Externalising Migration Governance Through Civil Society: Tunisia as a Case Study [1st ed.] 9783030395773, 9783030395780

Citation preview

MOBILITY & POLITICS SERIES EDITORS: MARTIN GEIGER PARVATI RAGHURAM · WILLIAM WALTERS

Externalising Migration Governance through Civil Society Tunisia as a Case Study Sabine Dini · Caterina Giusa

Mobility & Politics Series Editors Martin Geiger Carleton University Ottawa, Canada Parvati Raghuram Open University Milton Keynes, UK William Walters Carleton University Ottawa, Canada

Mobility & Politics Series Editors: Martin Geiger, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada; Parvati Raghuram, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK; William Walters, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada Global Advisory Board: Michael Collyer, University of Sussex; Susan B.  Coutin, University of California; Raúl Delgado Wise, Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas; Nicholas De Genova, King’s College London; Eleonore Kofman, Middlesex University; Rey Koslowski, University at Albany; Loren B.  Landau, University of the Witwatersrand; Sandro Mezzadra, Università di Bologna; Alison Mountz, Wilfrid Laurier University; Brett Neilson, University of Western Sydney; Antoine Pécoud, Université Paris 13; Ranabir Samaddar, Mahanirban Research Group Calcutta; Nandita Sharma, University of Hawai’i at Manoa; Tesfaye Tafesse, Addis Ababa University; Thanh-Dam Truong, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Human mobility, whatever its scale, is often controversial. Hence it carries with it the potential for politics. A core feature of mobility politics is the tension between the desire to maximise the social and economic benefits of migration and pressures to restrict movement. Transnational communities, global instability, advances in transportation and communication, and concepts of ‘smart borders’ and ‘migration management’ are just a few of the phenomena transforming the landscape of migration today. The tension between openness and restriction raises important questions about how different types of policy and politics come to life and influence mobility. Mobility & Politics invites original, theoretically and empirically informed studies for academic and policy-oriented debates. Authors examine issues such as refugees and displacement, migration and citizenship, security and cross-border movements, (post-)colonialism and mobility, and transnational movements and cosmopolitics. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14800

Sabine Dini • Caterina Giusa

Externalising Migration Governance Through Civil Society Tunisia as a Case Study

Sabine Dini University of Sorbonne Paris Nord Villetaneuse, France

Caterina Giusa University of Sorbonne Paris Nord Villetaneuse, France

Mobility & Politics ISBN 978-3-030-39577-3    ISBN 978-3-030-39578-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39578-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover image: Modern building window © saulgranda/Getty This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our PhD supervisor, Antoine Pécoud. We want to express our gratitude for their insightful comments, editing, and proofreading to: Hassen Boubakri, Giulia Breda, Clara Capelli, Paolo Cuttitta, Shoshana Fine, Anna Fortunier, Ilaria Giglioli, Barbara Lüthi, Haïfa Mzaloulat, Diane Robert, Giulia Scalettaris, Camille Schmoll, Farida Sebaï, Tanguy Séné, Maurice Stierl, Martina Tazzioli, Stacy Topouzova, Maggie Twenhoeven, Nicholas Van Hear, Carlo Vercellone, Maaï Youssef, Valentina Zagaria, Mathilde Zederman Special thanks go out to Shiar Youssef for editing and proofreading the final manuscript. We also thank Achref Dabbebi for the figures in this book. Finally, we are very grateful to the interviewees, colleagues, friends, and family who took part, in different and equally important ways, in this research project. They are too many to be listed here, but without them, this book would have not existed.

v

Contents

1 Introduction 1 2 Externalising EU Migration Policies in Times of Democracy11 3 Migration as a Historical Device of Political Regulation in Tunisia23 4 Revolution and Migration in Tunisia: A Matter of Civil Society?35 5 “Sweetening the Pill”: “Civil Society” as a Tool of Sedentarisation53 6 “Tunisie Terre d’Asile”: Constructing Tunisia as a “Destination Country”69 7 Conclusion85 Index91

vii

Acronyms and Abbreviations

AESAT AVRR CSO CTRM DCFTA EC ENI ENP ENPI EU EURA FPMI Frontex FTDA IAMM ICMPD IFT IGOs IOM IOs LEMMA LTDH MDM MP NATO

Association of African Students and Interns in Tunisia Assisted Voluntary Return and Reinsertion Civil Society Organisations Tunisian Council for Refugees and Migrants Deep and Comprehensive Free-Trade Agreement European Commission European Neighbourhood Instrument European Neighbourhood Policy European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument European Union European Readmission Agreement Milan Province Fund for International Cooperation European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union France Terre d’Asile International Agenda for Migration Management International Centre for Migration Policy Development French Institute in Tunisia Intergovernmental Organisations International Organization for Migration International Organisations European Union-Tunisia Mobility Partnership Support Programme Tunisian League of Human Rights Maison des Droits et des Migrations Mobility Partnership North Atlantic Treaty Organization ix

x 

ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

NGOs OFII OTE PASC ProGreS RCD RCP REMDH RTF SALEMM SPRING START TTA UGTT UNDP UNHCR UTICA VFA

Non-Governmental Organisations French Office of Immigration and Integration Office of Tunisians Abroad Civil Society Support Programme Migration Governance and Strategy Project Democratic Constitutional Rally Regional Consultative Process Euro Mediterranean Human Rights Network Rally of Tunisians in France Solidarity with the Children of the Maghreb and the Machrek Support to Partnership, Reform and Inclusive Growth Stabilisation of Communities at Risk Tunisie Terre d’Asile Tunisian General Labour Union United Nations Development Programme United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Tunisian Union of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts Visa Facilitations Agreement

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2

Field map. (Realised by: Achref Dabbebi; Source: Fieldwork) Distancing of visa application procedures in Tunis. (Realised by: Achref Dabbebi; Source: Fieldwork) Tunisia’s most trafficked airports. (Realised by: Achref Dabbebi; Source: Office de l’Aviation Civile et des Aéroports (OACA), Passengers’ movements—annual report 2018 and Enfidha airport website)

5 40

41

xi

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract  This chapter introduces the aim of the volume, that is, to investigate the ways in which European Union (EU) externalisation policies have changed as a result of the Arab Uprisings, and, more specifically, how those policies are implemented in post-2011 Tunisia after the fall of the Ben Ali regime. It particularly addresses the question of how the frameworks of intervention usually adopted by EU externalisation processes had to adapt to the “democratic transition” initiated by the Revolution of Dignity, shifting from the state apparatus as a privileged locus of intervention to the “vibrant Tunisian civil society” as a new category relevant to migration policies. Keywords  Tunisia • Revolution • Migration • Externalisation • Migration governance • Civil society The so-called Arab Spring uprisings, which were sparked in December 2010 by the self-immolation of Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi, have resulted in mass displacement and migration across the Middle East and North Africa region, as well as the Mediterranean Sea. With the fall of the Ben Ali regime on January 14, 2011, the system of externalisation of border controls performed by the Tunisian authorities to prevent boats from leaving the Tunisian shores collapsed. Around 28,000 Tunisians harragas1 crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Italy in the months following © The Author(s) 2020 S. Dini, C. Giusa, Externalising Migration Governance Through Civil Society, Mobility & Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39578-0_1

1

2 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

the fall of the regime. Furthermore, 1.5 million people were displaced by the conflict in Libya, mainly to neighbouring countries that were themselves experiencing political unrest such as Tunisia and Egypt. Only around 3% of the people displaced by the Libyan conflict reached the European Union (EU).2 The Arab Uprisings represented an opportunity for the reappearance of the rhetoric of invasion from the South (Marfleet and Cetti 2013). This narrative was employed as soon as the first Tunisian harragas arrived on the island of Lampedusa, Italy. Shortly after the fall of Ben Ali in January 2011, the then Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi referred to a “human tsunami.”3 The Italian Minister of the Interior, Roberto Maroni, spoke about a “real catastrophe”4 and referred to a “risk of mass exodus” coming from North Africa to the EU through the Mediterranean.5 The Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Franco Frattini, predicted the arrival of 200,000 or 300,000 people, a “biblical exodus of clandestine migrants.”6 The mayor of the island of Lampedusa, Bernardino de Rubeis, declared his fear of the “announced haemorrhage of migrants coming from Libya” to the media.7 The narrative illustrated by these statements was not limited to Italian politicians. The then French President Nicolas Sarkozy stated in a televised speech on February 27, 2011, that there was a fear of “incontrollable fluxes and terrorists” coming to Europe. This image was fueled by Gaddafi’s declarations in March 2011, who referred to an “invasion of Europe by thousands of migrants coming from Libya” that would occur if he was removed from power.8 “There will be chaos, Bin Laden, armed factions. That is what will happen. You will have immigration, thousands of people will invade Europe from Libya.” Public speeches by politicians constructed a crisis based on concerns over a threat to the security and territorial integrity of Europe. The “crisis” labelling thus enabled the translation of the political crisis in North Africa into a migration crisis on the southern shores of the EU (Jeandesboz and Pallister-Wilkins 2015). The use of the invasion rhetoric was not new in the context of irregular migration in the Mediterranean. Cuttitta (2008) notes that it was already employed in the Italian context in 2004 when the minister of the Interior, Pisanu, talked about an “assault on Italian coasts,” and again in 2008, when vice-minister Palma spoke of an “aggression.” The framing of the arrivals in the language of invasion led, both in 2004 and 2008, to an increase in border controls and the signing of migration agreements with the Tunisian and Libyan governments. Although the invasion narrative

1 INTRODUCTION 

3

does not hold for the Mediterranean Sea as a whole in terms of numbers of migrants apprehended at the borders, boat migration can be perceived as an “invasion” in particular localities and regions, such as the small Italian island of Lampedusa (Cuttitta 2012), which in 2011 became a sort of “barometer of the arrivals” (Wihtol de Wenden 2011). Thus, the reference to a threat coming from North Africa becomes more powerful when supported by the experiences of small localities, even if these small-scale events do not reflect a more general trend (Cuttitta 2012). In such cases, government policies can affect migration outcomes. In the particular case of Lampedusa, for instance, the Italian authorities contributed to the de facto invasion (ibidem) in the aftermath of the Tunisian revolution. The number of arrivals from Tunisia increased at the end of January 2011, and, at first, the Italian government refused to re-­ open the Reception Centre in Lampedusa that had de facto been closed as a consequence of revolts that happened in the centre in 2009 and of the “zero immigration” policy of 2009 and 2010. The government also refused to transfer the migrants to Sicily and to mainland Italy until February 13, 2011, when the number of migrants in Lampedusa, which has a population of 6300, reached 5500. During this period, the public was exposed to images of the island facing a humanitarian emergency, an “open-air camp” with migrants sheltered on what has since been dubbed the “hill of shame.” The construction of the invasion rhetoric in 2011 was driven mainly by domestic and international political concerns: the extreme right Northern League party of Umberto Bossi, part of the Berlusconi government at that time, was pushing for “keeping the migrants in the south of the country, out of the Italian territory.”9 At the same time, Italy was negotiating with the Tunisian transitional government for the repatriation of the migrants who arrived in Lampedusa. The ad hoc invasion was seen as good leverage for reaching an agreement. More generally, the European policy response to the uprisings has been characterised by an increase in the intensity of migration controls as well as in their externalisation, as exemplified by the European efforts to strengthen maritime surveillance operations and to re-propose the same agreements to “‘fight” irregular migration to the new governments in North Africa. The European reaction to migration after the Arab Uprisings was thus a continuation of the previous trends towards more restrictive migration policies vis-à-vis “unwanted” migrants. The increase in the number of arrivals to the EU in 2011 has shown the ineffectiveness of the European

