Jean-Pierre Cassarino

College of Europe Natolin

In July 2018, Belgium and Tunisia signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) aimed at dealing with the expulsion of irregular migrants. The MoU would have been unnoticed had it not been stipulated after the Council granted the European Commission the exclusive mandate to negotiate a European Readmission Agreement (EURA) with Tunisia. This article e...

The contributions contained in this study have opted to go beyond the recurrent reference to reluctance and uncooperativeness when addressing cooperation on readmission between European countries and countries located in the Southern Mediterranean and in Africa. The authors interrogate the various consequences of cooperation on readmission as well...

De nombreuses études relevant du droit international public et de la science politique, ont dénoncé la tendance, désormais manifeste, de la Commission européenne à flexibiliser ses modes opératoires en matière de réadmission, à savoir l’expulsion des migrants en situation irrégulière et des déboutés du droit d’asile. Souvent, les échelles d’analyse...

Cet article démontre qu'il est nécessaire de bien réfléchir au projet de « normaliser » la réadmission dans les relations extérieures de l’UE, plus particulièrement dans un contexte régional où les rapports d'interdépendance entre acteurs étatiques ont changé radicalement au cours des deux dernières décennies. Si d’aucuns reconnaissent la faible co...

Against the backdrop of the growing leverage that MENA states have been acquiring vis-à-vis Europe on the issue of migration and border controls over the last decade, this paper identifies a number of trends in the responses of MENA states on these issues. By providing examples from the western Mediterranean, especially North African countries, it...

Against the backdrop of the growing leverage that MENA states have been acquiring vis-à-vis Europe on the issue of migration and border controls over the last decade, this paper identifies a number of trends in the responses of MENA states on these issues. By providing examples from the western Mediterranean, especially North African countries, it...

The drive for flexibility was already a fait accompli at a bilateral level, long before the entry into force of the 1999 Treaty of Amsterdam which empowered the Union to negotiate and conclude formal EU readmission agreements with third countries. This chapter sets out to demonstrate that the drive for flexibility has also become a fait accompli at...

Moving the debate beyond the criminalisation of international migration begins with taking seriously the measure of its cumulative effects on foreigners as well as on state-citizen relationships in all countries of migration. The drive for criminalisation has gained so much momentum in all countries of migration, be they rich or poor, democraticall...

Moving the debate beyond the criminalisation of international migration begins with taking seriously the measure of its cumulative effects on foreigners as well as on state-citizen relationships in all countries of migration. The drive for criminalisation has gained so much momentum in all countries of migration, be they rich or poor, democraticall...

According to EU law, readmission pertains to the removal of persons who do not or no longer fulfill the conditions of entry to, presence in, or residence in a destination country. Today, readmission has become a major crossover issue, weaving its way through various bilateral talks, ranging from the fight against terrorism to energy security, visa...

Recent policy developments in the western Mediterranean, especially in North Africa, pose an important puzzle for our understanding of borders and frontiers and the ways in which they are politically addressed. This article sets out to analyse their various implications for patterns of interdependence among states, territoriality, sovereignty, mobi...

Il riferimento all’art. 13 dell’accordo di Cotonou, di cui uno dei paragrafi è dedicato alla cooperazione in materia di riammissione, è divenuto un tema ricorrente nei negoziati relativi alla questione migratoria fra Paesi europei e Paesi del gruppo ACP. Le esperienze bilaterali mostrano come la riammissione abbia acquisito un ruolo centrale, sebbe...

La référence à l’article 13 de l’accord de Cotonou, dont un paragraphe concerne la coopération en matière de réadmission, est devenue récurrente dans les pourparlers sur les questions migratoires entre Européens et pays du groupe ACP. L’expérience bilatérale montre que la réadmission a acquis une place centrale, mais cette question épineuse demeure...

Jamais la prise en compte des cycles migratoires dans la compréhension des modes de réinsertion multiples des migrants de retour n’aura été aussi pertinente au regard des développements politiques actuels. Cette étude entend démontrer qu’un lien de continuité existe entre la propension d’un migrant de retour à se réinsérer au pays et la complétude...

Migrant Readmission: False Pretenses of European-African Partnerships? Reference to Article 13 of the Cotonou Agreement – a paragraph of which deals with readmission cooperation – has become increasingly recurrent in discussions between Europeans and members of the ACP Group around the question of migration. Bilateral experience has shown that read...

Sur la base d’une récente enquête réalisée dans différents gouvernorats de la Tunisie, cet article entend proposer une relecture de l’entrepreneuriat des migrants de retour à la lumière de leur cycle migratoire. Après avoir identifié trois types de cycle migratoire (complet, incomplet et interrompu), il démontre l’existence de plusieurs degrés d’en...

Readmission is not simply a means of removing undesirable foreigners through coercive methods. When viewed as a way of ensuring the temporary stay of foreign workers in the labour markets of European destination countries, readmission may also impact on the participatory rights of a growing number of native workers facing equally temporary (and pre...

