after the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership.

  1. Contentious politics and protests: In the last years, we have seen an overwhelming spread of “protest waves” on both shores of the Mediterranean. Examples range from the so-called Arab Spring, the 15 M Movement, migrant protests in Southern Europe to the renewed 2019 wave of contention in Lebanon, Algeria and Iraq. What forms and trajectories has contentious politics taken across both shores of the Mediterranean? How are older and more recent protest waves related insofar as their tactical repertoires, grievances and framings are concerned? and what insights do they convey insofar as reevaluating the Euro-Mediterranean partnership is at stake?

  2. Conceptions and configurations of governance: Democracy promotion has been a key albeit contentious pillar of the Barcelona process. In the last decades, the EU’s regional model of “democracy promotion” has encountered much criticism. Scholars and practitioners have argued that conceptions of democracy differ across spaces and contexts, and that the standardized model of liberal democracy has failed to capture both formal and informal imaginings, narratives, and scriptings of democracy in various local settings. Reacting to the so-called Arab Spring that has ushered in a series of turbulent upheavals, the EU revamped its Neighborhood Policy in 2015, announcing that it would adopt a more pragmatic perspective towards democracy promotion, privileging stability and resiliency of people and societies [11]11 — Ana E. Juncos (2017). “Resilience as the New EU Foreign Policy Paradigm: A Pragmatist Turn?” European Security 26(1): 1-18. . Still, scholars have asked whether the EU’s shift to “principled pragmatism” may –instead of dealing with the roots of dispossession and vulnerability – obscure accountability over the latter. In this part, we take stock of bottom-up forms of governance in the Mediterranean. We account for how everyday politics as well as gender and youth politics reconceptualize governance and government, and seek to break ties with prevalent forms of rule that obfuscate the myriad political projects that citizens craft in their daily lives. Questions that authors raise are manifold: How do these alternative conceptions of politics and governance interact with state apparatuses and accumulated policy legacies? And how can a regional Mediterranean policy approach account for varied, evolving and localized modes of governance that defy categories of democracy versus full authoritarianism?

  3. The politics of borders, migration, sanctuary and refuge: As underscored, hegemonic conceptions of national security, border regulations and remote-control measures have characterized Mediterranean responses to mobility and refugee displacement. Here we take an incisive look at security-driven migration partnerships and strategies of refugee governance from a distance. We also show how they have obscured refugee and host societies’ perspectives and histories across both shores of the Mediterranean. We moreover bring in a fresh perspective on the politics of migrant and refugee narratives and its importance in offering an alternative script of sanctuary and mobility.


Contributions adopt a three-fold theory-driven, thematic and case study perspective. While highlighting the plurality of trajectories and cautioning against a perspective that glosses over spatial, geopolitical, and temporal complexities that have distinguished the Mediterranean both as a space and an assemblage of lived realities, they all integrate key insights as to whether and if so how a renewed Euro-Mediterranean Parternship, based on common histories and legacies, may see the light.

  • REFERENCES

    1 —

    Luiza, Bialasiewicz, Paolo Giaccaria, Alun Jones, Claudio Minca (2013). “Re-Scaling ‘EU’ Rope: EU Macro-Regional Fantasies in the Mediterranean.” European Urban and Regional Studies 20 (1): 59‒76.

    2 —
    • Michael Collyer (2016). “Geopolitics as a Migration Governance Strategy: European Union Bilateral Relations with Southern Mediterranean Countries.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42 (4): 606‒624.
    • Dimitris Bouris & Dimitris Papadimitriou (2020) The EU and Contested Statehood in its Near Abroad: Europeanisation, Actorness and State-building, Geopolitics, 25:2, 273-293, DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2019.1643162.
    • Christina Boswell (2003). The external dimension of EU immigration and asylum policy. International Affairs, 79 (3), 619–638.
    • Larbi Sadiki (2004). The search for Arab democracy. Discourses and Counter-Discourses. New York: Columbia University Press.
    3 —
    • Federica Bicchi, (2006). “Our Size Fits All’: Normative Power Europe and the Mediterranean”. Journal of European Public Policy 13 (2): 286‒303.
    • Andrea Teti (2012), “The EU’s First Response to the ‘Arab Spring’: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Partnership for Democracy and Shared Prosperity”, Mediterranean Politics 17/3.
    4 —
    • Bialasiewicz et al. (2013). “Re-Scaling ‘EU’ Rope: EU Macro Regional Fantasies in the Mediterranean”. European Urban and Regional Studies 20 (1): 59‒76.
    • Tamirace Fakhoury, (2016). “Securitising Migration: The European Union in the Context of the Post-2011 Arab Upheavals”. The International Spectator 51 (4): 67–79.
    5 —

    David Scott Fitgerald (2019). Refugee Beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers, Oxford University Press.

    6 —

    Vicky Squire (2017) “Governing migration through death in Europe and the US: Identification, burial, and the crisis of modern humanism”, European Journal of International Relations, published online. September 2016. Available online.

    7 —

    Kelly M Greenhill. (2016). “Open Arms Behind Barred Doors: Fear, Hypocrisy and Policy Schizophrenia in the European Migration Crisis.” European Law Journal 22 (3): 317–332

    8 —

    Interview with Judith Tucker, Al Jadiliyya. Available online.

    9 —
    • Daniela Huber and Maria Cristina Paciello. (2020). “Contesting ‘EU as Empire’ from Within? Analyzing European Perceptions on EU Presence and Practices in the Mediterranean,” European Foreign Affairs Review 25:109 – 130.

     

    • Judith E. Tucker (ed.) (2019). The Making of the Modern Mediterranean: Views from the South (University of California Press, 2019). Available online.
    10 —

    Interview with Judith Tucker, Al Jadaliyya. Available online.

    11 —

    Ana E. Juncos (2017). “Resilience as the New EU Foreign Policy Paradigm: A Pragmatist Turn?” European Security 26(1): 1-18.

Tamirace Fakhoury

Tamirace Fakhoury

Tamirace Fakhoury is an associate professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the American Lebanese University (LAU). She is the director of the Institute of Social Justice and Conflict Resolution and she is also member of the EuMedMi research network and the Global Migration Policy Associates of Geneva. She has received numerous research grants, including the Alexander von Humboldt grant of the German Institute of International Studies. She is currently the principal investigator of a Carnegie grant on “Resilience and Inclusive Governance in the post-2011 Arab Landscape” at American Lebanese University. She is also in the leadership team of the Rights for Time network. Between 2012 and 2016, she was a visiting assistant professor at the University of California in Berkeley. Fakhoury has a broad academic career focused on Euro-Mediterranean migration issues, migration policies and the role of immigrant communities. Her core research and publication areas are power-sharing and ethno-sectarian conflicts, migration and refugee governance in conflict areas, international responses to forced migration and the European Union’s external policy.