4 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

system of border controls in the absence of the possibility to rely on non-­ democratic North African regimes to curb cross-Mediterranean migration (Wihtol de Wenden 2011). In the last 20 years, three strategic aims have characterised the EU approach towards its MENA10 neighbours: the promotion of neoliberal economic policies, the inhibition of Islamist movements, and the control of migration to Europe (Lamloum 2003). This meant for the EU a process of “trading democracy for stability,” signing agreements, and doing business with authoritarian regimes (Marfleet and Cetti 2013). The aim of this volume is to investigate the ways in which the EU externalisation policies have changed as a result of the Arab uprisings; more specifically, how those policies were implemented in post-2011 Tunisia after the fall of the Ben Ali regime. It particularly addresses the question of how the frameworks of intervention usually adopted by EU externalisation processes had to adapt to the “democratic transition” initiated by the Tunisian Revolution, shifting from the state apparatus as a privileged locus of intervention to the “vibrant Tunisian civil society” as a new category relevant to migration policies. Our analysis aims to contribute to a set of recent academic production on the role of civil society in the EU’s externalisation policies and migration management in Tunisia.11 The book follows the epistemological path described by Allal in his analysis of the Tunisian revolutionary moment: “Here it is the reconstruction, through a comprehensive approach, of the stages of the revolutionary process underway which is central, and not the search for the initial causes of the “Revolution”12 (Allal 2012, p. 823).13 The reader should not be misled by the book’s architecture, which relies upon both a diachronic perspective and a presentation going from the theoretical to the empirical. This choice aims neither at revealing a linear progression based on a causal series of events nor at unveiling a teleological logic in the making. It rather attempts to capture a historical moment, between 2011 and 2019, when the externalisation of European migration policies and the revolutionary redefining of spaces and the modalities of Tunisian political power crystallised. The analysis thus intends to highlight a process, rather than to assert an explanatory logic, and it rests on a qualitative methodology of research in Political Science. It revolves around the analysis of project documents and policy papers, as well as semi-structured interviews and punctual participant and non-participant observations.14 The field trips conducted between 2012 and 2019  in Tunisia and Italy allowed to develop an

1 INTRODUCTION 

5

Fig. 1.1  Field map. (Realised by: Achref Dabbebi; Source: Fieldwork)

analysis, with a longitudinal approach, of the evolution of EU migratory policies in Tunisia in the aftermath of the Revolution (Fig. 1.1). The insights of this book have emerged through meaningful exchanges comparing the Tunisian case with the perspectives developed on Global Governance of Migrations in the Horn of Africa and in Djibouti.15 These two African countries, albeit for very different reasons, have been turned by foreign intervention into “migration hubs,” heavily funded to enforce programmes of migration containment in order to avoid a repetition of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea crossing by undocumented migrants. Djibouti and Tunisia are on opposing ends of the political regime spectrum, the former being a stable and authoritarian political order and the latter, at the time of this research, in the midst of a precarious post-­ revolutionary democratic process. The comparison between the implementation patterns of migration policy projects carried out in both countries allowed to get a deeper understanding of the ways in which Intergovernmental Organisations (IGOs), International Organisations (IOs), States, or regional organisations, such as the EU, develop resilient

6 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

and flexible intervention strategies. While the outcomes of the implemented projects prove to be identical, that is, containing the movement of people and, more broadly, of neighbouring countries’ citizens, the devices implemented vary tremendously to match the normative frameworks of political order within the targeted States. Intergovernmental projects carried out in Djibouti targeted almost exclusively the state apparatus and flattered the state authority, as used to be the case in Tunisia during the reign of the authoritarian regime. After the Tunisian democratic transition, migratory projects aimed at regulating people’s movement orchestrated by the EU and its Member States, shifted to rely heavily on the creation and participation of decentralised actors and intermediary organisations (Abbott et  al. 2015). The analysis explores how, in democratic times, the EU’s externalisation of migration policies converged with institutionalised actors and organisations labelled “Tunisian civil society” to legitimise foreign migratory goals while transforming them as by-products of Tunisian citizens’ intention and, therefore, responsibility. This attempt to influence Tunisian citizens’ conduct recalls Foucault’s analysis of power. In that respect, the following chapter16 proposes a theoretical framework that unveils how the emphasis on democracy and civil society can be apprehended along the lines of a Foucauldian concept of governmentality. Chapter 3 analyses the role of civil society in the outsourcing of European migration history in light of Tunisian political history. The chapter shows to which extent migration has been a historical mean for the authoritarian Tunisian government to discipline its population. Chapter 4 stresses that, following the 2011 Revolution and the politicisation of migration issues in Tunisia, the EU and its Member States changed the frameworks of intervention in the externalisation domain, by invisibilising control measures on the one hand, and on the other, by including civil society in the negotiation process. Chapters 5 and 6 explore the role of civil society as an intermediary for the implementation of European migration policies in Tunisia. Chapter 5 focuses on the issue of emigration and on the importance to include civil society to “sweeten the pill” of sedentarisation. Chapter 6 explores the question of immigration and asylum in Tunisia by highlighting the role of Western NGOs as a particular kind of civil society intermediary, fostering the idea of Tunisia as a “country of destination.”

1 INTRODUCTION 

7

The conclusion suggests possible ways of thinking about struggles challenging the European border regime as Tunisian “uncivil” society struggles.

Notes 1. In the Maghreb (in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia) the word used to refer to migrants who take the boats to reach Europe is harragas: this Arabic term refers to the verb “to burn” and could be translated as “those who burn.” This term is used to talk about the infraction of a prohibition (burn a red light). When used for migration, this expression refers to the practice of harragas to burn their papers in order not to be identified and deported; it refers also, more generally, to the practice of burning the borders as an infraction of an imposed limit. 2. Abdelfattah D. (2011) “Impact of Arab Revolts on Migration,” Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, San Domenico di Fiesole (FI): European University Institute; Bonfiglio Ayla (2012) The Arab Spring and Beyond: Human Mobility, Forced Migration and Institutional Responses (Report), Workshop organised on March 20, 2012, at the Oxford University; Fargues, P. and Fandrich, C. (2012), Migration after the Arab Spring, MPC RR 2012/09, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, San Domenico di Fiesole (FI): European University Institute. 3. “Berlusconi: 100 rimpatri al giorno. Appello a Tunisi: «È uno tsunami umano»,” Corriere della Sera 1 April 2011. http://www. corriere.it/politica/11_aprile_01/immigrazione-piano-cabina-regia_ ef3d7c94-5c38-11e0-b06c-b43ad3228bba.shtml 4. Ansa (2011) “Immigrazione: Maroni, è una catastrofe.” 24 February. h t t p : / / w w w. w w w a n s a . i t / w e b / n o t i z i e / r u b r i c h e / p o l i t ica/2011/02/24/visualizza_new.html_1583849526.html 5. “Maroni: rischio di esodo di massa,” Il Sole 24 Ore, June 2014. http:// www.ilsole24ore.com/art/notizie/2011-03-22/maroni-rischio-esodomassa-063633.shtml?uuid=Aas6ACLE 6. Carli A. “A Lampedusa esodo biblico di clandestini. Frattini vola a Tunisi per discutere dell’emergenza,” Italia & Mondo, February 2011. http:// www.ilsole24ore.com/art/notizie/2011-02-12/lampedusa-collassosbarchi-immigrati-122434.shtml 7. La Repubblica “Immigrati: sindaco Lampedusa, preoccupati per annunciata ‘emorragia’ dalla Libia (3),” March 7, 2011. http://palermo.repubblica.it/dettaglio-news/09:28/3929156

8 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

8. La Repubblica “Gheddafi, nuove minacce all” Europa “Pronti a inviare centinaia di martiri,” July 8, 2011. http://www.repubblica.it/ esteri/2011/07/08/news/gheddafi_minaccia_kamikaze-18868174/ 9. La Repubblica (2011b) “Bossi: “Immigrati föra da i ball” Berlusconi arriva sull’isola’, March 29. http://www.repubblica.it/politica/2011/03/29/ news/bossi_immigrati_fora_da_i_ball-14227475/ 10. Middle East and North Africa. 11. Breda, G. (2019). (Co)Développement et gestion internationale des migrations: Contrôler le savoir pour savoir contrôler, PhD Thesis. Nice: Université Côte d’Azur. Cassarini, C. (forthcoming). L’immigration subsaharienne en Tunisie: De la reconnaissance d’un fait social à la création d’un enjeu gestionnaire Migrations et Société. Migrations et Société. Cuttitta, P. (forthcoming). EU-externalization of migration management in Tunisia and Egypt. Non-governmental/civil society organizations and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Population, Space and Place. 12. In French: «Ici, c’est la reconstruction, dans une démarche compréhensive, des étapes du processus révolutionnaire en cours qui est centrale et non la recherche de causes initiales de la ‘Révolution’». 13. For a similar argument, see also Hmed, Choukri. « Réseaux dormants, contingence et structures. Genèses de la révolution tunisienne », Revue française de science politique, vol. vol. 62, no. 5, 2012, pp. 797–820. 14. Caterina Giusa conducted, between 2012 and 2019, eight field trips resulting in six months of fieldwork in Tunisia (in Tunis and down the Tunisian coast, in the cities of Sousse, Mahdia, Sfax, Gabès, Zarzis, and Ben Guerdane, at the border with Libya) and Italy (in Lampedusa and Sicily). She conducted around 60 semi-structured interviews with Tunisian, European, and migrants’ civil society organisations working on migration issues in Tunisia, as well as organisations and activists engaged in different struggles related to freedom of movement. She also carried out around 40 semi-structured interviews with Tunisian authorities, EU and EU Member States authorities, and IOs and IGOs officials involved in the migration management sphere in Tunisia. The interviews were conducted in French, English, Arabic, and Italian; the interviews conducted in Arabic were realised with the help of translators. She was participant observer at the World Social Forum in Tunis in March 2015 and at the International Organization for Migration—IOM Migration Summer School in Tunis in September 2015. For the purpose of the book, around 40 interviews and observations have been selected. 15. Sabine Dini conducted 19 months of participant observation with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and International

1 INTRODUCTION 

9

Organization for Migration (IOM) between February 2012 and August 2013 followed by eight months of participant and non-­participant fields in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Somalia from 2014 to 2017. 16. This book is the product of cooperation. The introduction, the conclusion as well as Chap. 4 were written together. Sabine Dini took sole responsibility for Chaps. 2 and 3 and Caterina Giusa for Chaps. 5 and 6.

References Abbott, K.W., P.  Genschel, D.  Snidal, and B.  Zangl. 2015. International Organizations as Orchestrators. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Allal, A. 2012. Trajectoires “révolutionnaires” en Tunisie, Processus de radicalisations politiques 2007–2011. Revue française de science politique 62 (5): 821–841. Breda, G. 2019. (Co)Développement et gestion internationale des migrations: Contrôler le savoir pour savoir contrôler, PhD Thesis. Nice: Université Côte d’Azur. Cassarini, C. forthcoming. L’immigration subsaharienne en Tunisie: De la reconnaissance d’un fait social à la création d’un enjeu gestionnaire Migrations et Société. Migrations et Société. Cuttitta, P. 2008. The Case of the Italian Southern Sea Borders. Cooperation Across the Mediterranean? Documentos CIDOB. ———. 2012. Lo spettacolo del confine. Lampedusa tra produzione e messa in scena della frontiera. Milano/Udine: Mimesis. ———. forthcoming. EU-Externalization of Migration Management in Tunisia and Egypt. Non-governmental/Civil Society Organizations and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Population, Space and Place. Jeandesboz, J., and P. Pallister-Wilkins. 2015. Crisis, Enforcement and Control at EU Borders. In Crisis and Migration: Critical Perspectives, ed. A.  Lindley, 115–135. London: Routledge. Lamloum, O. 2003. L’enjeu de l’islamisme au cœur du processus de Barcelone. Critique internationale 18 (1): 129–149. Marfleet, P., and F. Cetti. 2013. “Identity Politics”: Europe, the EU and the Arab Spring. In The International Relations of the Contemporary Middle East Subordination and Beyond, ed. T.Y. Ismael and G.E. Perry. London: Routledge. Wihtol de Wenden, C. 2011. Révolutions arabes et Migrations. CERI, April.