Making a case for return preparedness is crucial in realizing that current migration policies have disregarded so far the implications stemming from various levels of return preparedness. It could even be argued that, for having focused exclusively on the securitization of temporary labor migration, many migration countries find themselves with ina...

This study analyses how the migration policy options of the Government of Tunisia have been codified by repeated interactions with the European Union (EU) and its Member States. It argues that these interactions have been shaped by the gradual consolidation of a hierarchy of priorities where the drive for operability and security predominates. A hi...

Never before has the term ‘circular migration’ been used and mentioned by so many diverse actors ranging from scholars, think tank experts, policy makers, migration stakeholders, and officials from the European Union (EU), the United Nations and the World Bank. Over the last seven years or so, a plethora of studies, reports, policy briefs, communic...

The revolts sweeping across North Africa and the Middle East in 2011 have shaken long-held truths about the region, truths become such through their assiduous repetition by Middle Eastern regimes and the unconditional support conferred on these regimes by the West. True, Middle Eastern regimes had been remarkably resilient, remoulding their authori...

For many decades, the Government of Tunisia (GoT) has cooperated with various EU Member States on the readmission or removal of its own nationals, as well as of third-country nationals. This essay sets out to analyse the GoT’s cooperation on readmission, above all, when considering that it logically generates asymmetric costs and benefits as well a...

This study sets out to explain the drivers shaping cooperative patterns on the readmission of unauthorised third-country nationals, whether at bilateral or EU level. It lays emphasis on the existence of a predominant bilateral readmission system in which EU agreements are inextricably embedded. As a result of the entry into force of the Treaty of L...

Conceptually, Global Matrix advances in a systematic and structured inter-disciplinary (matrix) framework a research agenda for examining the stance of major world actors on the key policy dimensions to world politics (political ideologies, economics, migration, climate change, security and world view); drawing out evidence of cross-cutting linkage...

The revolts sweeping across North Africa and the Middle East in 2011 have shaken long-held truths about the region. Most strikingly, the sustainability of these regimes has proved a chimera. The events in the region and the many truths they uncovered call for a serious rethink in Western policies towards the region. The aim of this paper is to expl...

This short volume starts with a paradox. Over the last fifteen years or so, the number of bilateral readmission treaties concluded by the EU Member States with third countries has skyrocketed. This is quite extraordinary given the unbalanced reciprocities characterizing such treaties. Despite their being framed in a reciprocal context, readmission...

It is often difficult to analyze the impact and viability of policy measures that are in a pilot phase. It is even more so when such measures become part and parcel of a whole policy agenda that has undergone dramatic changes over the last few years. Nonetheless, it is possible to study the reasons and factors contributing to the adoption of such p...

Despite the reluctance of most African countries to enter into standard readmission agreements, alternative methods of bilateral co-operation with European countries on enforced return have gained momentum over the last decade. These alternative methods of co-operation include memoranda of understanding, exchanges of letters, pacts, and police co-o...

Based on a sample of around one thousand interviews with returnees in Morocco Algeria and Tunisia, the report sets out to determine the manifold factors shaping return migrants’ patterns of reintegration. Its novelty lies, among others, in making a distinction between migrants who decided to return and those who were compelled to do so. Actually, a...

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A number of factors explain why some EU member states, particularly France, Italy and Spain are gradually opting for informal patterns of cooperation on readmission issues with Mediterranean and African countries. This adaptive inclination is more of a necessity than an option. It reflects the more urgent need of some EU member states to find flexi...

The attention paid by international organisations to the link betweenmigration and development in migrants’ origin countries hashighlighted the need to revisit approaches to return migration.Moreover, the growing diversity of migratory categories (rangingfrom economic migrants to refugees and asylum seekers) necessitatesa distinction between the va...

Since the early 1990s, political economists have devoted a great deal of attention to the potential impact of liberal and fiscal reforms on the economic structures and social and political systems of Mediterranean Non-Member Countries (MNCs), while focusing, among other things, on the gradual exposure of domestic firms to international competition,...

This book concentrates on the economic sociology of return migration, with specific reference to Tunisia. As such, it aims to analyze, on the one hand, the patterns of resource mobilization and the strategies for survival developed by some Tunisian entrepreneur-returnees with a view to providing for the survival of their own business concerns, as w...

This article explores the impact of Tunisia's programme de mise à niveau globale (structural reform program) on the relationships between the state and entrepreneurs. Its purpose lies in outlining a contextual approach to the "pedagogical" measures that the Tunisian state has adopted in order to keep a balance between economic growth and social sta...

Since the fall of Ben Ali on 14th January 2011, Tunisia has been going through a process of transformation and reconfiguration of the manifold relationships between the state and society. So far, a series of legal amendments and policy provisions have been considered to respond to immediate political demands in the run-up to the next elections. How...