CHAPTER 2

Externalising EU Migration Policies in Times of Democracy

Abstract  This chapter presents a theoretical apparatus based on the Foucauldian conception of power by addressing Tunisian civil society as being caught in a device of governmentality. It starts by contextualising the externalisation of the EU migration policies in post-revolutionary Tunisia to highlight the role assigned in the process to civil society. It is stressed that the so-called “vibrant civil society” proves to be a crucial operative category for the EU externalisation device. Indeed, civil society, far from being a mundane realisation of democracy, appears to be an effective tool to channel the conduct, representations, and normative categories of Tunisian citizens regarding EU migration issues. Keywords  Externalisation • Migration • Civil society • Governmentality • Tunisia In the Aeneid, his magnum opus, Virgil, creates the legend of Dido, Queen of Carthage, (current-day Tunisia) as leaning to Aeneas, founder of Rome and father of Latinity, rather than to Hiarbas, the despotic king of Libya. In like manner, Tunisian political culture has often been mythologised as attuned to the morals and values of the enlightened West rather than to Oriental customs and the despotism of the “barbarians” and Arabs. For its being secularised, Tunisia’s political exceptionality in the Arab world has often been asserted (Dakhlia 2011). Even if the cliché is now largely © The Author(s) 2020 S. Dini, C. Giusa, Externalising Migration Governance Through Civil Society, Mobility & Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39578-0_2

11

12 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

deconstructed by scientific literature (Allal and Geisser 2018; Camau 2018; Dakhli 2018; Hmed 2016), it continues to sorely permeate political discourse about Tunisia. The speech pronounced on October 9, 2015, by the Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Karine Kullmann Five on the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to “four key organizations in Tunisian civil society”1 for their work to foster democratic dialogue following the Tunisian Revolution of 2011, is certainly no exception to this topos. A former member of the Norwegian Conservative Party, Karine Kullmann Five’s rhetoric delivered a Eurocentric vision of the Mediterranean political order resulting from the Arab Uprisings. Her speech presents a political context that combines instability and political insecurity on both European and African shores of the Mediterranean Sea: “We are living in turbulent times: millions of people in North Africa, the Middle East and Europe are fleeing war, oppression, suffering and terror (…).”2 She underlined the role played by the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, insisting on the exceptional and decisive action performed during the democratic transition and praising its capacity to contain migration: “If every country had acted like Tunisia did and paved the way for dialogue, tolerance, democracy and equal rights, far fewer people would have been forced to flee.”3 Consisting of the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT), the employers’ organisation Tunisian Union of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA), the Tunisian League of Human Rights (LTDH), and the Bar Association, the Quartet participated in the Tunisian democratisation process in 2013 by organising an arduous “national dialogue.” She concluded by emphasising that “Tunisia has shown the world that Islamist and secular political movements can negotiate together to find solutions in the best interests of the country, if they have the will.”4 Karine Kullmann Five also recalled the exceptional nature of the Tunisian political order and civil society organisations in the Arab world for, conversely to its dictatorial neighbours, having demonstrated their ability to engage in a process of liberal democratisation commensurate with the values promoted by Western democracies, cementing the cliché of the exceptional maturity of the Tunisian political body. The conception of democracy emphasised in the press release is strongly reductionist. It equates democracy with the mere emancipation of a people from an authoritarian yoke, with values of freedom and formal equality. Thus, it builds a direct link between civil society’s lack of freedom and migration patterns in the Mediterranean following the “exit voice loyalty” theory (Hirschman 1970). This posture implicitly delegitimises migration by citizens free to exercise their political rights, like Tunisians at the time

2  EXTERNALISING EU MIGRATION POLICIES IN TIMES OF DEMOCRACY 

13

of the speech. If the migration of Tunisian citizens was acceptable in times of dictatorship, in times of democracy, the “exit voice loyalty” pattern is no longer acceptable. This explains the international insistence placed on Tunisian civil society organisations (CSOs) that are conceived in a Tocquevillian and liberal conception (Colombo and Shapovalova 2017; Yousfi 2017) as “all non-State, not-for-profit structures, non-partisan and non-violent, through which people organize to pursue shared objectives and ideals, whether political, cultural, social or economic” (European Commission 2012 cited in Colombo & Shapovalova 2017). The Tunisian democratisation process is, therefore, envisioned as the guarantee of security for all European and African countries around the Mediterranean (Geisser 2015), as it is supposed to logically stop the migratory flow from Tunisia to Europe. Karine Kullmann Five’s speech recalls the ambivalent reaction of the EU and its Member States facing the political changes induced by the “revolution of dignity” in past years. Commingling admiration and anxiety (Marfleet and Cetti 2013), demands for democratisation were officially welcomed but coupled with a non-acceptance of the harragas. The young North African revolutionaries who were experiencing political unrest and crossing borders to reach Europe were considered, according to a pervasive European representation, as “heroes, but from afar” (Rodier 2011). Rapidly, a rhetoric of invasion (Cuttitta 2012; Jeandesboz and Pallister-Wilkins 2015) developed in the public sphere of EU Member States. The harragas’ arrivals were presented along the lines of a migration crisis (Marfleet and Hanieh 2015), allegedly causing a strong feeling of insecurity. This rhetoric was immediately associated with that of terrorist infiltration and the spread of radical Islam, possibly leading to the increase in terrorist attacks in European countries. The EU had to find a means to control, without undermining the Tunisian democratic process, and adopted a double-speak in response to these events. After the first period of silence and hesitation, the EU official position consisted of supporting the claims for freedom and democracy made by the Arab youth against the regimes. The European Union supported a depoliticised conception of democracy envisioned as an operative category prone to be mobilised in European policies implemented in North African countries (Dakhlia 2016) and beyond. The EU normative conception of democracy envisioned civil society as its mundane realisation. The democratic regime hence conceived entailed a teleological vision (Camau 2002) shared in European countries about the process of democratisation, its causes, and its consequences.

14 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

Civil society was the ferment of the revolution, the cause of any possible process of democratisation. In the specific Tunisian context, democracy, and civil society as its embodiment, was an operative concept leading to more security. On the one hand, European states supported democracy as it was considered the cornerstone of putting an end to the illegal departure of Tunisians towards Europe. On the other hand, based on the prejudice that democracy is incompatible with religious and, especially Islamic, political organisations, civil society was also seen as a guarantee of secularisation, and thus as a bulwark against the possible Islamic political structuration of society and spread of political Islam in the region. In this context, a European Commission Communication5 called on March 8, 2011, for “A Partnership for democracy and shared prosperity with the Southern Mediterranean Countries.” With the aim of creating a “thriving civil society,” the partnership was designed as a policy transfer based on expertise from experienced EU democratic states to a young democratic regime. This proposition undertook the instrumental role devoted to civil society organisations, which were used as a tool for the implementation of EU policy from the late 2000s (Colombo and Shapovalova 2017). The focus on civil society became a cornerstone for the EU to achieve various policy goals, specifically in the context of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) (Schumacher 2017). At first, the ENP intended to formalise the relationship between the EU and the governments, among others, of southern Mediterranean countries, to foster political, economic, and social security between neighbouring countries and the EU. Facing numerous critiques for being involved with authoritarian governments, notably when dealing with migration issues (Colombo and Shapovalova 2017), the EU reformed its ENP instruments and progressively acknowledged civil society as an operational category, thus following a more global turn to civil society participation within its larger policy framework (Saurugger 2010). Civil society was thus envisioned as a useful agent to implement broader policy goals (Marchetti and Tocci 2011; Shapovalova and Youngs 2014). Hence, 390 million euros were allocated to Tunisia through the 2011–2012 SPRING Programme—“Support to Partnership, Reform and Inclusive Growth.” The EU’s Task Forces, set up in 2011 in Tunisia and in 2012 in Egypt and Jordan, aimed to “bring together civil society representatives along with the EU institutions, governments, the private sector and international donors to serve as catalyst for political and economic reform” (Colombo and Shapovalova 2017, 501). This operative framework

2  EXTERNALISING EU MIGRATION POLICIES IN TIMES OF DEMOCRACY 

15

participated in blurring the line between the State and civil society. As the authoritarian Tunisian regime was dislocated and the institutionalisation of political power within the state was questioned, the EU turned towards civil society to institutionalise the Tunisian migratory policy. Civil society was presented as a legitimate political body to work with that could be turned into a powerful tool of control of the state apparatus. It would help enact the Tunisian state’s transition to “transparency” and “accountability.”6 The European Council, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions released a Joint Communication, “A Partnership for Democracy and Shared Prosperity with the Southern Mediterranean.” It stated, among other things, that “A thriving civil society can help uphold human rights and contribute to democracy building and good governance, playing an important role in checking government excesses.”7 The merging between civil society and the government reached its acme when the Ministry of Civil Society8 was created, proving that civil society has become a key actor in the political sphere in Tunisia. As Yousfi (2017) highlights: “The appointment in January 2015 of a minister in charge of relations with the constitutional institutions and civil society illustrates perfectly the fact that the latter has become a key actor on the political stage. It is no longer a mere countervailing force but an inescapable partner in the process of political decision-­ making.” As a consequence of this ambivalence, in July 2018, nine Tunisian organisations and civil society associations published a joint declaration to ask for the dissolution of the new ministry, accusing it to be an obstacle to communication and a “threat to freedoms.”9 The declaration stated, “this kind of ministry does not exist in democratic countries.”10 The dichotomy between State and non-state actors was obsolete in the Tunisian context, both from a practical and an analytical stand. The question of the use made of civil society as both a category and a tool of government is not a pristine topic for Tunisians. The declaration released by the nine Tunisian associations mentioned above highlights an entanglement between the state apparatus and organised civil society that is rooted in Tunisian political history. Literature about Tunisian political history has abundantly stressed how the fabric of civil society had been a powerful tool of political control for the authoritarian government in postcolonial Tunisia (Allal 2016; Chouikha and Gobe 2015; Khiari 2003; Camau and Geisser 2003). This pervasive characteristic of Tunisian postcolonial political order can be explored in light of Foucault’s analytics of power.

16 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

The work of the second Foucault—1970–1980—(Dreyfus and Rabinow 1984) traces a genealogy of power relations. Foucault exposes a grid of analysis of the devices of social regulation and control of the behaviours of others (Foucault 2004a, b) that he subsumes in the concept of governmentality. Governmentality can be understood as the “conduct of conducts” or as a means of “structuring the field of action of others” (Jeanpierre 2006) by orienting the behaviour of individuals and groups through “the institutions, procedures, analysis and reflections, calculations and tactics” (Foucault 2004b, 48). Using Foucault to analyse migration policies is not new. The scholarship on the governance of international migration is often based on the Foucauldian paradigm of governmentality (Bigo 1998; Walters 2010a, b; Geiger and Pécoud 2010, 2012, 2013), mostly to investigate the state control practices of identification and surveillance. This book proposes a different perspective and shifts the focus to describing an overlooked aspect of governmental practices in international migration management. The concept of governmentality proposes a complex vision of power relations by emphasising how, far from being passively dominated by the State, “the subjects can also act, under certain conditions, as producers of a freedom and a power by which their subjection, yet, is getting stronger.” (Jeanpierre 2006). It supposes to apprehend the apparatus linking the governors and the governed in the building of power. Foucault’s work contends that the governed are not passive recipients of state power but participate in its definition. Producing the consent of the governed thought, the shaping of the identity, and the orientation of conducts is a keystone of any working modern political and social order (Foucault 1976, 1982; Hibou 2006, 2011). Building on a Foucauldian concept of governmentality, Neumann and Sending have investigated the relationship between civil society organisations and political orders in the apparatus set in motion by global governance (Neumann and Sending 2006, 2010). Their work shows with finesse how to identify the concrete apparatus of governmentality involving civil society. They highlight how, in the last decades, civil society actors were at the heart of the advent of stratified social order: “actors claiming to represent affected individuals and constituencies of “civil society” emerged to assume key governing roles, both in terms of service delivery, advocacy, and expertise. Here, governing increasingly operated through affected individuals rather than on them as they were increasingly conceptualized as key actors to ensure both

2  EXTERNALISING EU MIGRATION POLICIES IN TIMES OF DEMOCRACY 

17

effectiveness in program-delivery and to confer legitimacy on governmental practices” (Neumann and Sending 2006, 661). The analysis presented in this book follows the path opened by the analytical proposition of Sending and Neumann and applies it to the global governance of migration and, more specifically, to the externalisation of EU migration policies in Tunisia. It contends that the fabrication of Tunisian civil society organisations orchestrated by the EU is part of a larger process of governmentality aiming at blurring the lines between the nebulous ensemble of State and non-state actors involved in migration issues in Tunisian domestic policies. The revolution destabilised the country’s political order. If the state apparatus was still effective, its political actors had lost most of their political legitimacy, which was transferred to the vox populi. This context turned Tunisia into a particularly fruitful and salient case study of a governmentality process engaging civil society. Prior to the revolution, under an authoritarian political order, the EU externalisation of migratory policy was implemented through a process of border-crossing management through legal patterns of control, such as the visa policy (Infantino 2019, 2016a, b), border controls (Côté-Boucher et al. 2014; Fine 2018; Frowd 2014), and bilateral readmission agreements (Cassarino 2018; El Qadim 2015) implemented with and by the host state apparatus and its civil servants. The revolution made the former system obsolete and the bordering processes shifted progressively from the state apparatus to the production of new social subjectivities and identities. For the EU project of migration management, civil society organisations became a locus of production of a new social identity justifying a social order associating positive citizenship and immobility. Therefore, the pattern of sedentarism (Bakewell 2008; Dini 2018; Pécoud 2015a, b) has been identified as one of the main rationalities involved in the governmentality processes of the global governance of migration. The following argument shows how the sedentarist rationality roots itself in the representation of a Tunisian citizen as a “Homo ethicus,” a responsible subject of ethical governance based on a responsibilisation process: “the government of conducts through the activation of good will” (Chamayou 2018). More precisely, the production of Tunisian civil society by the EU can be apprehended in light of Graham Burchell and Mitchell Dean’s twofold analysis of governmentality. From their perspective, governmentality first revolves on the deployment of “possibilities of agencies” (Dean 1999: 167–168  in Neumann and Sending 2010), that is, the incitation for

18 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

individuals to take control. It is coupled with a demand for the “responsibilization” (Burchell 1996: 29  in Neumann and Sending 2010) of the individual and collectives involved, the responsibilisation of complying with the patterns of actions, and the ethical values approved by the global governance incentives. The “possibilities of agencies” and the demand for “responsibilization” are consequently the two keystones of the following demonstration.

Notes 1. The Nobel Peace Prize for 2015. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2019. Mon. March 4, 2019. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2015/ press-release/ 2. Ibidem. 3. Ibidem. 4. Ibidem. 5. European Commission and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign and Security Policy, A Partnership for Democracy and Shared Prosperity in the Mediterranean, March 8, 2011: http://ec.europa.eu/ archives/commission_2010-2014/president/news/speeches-statements/pdf/20110308_en.pdf 6. Ibidem. 7. Ibidem. 8. Minister of the relations with the constitutional instances, civil society, and of human rights. 9. TAP, Après la démission de Ben Gharbia: Des ONG appellent à supprimer le ministère des Relations avec les instances constitutionnelles, la société civile et des droits de l’homme, Huffington Post Maghreb, July 27, 2018 https:// www.huffpostmaghreb.com/entry/apres-la-demission-de-ben-gharbiades-ong-appellent-a-supprimer-le-ministere-des-relations-avec-lesinstances-constitutionnelles-la-societe-civile-et-des-droits-de-lhomme_ mg_5b5b24a7e4b0de86f4968386 10. Ibidem.

References Allal, Amin. 2016. “Penser global, agir dans un bocal” Participation locale, régulation néoliberale et situation autoritaire en Tunisie (2006–2010). Gouvernement et action publique 2 (2): 153–181. Allal, Amin, and Vincent Geisser. 2018. Tunisie, Une démocratisation au-dessus de tout soupçon? Paris: CNRS Editions.

2  EXTERNALISING EU MIGRATION POLICIES IN TIMES OF DEMOCRACY 

19

Bakewell, Oliver. 2008. “Keeping Them in their Place”: The Ambivalent Relationship between Development and Migration in Africa.” Third World Quarterly 29 (7): 1341–1358. Bigo, Didier. 1998. Sécurité et immigration, vers une gouvernementalité par l’inquiétude. Cultures et Conflits 31-32: 13–38. Camau, Michel. 2002. Société civiles réelles et téléologie de la démocratisation. Revue internationale de politique comparée 9 (2): 213–232. ———. 2018. L’exception tunisienne, Variations sur un mythe. Paris/Tunis: Karthala - IRMC. Camau, Michel, and Vincent Geisser. 2003. Le syndrome autoritaire: politique en Tunisie de Bourguiba à Ben Ali. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Cassarino, Jean-Pierre. 2018. Informalizing EU Readmission Policy. In The Routledge Handbook of Justice and Home Affairs Research, ed. Ariadna Ripoll Servent and Florian Trauner. Abingdon: Routledge. Chamayou, Gregoire. 2018. La société ingouvernable, Une généalogie du liberalisme autoritaire. Paris: La Fabrique. Chouikha, Larbi, and Eric Gobe. 2015. Histoire de la Tunisie depuis l’Indépendance. Paris: La Découverte. Colombo, Silvia, and Natalia Shapovalova. 2017. The European Neighborhood Policy Promotion of Civil Society. In The Routledge Handbook on the European Neighborhood Policy, ed. Tobias Schumacher, Andreas Marchetti, and Thomas Demmelhuber. Abingdon: Routledge. Côté-Boucher, Karine, Federica Infantino, and Mark Salter. 2014. Border Security as Practice, vol. 45. Security Dialogue, 3 vols. London: Sage. Cuttitta, Paolo. 2012. Lo spettacolo del confine. Lampedusa tra produzione e messa in scena della frontiera. Milano/Udine: Mimesis. Dakhli, Leyla. 2018. Quelle exception tunisienne? La vie des idées. June 7. https:// laviedesidees.fr/Quelle-exception-tunisienne.html Dakhlia, Jocelyne. 2011. Le pays sans bruit. Paris: Actes Sud. ———. 2016. Peut-on penser dans la transition? Nachaz: Dissonances. Dini, Sabine. 2018. Migration Management, Capacity Building and Sovereignity of an African State: International Organization for Migration in Djibouti. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44: 1691–1705. Dreyfus, Hubert L., and Paul Rabinow. 1984. Michel Foucault. Un parcours philosophique. Paris: Gallimard. El Qadim, Nora. 2015. Le gouvernement asymétrique des migrations. Maroc/Union Européenne. Paris: Dalloz. Fine, Shoshana. 2018. Borders and Mobility in Turkey, Governing Souls and States. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Foucault, Michel. 1976. Histoire de la sexualité – Vol. I: La Volonté de Savoir. Paris: Gallimard.

20 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

———. 1982. Le Sujet et le Pouvoir. In Dits et Ecrits vol IV, 222–243. Paris: Gallimard. ———. 2004a. Naissance de la biopolitique. Paris: Gallimard. ———. 2004b. Sécurité, Territoire, Population. Paris: Gallimard. Frowd, Philippe M. 2014. The Field of Border Control in Mauritania. Security Dialogue 45: 226–241. Geiger, Martin, and Antoine Pécoud, eds. 2010. The Politics of International Migration Management. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ———, eds. 2012. The New Politics of International Mobility. Migration Management and its Discontents. Osnabrück: Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies [IMIS Beiträge 40]. ———, eds. 2013. Disciplining the Transnational Mobility of People. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Geisser, Vincent. 2015. Les révolutionnaires tunisiens de 2011: les grands oubliés du Prix Nobel. Zaman France. October 9. https://www.zamanfrance.fr/article/revolutionnaires-tunisiens-2011-grands-oublies-prix-nobel-17984.html Hibou, Béatrice. 2006. La force de l’obéissance: économie politique de la répression en Tunisie. Paris: La Découverte. ———. 2011. Anatomie politique de la domination. Paris: La Découverte. Hirschman, Albert. 1970. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Hmed, Choukri. 2016. Au-delà de l’exception tunisienne: les failles et les risques du processus révolutionnaire. Pouvoirs 1 (156): 137–147. Infantino, Federica. 2016a. Outsourcing Border Control - Politics and Practice of Contracted Visa Policy in Morocco. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2016b. State-Bound Visa Policies and Europeanized Practices. Comparing EU Visa Policy Implementation in Morocco. Journal of Borderland Studies 31 (2): 171–186. ———. 2019. Schengen Visa Implementation and Transnational Policy-Making. Bordering Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Jeandesboz, Julien, and Polly Pallister-Wilkins. 2015. Crisis, Enforcement and Control at EU Borders. In Crisis and Migration: Critical Perspectives, ed. Anna Lindley, 115–135. London: Routledge. Jeanpierre, Laurent. 2006. Une sociologie foucaldienne du néolibéralisme est-elle possible ? Sociologie et sociétés 38 (2): 87–111. Khiari, Sadri. 2003. Tunisie: le délitement de la cité: Coercition, consentement, résistance. Paris: Karthala. Marchetti, Raffaele, and Nathalie Tocci. 2011. Introduction: Civil Society, Ethnic Conflicts and the Politicization of Human Rights. In Civil Society, Conflicts and the Politicization of Human Rights, ed. Raffaele Marchetti and Nathalie Tocci. Tokyo: United Nations University Press.

2  EXTERNALISING EU MIGRATION POLICIES IN TIMES OF DEMOCRACY 

21

Marfleet, Philip, and Fran Cetti. 2013. “Identity Politics” Europe, the EU and the Arab Spring. In The International Relations of the Contemporary Middle East, Subordination and Beyond, ed. Tareq Y. Ismael and Glenn E. Perry. London: Routledge. Marfleet, Philip, and Adam Hanieh. 2015. Migration and ‘Crisis’ in the Middle East and North Africa Region. In Crisis and Migration: Critical Perspectives, ed. Anna Lindley, 24–45. London: Routledge. Neumann, Iver B., and Ole Jacob Sending. 2006. Governance to Governmentality: Analyzing NGOs, States, and Power. International Studies Quarterly 50: 651–672. ———. 2010. Governing the Global Polity: Practice, Mentality, Rationality. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Pécoud, Antoine. 2015a. Depoliticising Migration: Global Governance and International Migration Narratives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2015b. Liberté de circulation et gouvernance mondiale des migrations. Éthique publique 17 (1). Rodier, Claire. 2011. Révolutions arabes: des héros, mais de loin. Plein Droit 90: 3–5. Saurugger, Sabine. 2010. The Social Construction of the Participatory Turn. The Emergence of a Norm in the European Union. European Journal of Political Research 49: 471–495. Schumacher, Tobias. 2017. The European Neighborhood Policy. In The Routledge Handbook on the European Neighbourhood Policy, ed. Tobias Schumacher, Andreas Marchetti, and Thomas Demmelhuber. Abingdon: Routledge. Shapovalova, Natalia, and Richard Youngs. 2014. The Changing Nature of EU Support to Civil Society. In Civil Society and Democracy Promotion, ed. Irene Hahn-Fuhr, Frank Schimmelfennig Timm Beichelt, and Susann Worschech. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Walters, William. 2010a. Foucault and Frontiers: Notes on the Birth of the Humanitarian Border. In Governmentality: Current Issues and Future Challenges, ed. Ulrich Bröckling, Susanne Krasmann, and Thomas Lemke, 138–164. London: Routledge. ———. 2010b. Imagined Migration World: The European Union’s Anti-Illegal Immigration Discourse. In The Politics of International Migration Management, ed. Martin Geiger and Antoine Pécoud, 73–95. Palgrave Macmillan, London. Yousfi, Hèla. 2017. “Civil Society” in Tunisia: the Ambivalence of a New Seat of Power. Orient XXI. January 24. https://orientxxi.info/magazine/ civil-society-in-tunisia-the-ambivalence-of-a-new-seat-of-power,1677

CHAPTER 3

Migration as a Historical Device of Political Regulation in Tunisia

Abstract  This chapter analyses the outsourcing of European migration policies, and the role of Tunisian civil society in this context, over the course of recent Tunisian political history. If the use of civil society by the European Union (EU) is part of a global trend of its more general governance, these policies meet Tunisian political history. The construction of the Tunisian political body has been marked by the entanglement of migratory issues with the regulation of the population orchestrated by successive authoritarian governments. Building on the Foucauldian concept of governmentality, the chapter shows to which extent migration has been a historical means for the government to discipline its population. Keywords  Global governance • Migration • Political society • Governmentality • Tunisia To understand the ways in which Tunisian civil society became a keystone of the European Union (EU) migration governance processes, and to understand how its regulation became a crucial part of the EU externalisation of migration policies, one needs to unveil how the issue of mobility in the Mediterranean had historically been a central piece of Tunisian political history. The Tunisian postcolonial socio-political and economic order was structured around a rentier system derived from the exploitation of agricultural raw material, olive oil, and phosphate mining produced and © The Author(s) 2020 S. Dini, C. Giusa, Externalising Migration Governance Through Civil Society, Mobility & Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39578-0_3

23

24 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

exploited in the north-eastern and southern regions respectively. The dependency system created by the rent prevented the integration of Tunisia into the global economic system. The various economic and agricultural policies pursued by the authoritarian leaders were unable to reduce unemployment, which dramatically increased over the decades, especially in rural Tunisia (Poncet 1974; Camau 1989). From 1970 on, the economic system was largely based on the development of the coastal region through tourism and outsourcing. This context fostered an intertwined political and economic asymmetry in the country (Hibou 2006). It concentrated political and economic power in the coastal region and marginalised the regions of the interior. The authoritarian and secularised modernisation process implemented by Bourguiba and later pursued by the Ben Ali regime was based on “state patronage” carried out by a class of bilingual Tunisian bourgeoisie forged during the French colonisation that politically and economically excluded the illiterate and rural population of the centre and the south of the country. This elite class controlled the export of raw materials and benefitted directly from the rentier logic. It orchestrated authoritarian power relations with the rest of the population based on a clientelist logic of redistribution. The economic distress among the population of the interior was muted by a social and political pact that ensured the redistribution of the fruits of the state economic rent to the poorest population (Camau 1989). The clientelist system controlled all aspects of social and political life through the ruling political party, the Rassemblement Constitutionnel Démocratique (RCD) (Ben Dhiaf 1982; Hibou 2006; Willis 2012, 2015). The authoritarian political device of control fostered a “passive citizenship” built upon the “mobilisation of the masses” (Camau 1987; Marzouki 2002) and led by the new urban political elite. The intermediary organisations devoted to relay the population’s criticism to the state were institutionalised and controlled by the state itself, channelling any public form of protest. In this context, the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) oversaw the redistribution of the economic rent outcome in the mining areas, notably consisting of job opportunities and access to infrastructure, while muffling the protestation of the population that was left behind (Yousfi 2015; Allal 2010). The imbrication of an iniquitous political system and economic distress sowed seeds for political and social discontent among the larger population. Under the iron rule of the Tunisian authoritarian regime, the public space was not available for public debate or the expression of the population’s dissatisfaction (Allal 2012). All aspects of Tunisian citizens’ life

3  MIGRATION AS A HISTORICAL DEVICE OF POLITICAL REGULATION… 

25

being repressed by an authoritarian system of control, forbidding any form of political protest and the absence of economic opportunities, led to significant emigration (Meddeb 2012). The Tunisian population belonging to the most deprived areas, looking for better economic perspectives in neighbouring Arab and European countries, started to leave the country, while mobility was also a way for Tunisian citizens who were political dissidents to escape the claw of the authoritarian political order. In Tunisia, too, the assertion that the “narrative of migration as physical mobility has been integrally linked with the promise of social mobility” (Kalir 2013) proved to be true. Soon almost 20% of the Tunisian population had moved abroad (Meddeb 2012). Emigration thus became an ambiguous social fact that the Tunisian state had to deal with. It became a crucial means of dealing politically and economically with the ever-growing social discontent. Indeed, over the years, successive failures of return-to-work policies and economic hardships fostered the emigration process, which was progressively envisaged by the state as a means to get rid of popular discontent that it could not fully control, while also being an inexpensive tool of development (ibidem, 394). Progressively, individual initiatives of emigration were institutionalised into a truly concerted public policy (Brand 2006). As mentioned in the Official Report on the Employment Problem published in Tunis in 1964 (quoted in Simon 1979, 67). “There is little doubt that one of the most effective, least expensive solutions to underemployment is the export of labour.” The progressive institutionalisation of emigration as a means of state policy was officially enacted through labour agreements with European states in the 1960s and the creation of the Vocational Training and Employment Office (VTEO) in 1967. Emigration became both an “explicit strategy of defusing social tensions” (Meddeb 2012, 402) for the unemployed Tunisian youth and a “modality of insertion of Tunisia in the world economy in this phase of liberalization of the economy” (ibidem: 405). As the number of emigrants grew, financial remittances sent by Tunisians abroad back home became an integral part of the state economic rent, like the exploitation of phosphate or the production of olive oil. However, if emigration became a solution, it was also soon seen as an entailing political contestation of the Tunisian authoritarian political order. Out of fear of politicisation of the Tunisian population abroad, successive Tunisian governments worked actively on the creation of devices to control its emigrants. Tunisians abroad were thus “embraced” (Torpey 2000) by a “dialectic of assistance and surveillance” (Zederman 2018).

26 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

Tunisians would self-discipline themselves for fear of being targeted by the political police. The institutionalisation of emigration by the state lay the foundations for a more general process of state control through the institutionalisation of civil society that never faltered in the following decades.1 The Tunisian migratory paradigm has been progressively institutionalised by the authoritarian regime of Bourguiba, then of Ben Ali, as a cornerstone of postcolonial Tunisia’s political order. Successive governments turned migration to Europe by unsatisfied Tunisian citizens facing economic hardship into an economic asset through remittances. It also helped control the institutionalisation of Tunisian civil society, stifling all forms of political protest. The institutionalisation of civil society, the emigration device of control, was fostered by a cooperation process between the Tunisian and European states, notably France, Italy, and the European Union. It became strategic to keep control not only over the Tunisian population abroad but also over Tunisian citizens more broadly. As Cassarino puts it, “The official adherence of the Tunisian authorities to the IAMM2 may be explained by the fact that it also offered an opportunity to exert stronger legitimate coercive power and control over Tunisian society, both at domestic and international levels, in the guise of ‘migration management’. In other words, the drive for migration management, sustained by the recurrence of RCPs3 and the sharing of ‘common security challenges’, was reinterpreted by the regime with a view to buttressing its regulatory and disciplinary functions.” (Cassarino 2014) The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership of 1995 enacted the convergent interests of the Tunisian regime and EU countries to repress religious extremism (Lamloum 2003; Hibou and Martinez 1988; Lacroix 2004). The contextual redefinition of the transnational political lines was euphemistically addressed as “common security challenge.” The expression designates radical Islamic religious groups, notably the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front. Fueling Tunisian political opposition, they were seen as major threats, both for Tunisia’s and for European states’ political stability. Islamic religious groups were seen as a political danger on both shores of the Mediterranean (Marfleet and Cetti 2013). The imbrication of the normative principle of civil society’s involvement enacted by the Euro-­ Mediterranean Partnership and the presentation of Islamist groups as a threat to security fostered the institutionalisation of civil society associations, while discrediting political opposition more generally as jeopardising democratic power. From the 1990s onwards, the Tunisian regime’s propaganda would discredit any sort of political opposition abroad and

3  MIGRATION AS A HISTORICAL DEVICE OF POLITICAL REGULATION… 

27

would promote the idea that the secularised authoritarian regime was the best protection against radical political Islamist groups, fostering an economic miracle (Hibou 1999) and protecting the minorities (Zederman 2018). Within the Tunisian territory, successive governments promoted the creation of civil associations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that would convey this new political ideology through a change in the legislative body. The Non-Profit Organisation Act of August 2, 1992, was modified notably to “broaden the scope of citizens’ involvement in associative activities” in order to counter the powerful Islamist rise (Ferjani 2009, 530). These organisations, ironically renamed by the vox populi “very governmental organisations” grew dramatically during the 1990s to reach almost 8300 in 2003 (ibidem). The foreign intervention on migration issues came as a means for the Tunisian regime to gain legitimacy over the control of its citizenry by creating a Tunisian civil society from scratch. The creation of Tunisian civil society was caught in a mutual construction of state-national and international politics based on Tunisia’s and the EU’s partnership. It contributed to draw a line between good and bad Tunisian citizenry. Indeed, European migration policy implemented during the two decades that preceded the Tunisian revolution, starting with the legal framework of 2004, synthesised in the European Pact on Immigration and Asylum of 2008,4 is characterised by the paradigm of “chosen immigration.” The policy framework creates barriers to free movement for non-EU citizens considered “undesirable.” This objective was achieved through the militarised control of the external borders of the Schengen area and through the increased externalisation of the management of migratory movements, enacting the role of the Maghreb as a “migratory security zone” between Africa and Europe. This outsourcing was set up with the creation of a common visa system that disciplines the entry and residence of third-country citizens. The system was based on the signing of bilateral readmission agreements with these third countries, even with undemocratic regimes, seen as a solution to avoid any “migratory risk.” The agreements were part of the European Neighbourhood Policy, inaugurated in 2003,5 which provides financial support, as well as facilitation for obtaining visas, for the countries of departure and transit of migrants, who accept to increase their collaboration on border surveillance. They are carried out within a framework of “migratory conditionality” (El Qadim 2018), which closely links development aid to border control. The collaboration of third countries is not

28 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

only a “police” collaboration but it has also materialised, from a legal point of view, in the drafting of laws criminalising irregular migration in the Maghreb, be it foreign immigrants or emigrants who are citizens of the Maghreb (Zeghbib 2009). This device of the control and criminalisation of the illegal movement between the two shores of the Mediterranean was one of the favoured devices of the Tunisian regime to enforce arbitrariness among its population and to discipline Tunisian citizenry. It was based on an arbitrary implementation of legal agreements signed with the EU, creating not only uncertainty and fear but also hope among the population (Cassarino 2014, 106). The Tunisian regime would not respect European rules when these were against its interests. It would criminalise all patterns that were detrimental to its legitimacy and disregard other aspects of migration management. Indeed, despite the process of institutionalisation of migration, most undocumented Tunisians leaving for Europe remained outside of the official system, with the Tunisian state’s blessing. Illegal departures were even favoured by the Tunisian government because they would not involve the state, and most of them were beneficial from an economic point of view, while also helping defuse social tensions (Meddeb 2012). Emigration gradually began to include not only marginalised communities but also Tunisians with significant academic and social capital from the middle class and even the petty bourgeoisie. Thus, the Tunisian regime remained reluctant to consistently apply the agreements signed on deportation (Cassarino 2014, 109). Control of the population was implemented strictly along the lines of power interests, which sometimes, but not always, met the expectations of European countries and EU agreements (ibidem: 107). Despite the instrumental use of some aspects of the migration management normative framework by the Tunisian regime, its implementation of the EU’s externalisation policies promoted its international recognition and protected the power from its own abuses. When addressing cooperation with Italy, Cassarino sums up the situation: “(…) the GoT6 knew that the reinvigorated cooperation with Italy in the field of migration and border control would foster its regime legitimacy and reliability in European political circles while deflecting political attention from resilient human rights violations in Tunisia” (ibidem: 110). By drastically restricting access to European countries for the citizens of the Maghreb, European policies destroyed one of the main drivers of consensus that structured Tunisian political society. The end of the possibility of migration, as one of Tunisian political society’s pillars of consensus,

3  MIGRATION AS A HISTORICAL DEVICE OF POLITICAL REGULATION… 

29

directly affected unemployed Tunisians, most of whom were among the youngest categories of the population. The crisis and the closure of Europe, therefore, reduced the opportunities for migration and increased the pressure of young people on the labour market. This is considered as having played an indirect role in the Tunisian revolution (Natter 2015). Emigration to Europe was indeed a “safety valve” for the frustrations of these young people and represented an alternative to protest, an “exit instead of voice” response, according to Hirschman’s model (Hirschman 1970), which allowed a reduction in the internal pressure caused by unemployment and frustration. In the period that immediately followed the fall of Ben Ali, a significant number of Tunisians achieved their migratory projects. The externalised system of border controls jointly performed by the Tunisian and EU authorities to prevent boats from leaving the Tunisian shores collapsed with the chaos that followed the fall of the regime, and around 28000 Tunisians harragas left (Boubakri 2013b; Boubakri and Potot 2013). The successive departures that coincided with the consecutive uprisings in Tunisia, as well as the links established between the actors themselves (Giusa 2018), directly raised the question of the relation between migration and revolution (Fargues 2017; Natter 2015; Van Hear 2015). The destabilisation of the mobility patterns in the region after the successive fall of Mubarak in Egypt and Kaddafi in Libya added a layer of complexity regarding Tunisian political society’s equilibrium concerning migration issues. Tunisia’s geostrategic position, along with its former political relationship with the EU, made it an excellent political territory and government to be the middleman in the EU externalisation policies, redefining Tunisia as a country of immigration as much as a country of emigration. Tunisia, destabilised by the 14th January Revolution, represented one of the major host countries for people fleeing Libya (Boubakri 2013a). Libya, the oil rentier regime, had long been a land of immigration and transit. The IOM estimated the total number of foreign nationals living in Libya before the crisis at “2.5 million, including 1 million Egyptians, 80,000 Pakistanis, 59,000 Sudanese, 63,000 Bangladeshis, 26,000 Filipinos, 10,500 Vietnamese and a large population of sub-Saharan African nationals, mainly from Niger, Chad, Mali, Nigeria and Ghana.”7 These migrants left Libya not only as a consequence of instability but also because of the increase in violent acts against African migrants, accused by the revolutionaries to be part of the mercenaries of Gaddafi. According to figures

30 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

given by the IOM,8 since February 2011, 790,000 foreigners left Libya for neighbouring countries, 43% of them to Tunisia. In this context, the Tunisian transitional government maintained an open-door policy and the most important role was played, in the first days of arrival, by Tunisian citizens who organised the initial reception and took care of the assistance and basic needs of people fleeing the Libyan conflict (Boubakri and Potot 2012). The coordination of part of the aid was done by the Tunisian Red Crescent. On February 20, the Tunisian army set up a reception camp in Choucha, near the Ras Jedir border crossing. The hosting of refugees immediately became a matter of redefinition of civil society and was seen as proof of its ethics. As noted by Hassan Boubakri and Swanie Potot, in this “citizen momentum to welcome migrant workers in exodus (…) everything happened as if the needs, which intensified week by week on the southern border, gave an opportunity for Tunisian society to put into practice the values expressed during its revolution” (Boubakri and Potot 2012). In the same fashion, policy papers produced by the IOM and the UNHCR celebrated the individual initiatives of Tunisian citizens. They emphasised the sense of responsibility of Tunisian citizens, who were seen as sacrificing their time and money for welcoming refugees. They were thus proving their autonomy and responsibility to the international community.9 This approach puts forward the celebration of the individual agency and the responsibility of individual citizens (Chamayou 2018). Were Tunisians looking for asylum in Europe or was Tunisia becoming a new country of asylum? The question then became one of the main pillars defining Tunisian political society. The semantic instability of whom to label as an immigrant was indicative of the general confusion and redefinition of mobility issues in the country, which represented the acme of the possibility to create a consensus around turning Tunisia into a third country. This alternative became crucial for European externalisation policies. In the last decade of the century, the EU started to conceptualise the notion of a “third country.” The EU migration policy consists notably in surrounding its border by a ring of states that would take on the role of an externalised border. The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership countries, including Tunisia, were integrated into the European Neighbourhood Policy, first through the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI)10 in 2007 and then in 2014 through the European Neighbourhood Instrument (ENI), with an overall budget of 15.4 billion euros. Among other things, the ENPI aims to “create conditions for the better organization of legal migration and the fostering of well-managed

3  MIGRATION AS A HISTORICAL DEVICE OF POLITICAL REGULATION… 

31

mobility of people, for the implementation of existing or future agreements concluded in line with the Global Approach to Migration and Mobility, and for the promotion of people-to-people contacts, in relation to cultural, educational, professional and sporting activities.” It stresses the importance of dealing with “mobility and migration management, including the protection of migrants”11 at the bilateral and multilateral levels. The EU’s externalisation process was based not only on the necessity to stop irregular crossings of Tunisian citizens but also to prevent Tunisia from becoming a transit country. The acceptance of refugees as an ethical responsibility would fit the European externalisation policy. Thus, the hosting of refugees became mainly the responsibility of the Tunisians rather than that of the European Union or its Member States. This logic also fits a more global pattern of neoliberal governance of migration (Chamayou 2018), which entails the disappearance of state responsibilities within the controlling processes of mobility by fostering the participation of the population (Allal 2016).

Notes 1. The case study proposed by Mathilde Zederman (2018) about the “framework policy” of diaspora set in motion by successive authoritarian regimes in France is enlightening in this respect. The analysis stresses how it was progressively structured on a “dialectic of assistance and surveillance,” leading to the de-politicisation of Tunisian diaspora. 2. The most important outcome of the Berne Initiative process is the International Agenda for Migration Management (IAMM), a reference system and non-binding policy framework aimed at facilitating cooperation between States in planning and managing the movement of people in a humane and orderly way. The IAMM was developed by States as the principal actors in the field of migration management, with the advice and support of other relevant stakeholders. https://www.iom.int/development-iamm 3. Regional Consultative Processes. 4. register.consilium.europa.eu/doc/sr v?l=EN&f=ST%2,013,440%20 2,008%20INIT 5. https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/files/ neighbourhood/pdf/key-documents/151118_joint-communication_ review-of-the-enp_en.pdf 6. Government of Tunisia. 7. IOM, «Libyan Crisis One Month into IOM’s response », 28 March 2011.

32 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

8. IOM International Organization for Migration, Migrants caught in crisis: the IOM experience in Libya, 2012. 9. Eyster E. et al. 2012. “Proud to be Tunisian”, Forced Migration Review, Oxford, P. 28. 10. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:201 4:077:0027:0043:EN:PDF. And more specifically on Tunisia, https:// ec.europa.eu/europeaid/sites/devco/files/csp-nip-tunisia-2007-2013_ en.pdf 11. ibidem.

References Allal, Amin. 2010. Réformes néolibérales, clientélismes et protestations en situation autoritaire. Les mouvements contestataires dans le bassin minier de Gafsa en Tunisie (2008). Politique africaine 117 (1): 107–125. ———. 2012. Trajectoires “révolutionnaires” en Tunisie, Processus de radicalisations politiques 2007–2011. Revue française de science politique (Presses de Sciences Po) 62 (5): 821–841. ———. 2016. “Penser global, agir dans un bocal” Participation locale, régulation néoliberale et situation autoritaire en Tunisie (2006–2010). Gouvernement et action publique 2 (2): 153–181. Ben Dhiaf, Issa. 1982. Chronique politqiue Tunisie, Annuaire de l’Afrique du nord 1980. Paris: CNRS edition. Boubakri, Hassan. 2013a. Les migrations en Tunisie après la révolution. Confluences Méditerranéennes 87: 31–46. ———. 2013b. Revolution and International Migration in Tunisia. MPC Research Report (Migration Policy Centre). Boubakri, Hassan, and Swanie Potot. 2012. De l’élan citoyen à la mise en place d’une politique migratoire en Tunisie: l’accueil des réfugiés de Libye en 2011. Migrations et Sociétés (CIEMI) 143 (5): 121–138. ———. 2013. Migrations et révolution en Tunisie. Revue Tunisienne des Sciences Sociales (RTSS) 141: 59–78. Brand, Laurie. 2006. Citizens Abroad: State and Emigration in the Middle East and North Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Camau, Michel. 1987. Tunisie au présent. Une modernité au dessus de tout soupçon. Paris: CNRS edition. ———. 1989. La Tunisie. Paris: PUF – “Que sais-je?”. Cassarino, Jean-Pierre. 2014. Channelled Policy Transfers: EU-Tunisia Interactions on Migration Matters. European Journal of Migration and Law 16: 97–123. Chamayou, Gregoire. 2018. La société ingouvernable, Une généalogie du liberalisme autoritaire. Paris: La Fabrique.

3  MIGRATION AS A HISTORICAL DEVICE OF POLITICAL REGULATION… 

33

El Qadim, Nora. 2018. Lutte contre l’immigration irreguilère et conditionnalité de l’aide au développement. Migrations et Sociétés 171 (1): 109–125. Fargues, Philippe. 2017. Mass Migration and Uprisings in Arab Countries: An Analytical Framework. In Combining Economic and Political Development: The Experience of MENA, International Development Policy Series, ed. G. Luciani, vol. 7, 170–183. Geneva: Graduate Institute Publications. Ferjani, Mohamed-Chérif. 2009. The Concept of “Civil Society” and the Tunisian Exemple. In Mediterranean Policies from Above and Below, ed. Isabel Schäfer and Jean Robert Henry, 524–548. Baden-Baden: Nomos. Giusa, Caterina. 2018. “On a fait la révolution pour être libres. Libres de partir”: les départs des harragas de la Tunisie en révolution. Mouvements (La Découverte) 1 (93): 99–106. Hibou, Béatrice. 1999. Tunisie: le coût d’un “miracle”. Critique internationale 1 (4): 48–56. ———. 2006. La force de l’obéissance, Économie politique de la répression en Tunisie. Paris: La Découverte. Hibou, Béatrice, and Luis Martinez. 1988. Le partenariat euro-maghrébin: un mariage blanc? Les études du CERI 47: 1–39. Hirschman, Albert O. 1970. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Kalir, Barak. 2013. Moving Subjects, Stagnant Paradigms: Can the ‘Mobilities Paradigm’ Transcend Methodological Nationalism? Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39 (2): 311–327. Lacroix, Thomas. 2004. Contrôle et instrumentalisation de la société civile maghrébine dans la coopération euro-méditerranéenne: le cas du Maroc et de la Tunisie. L’Année du Maghreb I: 100–115. Lamloum, Olfa. 2003. L’enjeu de l’islamisme au cœur du processus de Barcelone. Critique internationale 18 (1): 129–149. Marfleet, Philip Fran Cetti 2013 “Identity Politics”: Europe, the EU and the Arab Spring The International Relations of the Contemporary Middle East Subordination and Beyond Tareq Y. Ismael Glenn E. Perry London Routledge Marzouki, Moncef. 2002. L’enjeu de la citoyenneté dans la Tunisie d’aujourd’hui. Horizons Maghrébins - Le droit à la mémoire 46: 76–80. Meddeb, Hamza. 2012. Courir ou mourir, Course à el khobza et domination au quotidien dans la Tunisie de Ben Ali, PhD Thesis. Paris: IEP. Natter, Katharina. 2015. Revolution and Political Transition in Tunisia: A Migration Game Changer? Migration Information Source  – Migration Policy Institute, May. Poncet, Jean. 1974. La Tunisie à la recherche de son avenir. Paris: Ed. Sociales. Simon, Gildas. 1979. L’espace des travailleurs tunisiens en France, Structures et fonctionnement d’un champ migratoire international. Poitiers: Chez l’auteur.

34 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

Torpey, John. 2000. The Invention of the Passport, Surveillance, Citizenship and the State. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press. Van Hear, Nicholas. 2015. Dépasser la défection et la prise de parole dans la région euro-méditerranéenne. In Migrations en Méditerranée, ed. Camille Schmoll, Hélène Thiollet, and Catherine Wihtol de Wenden, 371–379. Paris: CNRS Éditions. Willis, Michael. 2012. Politics and Power in the Maghreb: Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco from Independence to the Arab Spring. Oxford: Hurst and Oxford University Press. ———. 2015. Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yousfi, Hèla. 2015. L’UGTT une passion tunisienne, Enquête sur les syndicalistes en révolution 2011–2014. Tunis: IRMC. Zederman, Mathilde. 2018. Trans-state spaces of mobilisation Tunisian activism in France in the era of Ben Ali (1987–2011), PhD Thesis. London: School of Oriental and African Studies. Zeghbib, Hocine. 2009. Normativité juridique et géopolitique des migrations en Méditerranée. Méditerranée 113: 93–104.

CHAPTER 4

Revolution and Migration in Tunisia: A Matter of Civil Society?

Abstract  This chapter shows how the “democratic transition” initiated by the Revolution of Dignity in Tunisia has profoundly changed the frameworks of intervention usually adopted by EU externalisation processes. As the issue of migration is politicised in post-2011 Tunisia, migration control measures are invisibilised. At the same time, civil society appears as a new actor in the process. The institutionalised participation of civil society in the EU-Tunisia Mobility Partnership negotiations shows the ambiguity of the power dynamics between global governance, the Tunisian government, and the people of Tunisia. Keywords  Invisibilisation • Civil society • Mobility partnership • EU-Tunisia negotiations • Readmission agreement In 2011, the issue of migration started to be politicised in post-­ revolutionary Tunisia and migratory issues entered the public sphere as a topic of debate and mobilisation (Bartels 2015; Boubakri 2013; Cassarino 2018; Natter 2015). What could not be spoken of, what was in a way a “national taboo,” became a topic to be discussed in the public sphere. If emigration and politics have always been a matter of tremendous importance in Tunisia, under the iron rule of the Ben Ali regime, it was presented as a matter of the state (Chouikha and Gobe 2015; Boubakri 2009) and not of public display or concern. In September 2015, during a © The Author(s) 2020 S. Dini, C. Giusa, Externalising Migration Governance Through Civil Society, Mobility & Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39578-0_4

35

36 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

Q&A session at the IOM summer school,1 the Director of the Office of Tunisians Abroad, Lassaad Labidi, declared: “We should say the truth, the question of migration has appeared in Tunisia in 2011.” To which Hassan Boubakri, an academic specialising in migration, answered with precision: “in the public space.” In relation to the freedom of speech and to the role the press gained after the fall of the regime, migration became a topic in the Tunisian public space in 2011. The emigration phenomenon that was now mediatised was ancient, but before 2011, “nobody spoke about it.”2 In an interview3 with a member of FTDES, the Tunisian Forum of Social and Economic Rights, a Tunisian civil society organisation engaging in the cause of the disappeared at sea and of the Choucha asylum seekers, he said: “Before 2011, I think the only work that was done was done by the universities. We could not before 2011 speak about migration as a failure of the development model, as a failure of the economic, social and political choices.” The increasing attention paid to the topic after 2011 had its roots in the Tunisian history of the manipulation of emigration and diaspora by the successive dictatorial powers and the very high rates of death and disappearance on shipwrecks in the Mediterranean, emphasised by the significant simultaneous departures from Libya. Analysing the media coverage of the phenomenon of the harragas in four main Tunisian newspapers, Ben Khalifa notes, “Tunisian journalists who were previously subject to extreme censorship suddenly find themselves in a climate where the migration problem can be commented freely” (Ben Khalifa 2015). The following account4 of the power struggle around the ship that wrecked in Lampedusa in September 2012 shows the plethora of actors at the heart of the politicisation of migration and the role of the Tunisian authorities that have become accountable on the issue of cross-­ Mediterranean migration after the revolution. The night between the sixth and seventh of September 2012, a boat coming from Tunisia with 130 people on board capsized off the coast of Lampione, a small uninhabited island close to Lampedusa. The shipwreck caused tens of victims, and the survivors were kept in detention for several weeks at the Lampedusa retention centre while the authorities were conducting investigations into the incident.5 The event was immediately politicised and the Tunisian Minister of the Interior declared that Tunisia would increase border controls. Following the shipwreck, protests took place in Tunisia as well as in Palermo, Sicily, which shows that the issue of the disappeared was dealt with in the transnational public sphere. In Tunisia, inhabitants of El Fahs, a neighbourhood from where many of the

4  REVOLUTION AND MIGRATION IN TUNISIA: A MATTER OF CIVIL SOCIETY? 

37

disappeared migrants came from, protested against the lack of information given about the fate of their family members who had disappeared in the accident.6 A gathering was organised in the centre of Tunis to commemorate the victims and the disappeared of the shipwreck.7 In Palermo, the Antiracist Forum organised a rally on September 19. Following these events, the Tunisian government sent delegations to Lampedusa to discuss the questions related to the shipwreck and the fate of the Tunisian nationals detained at the Lampedusa detention centre. In an interview, a lawyer and migration activist in Lampedusa who was following the issues related to the arrivals of Tunisians since 2011, and who was in contact with several activists in Europe and Tunisia, states that “since the shipwreck in September there has been a continuous back and forth of Tunisian authorities. (…) it is the first time that there is attention from the Tunisian government. Why? Because of the popular uprising of the families of the victims against the reaction of silence the government had in the beginning, and the absence of a list of the survivors.”8 At a meeting at the Municipality of Lampedusa on September 28, the mayor Giusi Nicolini goes in the same direction: “The situation in the detention centre is unbearable. It’s the 5th Tunisian delegation that visits Lampedusa, something has changed, post Arab Spring Tunisia recognizes the value of human life.”9 A Lampedusa priest, active in migrants’ issues, says: “What is new today is the Tunisian delegations’ visits, the exchange between the parties.”10 While recognising the importance of this new interest of the Tunisian authorities in the fate of Tunisian citizens arriving in Lampedusa, some activists call into question their position11: “I spoke with some MPs from the opposition and a deputy from Nahda [party] and they have no idea. There is a distance between politics and the real world. They say the borders should be closed to push young Tunisians to stay in Tunisia, they agree to continue with the securitisation policies. They say that they can stop migration.” Some of the harragas stuck on the island also underline the distance between the authorities and the struggle for freedom of movement: “We are tired of being here waiting. The tension in the centre is growing, we want to go to France or Germany. Some of us have family in Italy, others have family members who died in the shipwreck. Every day they give us different information about the day we will leave, about the permits they will give us (…) We don’t trust those Tunisian delegations sent from the government. They are only interested in the shipwreck, in showing they are involved in the issue, but they don’t care about us.”12

38 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

The conflict between the different actors—Tunisian delegations, activists, harragas—shows the visibility of the issue: the “street” denounces the Tunisian government’s responsibility in the issue of the disappeared at sea (Souiah 2019; Oliveri 2016; Ben Khalifa 2013; Tazzioli 2018) which becomes a state matter: “The dossier of the disappeared at sea was a political problem for us (…) There is a list of 500 disappeared, it is very serious. Even during the revolution, we did not lose 500 Tunisians, there have not been 500 martyrs (…) The regime would leave Tunisians die, leaving them to their own devices,” explains the former Tunisian State Secretary of Migrations and Tunisians Abroad. This politicisation of migration issues happens in the context of a renegotiation of multilateral and bilateral agreements with the EU and its Member States, where civil society has a voice concerning migration issues and the relations with European countries. A former director of the Office of Tunisians Abroad explains in 201213: “One of the aims of the Tunisian migration policy is to rethink the texts of bilateral and multilateral cooperation. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is responsible for the diplomatic issues, the Office for Tunisians Abroad for the content, but in a consensual spirit, asking for advice from civil society, trade unions, employers, human rights organisations and associations. The state is no longer all-powerful.” A Tunisian activist, belonging to an association of Tunisians residents in France, who had been active in Lampedusa supporting the Tunisian harragas since the first arrivals in January 2011, and who was present at the Ministry of the Interior in Tunis in March 2011 at the moment of the negotiations with the Italian authorities who were pushing for Tunisia to accept the deportation of the harragas, describes the process of politicisation as follows14: It was the first time that Tunisia said no. The Béji Caïd Essebsi government, very weak, adopted a decision defined by the pressure of a group of activists for the rights of migrants who had been consulted and who had participated in the debate over the Italian propositions to the Minister of the Interior. This parenthesis of change and effective participation of civil society in decisions on the issue of migration did not last long: not long after, the 5th April agreement was signed, an agreement negotiated in secret that reflects the priorities of the new Tunisia, structural priorities that take into account the role of Italy as the second economic partner of Tunisia.

On April 5, 2011, Italy signed an agreement with the Tunisian transitional government to reinforce the control of irregular migration and to

4  REVOLUTION AND MIGRATION IN TUNISIA: A MATTER OF CIVIL SOCIETY? 

39

re-establish the readmission procedures of irregular Tunisian nationals. Following this agreement, which has not been made public, Italy issued a decree that states that all the Tunisian nationals arriving in Italy after April 5, 2011, at midnight will be repatriated to Tunisia. The Italian authorities applied humanitarian measures of temporary protection to more than 25,000 Tunisians who had arrived between January and April 5, 2011. The Italian decision of granting those migrants a humanitarian permit, and the right to circulate in the Schengen area, triggered strong reactions by the French authorities, without fundamentally questioning the Schengen convention (Guiraudon 2011). In the quote, the activist insists on the secrecy of the agreement between the Tunisian transitional government and Italy (Paoletti 2011). His analysis is based on the idea that bilateral agreements are intentionally kept secret and out of reach of the Tunisian people. If an atmosphere of secrecy characterises migration issues in Tunisia, it is as much a consequence of a context of the invisibilisation of the control processes as that of an active will to veil stakes that could not be well accepted by “the street.” As an example of this invisibilisation tendency, since 2014, the French Embassy in Tunisia has relocated part of the visa application management service to a subcontracted company, TLS Contact. The same goes for the Italian Embassy subcontracting Almaviva and for the German Embassy and VFS Global. Most of these agencies are geographically distant from the embassies, which reduces the pressure, even symbolic, around these sites of power. The process is part of a more global and gradual disengagement of state services through the privatisation of services related to the mobility of people (Infantino 2016) creating an economy around the closing of borders (Rodier 2012). The Tunisia dispositive adopts specific patterns: in Tunis, the urban separation associated with privatisation and dematerialisation has made it possible to defuse the issue of asymmetry of migration governance, not to make it a political issue. In this light, the French Embassy’s location is representative. Located in the heart of Tunis, on Bourguiba Avenue, opposite the Cathedral, close to the medina and the central market, the French Embassy is militarised since 2012, surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by armed guards. Since 2014, the location of TLS Contact in a rich business neighbourhood, not easily reachable with public transport, allows the Consulate to not receive directly part of the people applying for a visa to France. Those measures participate in a neoliberal logic of privatisation that separates intention and responsibility (Chamayou 2018) (Fig. 4.1).

40 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

Fig. 4.1  Distancing of visa application procedures in Tunis. (Realised by: Achref Dabbebi; Source: Fieldwork)

More generally, as they arouse popular condemnation, the practical consequences of readmission agreements are carefully kept out of all mediatisation. The example of the deportations of Tunisian citizens irregularly residing in the EU to the airport of Enfidha15 is interesting in this respect. The airport is in a strategic position close to the city of Sousse, which allows the authorities to organise buses to the South and North of the country after the deportees have been controlled by the anti-criminality brigade. At the same time, its location makes the airport more difficult to access and less visible than other airports. Deportations carried out through charter flights from Italy started in 2012 and from Germany in 2016. The flights are not displayed on the arrival screen and access to the airport is forbidden for those who are not travelling. In the words of a civil servant, “the Ministry of the Interior wants to conceal the question of deportations”16 (Fig. 4.2).

4  REVOLUTION AND MIGRATION IN TUNISIA: A MATTER OF CIVIL SOCIETY? 

41

Fig. 4.2  Tunisia’s most trafficked airports. (Realised by: Achref Dabbebi; Source: Office de l’Aviation Civile et des Aéroports (OACA), Passengers’ movements— annual report 2018: http://www.oaca.nat.tn/fileadmin/docs/DCRP.Doc/ images/statistiques_2018/Decembre_2018/statistiques_Decembre_2018.pdf and Enfidha airport website: http://enfidhahammametairport.com/fr-FR/ about-tav-airport-fr/page/history-fr)

42 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

The migration agreements reached with the Tunisian state before the revolution and the contested bilateral agreements signed after the revolution are becoming less and less visible and tangible.17 Moreover, negotiations with the Tunisian authorities after 2011 appear to be more complex, as the democratic transition has seen a multiplication of the actors involved in the migration policy sphere (Boubakri 2013; Natter 2018). In 2011, migration became crucial and was recognised at the government level with the creation of the Secretary of Migrations and Tunisians Abroad. A Tunisian activist links the process of institutionalisation of migration at the state level with the visibility of the question in 2011: “Still, during two weeks there was a sort of public agora that debated the migration issue in Tunisia. This period determined the creation, after the October 2011 elections, of the “State Secretary of Migrations and Tunisians Abroad,” formally under the Minister of Social Affairs.”18 Quoting the former Secretary: “There has been a recognition of migration by the state after the Revolution, which is exemplified by the creation of the MigrationS, plural, for those who leave and those who are here. It is the first time that migration is part of the government.”19 This multiplicity of actors in the context of the transition, as well as the high governmental volatility and instability of the Secretary (Natter 2018), made it more difficult to find one interlocutor to negotiate agreements and implement migration policies that were previously negotiated with the Ben Ali regime. The EU has fostered an externalisation process of its migratory policy in African countries, creating an asymmetrical government (El Qadim 2015) of migration with African states. Most of these policies are based on bilateral agreements enacted with dictatorial or authoritarian governments. After the fall of the Tunisian dictatorial regime in 2011, the externalisation process was destabilised by the absence of a stable authoritarian government. The “democratic transition” has modified the space of action and negotiation in Tunisia regarding a possible process of cooperation between the EU and Tunisia with the arrival of the voice of the people in the street who contributed to the fall of the regime (Cassarino 2018). An activist for the cause of the disappeared at sea declares in an interview in 2012, “They are asking Tunisia to be the policeman of the southern shore of the Mediterranean. But it is not happening yet: there is pressure from civil society.”20 In the aftermath of the revolution, Tunisian political society could no longer revolve around coercion. The change in the domestic structuration of political power had an immediate impact on the bilateral

4  REVOLUTION AND MIGRATION IN TUNISIA: A MATTER OF CIVIL SOCIETY? 

43

agreement and multilateral intervention in the country, as the devices that would work under the authoritarian rule of power were obsolete and illegitimate after 2011. The externalisation of migration policy processes led by the EU had to adapt and create a new device to implement its policies in Tunisia. Along the lines of a Foucauldian analysis of power, the Tunisian democratisation process entails that the production of the international stratified order on migration cannot revolve only around governmental decisions and the state apparatus. It also implies that the device of externalisation, in addition to the new government, manages to produce the consent of the dominated to the migratory order by intertwining migration issues with the support to an “active and responsible” civil society. After 2011, Tunisian civil society has attracted a great deal of international attention (Yousfi 2017) with the emergence of programmes aiming at fostering the emergence of an “active and responsible” Tunisian civil society to support the “democratic transition.” The idea of responsibility is present in this quote from the brochure of the “Europe Days,” organised in May 2016  in Tunis to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Cooperation Agreement signed between Tunisia and the European Community in 1976: “(…) in this historical time of democratic transition. Through hundreds of projects, the EU and its Member States intervene in all the development domains, participating in the reinforcement of the State and the emergence of an active and responsible civil society.” The atelier “Civil society as an actor and promotor of change” promoted the idea of civil society, not only as a recipient or as an object of policies but also as an “actor.” As we have seen, claims of civil society concerning migration issues have gained visibility in the public space since 2011. Thus, the inclusion of civil society as an “actor” in the redefinition of migration governance in Tunisia becomes essential. In this context, the EU has made continuous diplomatic efforts to establish renewed cooperation around migration issues with the new Tunisian government (Limam and Del Sarto 2015). As early as April 2011, the President of the European Commission, José Barroso, declared that the EU was ready to give 140 million euros to Tunisia in exchange for cooperation on matters of the readmission and management of irregular migration.21 In May 2011, the EU Commission presented its communication titled “A Dialogue for Migration, Mobility and Security for the Southern Mediterranean Countries.” This communication sets the basis of the Mobility Partnerships, cantered on the fight against irregular migration, in order to benefit from better access to legal migration opportunities. In

44 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

July 2012, Euromed Rights released a declaration “EU Mobility Partnerships with Tunisia and Morocco: Guarantees for the respect of rights must be a prerequisite to any agreement,” asking for “transparent and inclusive negotiations and partnerships” that would take into account civil society’s position on migration and asylum matters. Moreover, several Tunisian civil society organisations together with European networks and organisations published a joint press release in December 2013 to criticise the terms of the Partnership, considering it an “externalisation policy in disguise.”22 The Mobility Partnership (MP) Joint Declaration was signed by the EU, ten Member States, and Tunisia in March 2014. The MP Joint Declaration is a non-binding political declaration setting out a framework for negotiations concerning readmission and visa facilitation. Limam and Del Sarto point out that the MP Joint Declaration was signed not by the Tunisian government but by the Tunisian ambassador to the EU in Brussels, which may indicate that “by delegating the signing of the agreement to the ambassador, the Tunisian government sought to ‘hide’ this highly unpopular measure from public opinion” (Limam and Del Sarto 2015, 6). Another joint press release “Tunisia-EU Mobility Partnership: A Forced March towards the Externalization of Borders,” was published by civil society organisations to criticise the signature in March 2014.23 The EU has made efforts to institutionalise the role of civil society in the EU-Tunisia negotiations by funding a programme on “capacity building and participation of civil society” implemented by the international NGOs network Euromed Rights  – Euro Mediterranean Human Rights Network (REMDH), which opened an office in Tunis after the 2011 Revolution. The programme was designed in two phases, a first phase that started in 2014, “Mobilization of civil society in the monitoring of the relations between Tunisia and the EU.” and a second phase that was launched in April 2016, “A three-party dialogue between EU institutions, Tunisian civil society and Tunisian authorities.” The project is divided into different working groups, one of them being the “REMDH migration and asylum working group,” which includes different Tunisian civil society organisations. This working group produces recommendations and advocacy campaigns addressing European institutions as well as the Tunisian government on the issue of migration in Tunisia. The “REMDH migration and asylum working group” is supposed to have a role in the negotiations related to the Mobility Partnership. At the World Social Forum in March 2015 in Tunis, a civil society member summarised the situation as follows24: “The Migrations Secretary has not signed the Mobility Partnership, the Parliament

4  REVOLUTION AND MIGRATION IN TUNISIA: A MATTER OF CIVIL SOCIETY? 

45

was not consulted, the annexes were not signed. Consultation of civil society is a sort of “democratic polish.” In terms of real impact in the negotiations, the actors involved underline the ineffectiveness of the programme. A member of REMDH explains25: “In reality, in the Mobility Partnership civil society is not at all included (…) This civil society support programme is a form of schizophrenia of the EU: they fund Euromed Rights but there is no participation of civil society at the Malta summit,26 for example.” A member of one of the Tunisian organisations participating in the REMDH working group asks27: “Is it about real participation or are we just there as bodies?” The real impact of these civil society capacity building programmes is generally questioned by the actors involved, as organising civil society’s participation in the negotiations can also allow for the institutionalisation and control of the dissent (for an account of the Tunisian Civil Society Organisations’ (CSO’s) positions on migration-related issues, see Roman 2019). The case of the Deep and Comprehensive Free-Trade Agreement (DCFTA) negotiated between the EU and Tunisia at the same time as the European Readmission Agreement (EURA) and the Visa Facilitations Agreement (VFA) is interesting in this respect. The REMDH advocates for a simultaneous negotiation of the free trade, readmission, and visa facilitation agreements. In other words, agreeing to free trade and readmission agreements in exchange for more visas. In an interview with one of the civil society organisations participating in the REMDH programme, an actor involved explains, “We know that the DCFTA is going to be approved. In return, we at least ask for freedom of movement.”28 Having an institutionalised role in the negotiations can thus result in a reduction of the possibility of opposing neoliberal reforms, such as the imposition of the contested free trade agreement,29 as well as border control policies and readmissions. Furthermore, the “freedom of movement” that civil society can advocate for in the context of the negotiations remains partial and selective. Indeed, the room for manoeuvre in the discussion about the Tunisia-EU readmission agreement is another example of this tendency. The REMDH group advocates for the non-readmission of “third country nationals” from Europe, “but concerning the deportation of Tunisians, we can only monitor, ask for information on what is going on, we cannot oppose it.”30 The terms of the negotiations are set and calling for the non-readmission of Tunisians irregularly residing in the EU is not even considered a possibility. More generally, even if the readmission agreement in negotiation was made accessible,31 the influence of and the possibility for REMDH to intervene in the readmission agreement negotiations is

46 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

very weak: “In Tunis there has been a big event for the opening of the negotiations. There were around 50 people, all the ministries, the Member States, and 10 civil society delegates. But at REMDH Tunis we did not expect this, we do not even know who the readmission agreement negotiators are.”32 Civil society is included and its presence made visible at public events, but the actors are sceptical about the real possibility for civil society to have an impact on the result of the negotiations. If the sensitivity of the issues on the table during the EU-Tunisia negotiations—readmission and visa facilitations—has slowed down the agreement process, the 2014 EU-Tunisia Mobility Partnership Declaration signature has allowed the EU to unblock five million euros to put in place a three-year project to support the Partnership. The Mobility Partnership serves as a framework for the EU to rationalise actions concerning migration in Tunisia. The aim of the three-year support project, funded by the EU and implemented by Expertise France, is to “support the implementation of the EU-Tunisia Mobility Partnership through the capacity building of the Tunisian government in developing and implementing its national migration policy.”33 The support  project is organised into three components: labour migration and professional mobility, diaspora mobilisation and integration of migration in local development, and return and reinsertion. The EU has made a proposition to its Member States who signed the Mobility Partnership declaration and France, through its technical agency Expertise France, has signed the contract with the EU in coordination with OFII, the French Office of Immigration and Integration, and the Spanish state employment agency. The latter has retired and been replaced by Expertise France. The role of civil society in the support project is underlined in the following example. In an interview34 conducted in November 2016, during the first phase of implementation of the project, the Expertise France project manager expressed the need to clarify the role of Expertise France, as well as the role of this project, vis-a-vis the Tunisian authorities, to separate it from political negotiations and to underline the technical angle as a means of depoliticisation: “Whatever people think, the aim is to assist Tunisia in the development of its national migration strategy (…) We have called the project LEMMA, in Tunisian it is linked to the idea of living together, of family life, and it goes with this idea of partnership. In our project it was important to make the difference between negotiations and the political declaration on the one hand, and the technical assistance project on the other. The authorities need to understand that the project has been put in place for their benefit, and

4  REVOLUTION AND MIGRATION IN TUNISIA: A MATTER OF CIVIL SOCIETY? 

47

they actually know it, they have been included in the development of the project. The topics have been elaborated following what has been discussed in the framework of the partnership, as well as the national migration strategy (…).” Here, the main issue seems to be separating the political negotiations for readmission and visa facilitations from the “technical” issues. Mobility Partnerships and their focus on issues of readmission and cooperation on irregular migration have been criticised for being EU-centred and security-­ oriented,35 without much reference to the need for effectively facilitating legal migration. Policy analysis36 points out that EU home affairs diplomacy continues to dominate the policy formulation of the external dimension of EU migratory policies. The interview shows how the political dimension of the Partnership, as well as its unbalanced nature, is left aside and invisibilised in the conception of the support project, LEMMA, where the idea of “living together,” of “family life,” is put forward to convey the idea of a balanced partnership. Further in the interview, the aim of using this type of conciliatory and consensual language is specified. When asked if the Tunisian authorities are reticent about accepting these types of projects, the LEMMA project manager answers: “Not really, but we made the decision to clarify our work well. We spent a lot of time working on the name of the project. We had to do pedagogical work to explain that we don’t do political negotiation. But yes, we work between states, Expertise France represents France, but conflation can arrive quickly. The message was also important to pass on to civil society that is much more engaged and quite critical towards the PPM. Of course, the institutions are our first partners and beneficiaries, but civil society is part of the project, we had to do it to have them on board. Two associations, REMDH and UGTT, have been identified after consultations between Expertise France and the government, and are part of the steering committee of the project.” The actors concerned are not only Tunisian institutions but more so civil society. As this sentence clearly states, there was an interest in having civil society on board for the project: making civil society participate in the project committee allows it to present an image of inclusiveness, of consultation with civil society in the implementation of the project, which gives it more legitimacy. The examples of the Euromed Rights programme and the LEMMA Mobility Partnership support project show the importance of finding ways to include civil society in the process of negotiations and the

48 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

implementation of migration policies in a country where democratic transition and participation of civil society are terms that are at the forefront of the public debate. Drawing on Chamayou’s reflections on neoliberalism in the firm and inclusion of dissent in a dialogue that depoliticises the issue (Chamayou 2018), including civil society in the negotiation process, giving it a voice, can result in a “domestication” of the dissent and a deradicalisation of claims. In short, including civil society may eventually lead to an effective exclusion of its more radical claims, as well as to a new externalisation device using civil society as support.

Notes 1. Participant observation, International Organisation for Migration Summer School, September 2015, Tunis (Tunisia). 2. ibidem. 3. Interview, FTDES member, May 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 4. Observations, September 2012, Palermo and Lampedusa (Italy). 5. Forum Tunisien des Droits Economiques et Sociaux – Le naufrage des 6 et 7 septembre, 2012: http://nawaat.org/portail/wp-content/uploads/ 2013/02/2012_09_28-FTDES-Rapport-naufrage.pdf 6. « Tunisie: Des habitants d’El Fahs protestent contre le manque d’informations sur leurs proches disparus dans le naufrage de Lampedusa », TunisieNumérique, 10 September 2012 https://www.tunisienumerique. com/tunisie-des-habitants-del-fahs-protestent-contre-le-manque-dinformations-sur-leurs-proches-disparus-dans-le-naufrage-de-lampedusa/143012 7. « Rassemblement ce soir au centre de Tunis en mémoire des victimes et des disparus du naufrage de Lampedusa », TunisieNumérique, 11 Septembre 2012 https://www.tunisienumerique.com/rassemblement-ce-soir-aucentre-de-tunis-en-memoire-des-victimes-et-des-disparus-du-naufragede-lampedusa/143193 8. Interview, lawyer and migration activist, September 2012, Lampedusa (Italy). 9. Observation, meeting at the municipality of Lampedusa, September 2012, Lampedusa (Italy). 10. Interview, Lampedusa priest, September 2012, Lampedusa (Italy). 11. Interview, lawyer and migration activist, September 2012, Lampedusa (Italy). 12. Interview, shipwreck survivors, September 2012, Lampedusa (Italy).

4  REVOLUTION AND MIGRATION IN TUNISIA: A MATTER OF CIVIL SOCIETY? 

49

13. Interview, former director of the Office of Tunisians Abroad, October 2012, Tunis (Tunisia). 14. Interview, Tunisian migration activist, October 2012, Tunis (Tunisia). 15. Interviews, IOM Tunis officials and “Migration Expert” at the Italian Embassy in Tunis, May 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 16. Interview, Tunisian civil servant, May 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 17. Bilateral agreements were signed with Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, and Switzerland. 18. Interview, Tunisian migration activist, October 2012, Tunis (Tunisia). 19. Interview, former Secretary of Migrations and Tunisians abroad, April 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 20. Interview, militant for the cause of the disappeared at sea, Tunis, October 2012, Tunis (Tunisia). 21. Reuters, EU awaits “strong action” from Tunisia on migrants, 12 April 2011: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tunisia-eu/eu-awaits-strongaction-from-tunisia-on-migrants-idUSTRE73B4KJ20110412 22. “EU-Tunisia Mobility Partnership: Externalisation policy in disguise”, Joint press release, 3 December 2013, http://www.migreurop.org/article2319.html?lang=fr 23. Joint press release, 17 March 2014, http://www.migreurop.org/IMG/ pdf/pr_tunisia_en-2.pdf 24. Participant observation, World Social Forum, March 2015, Tunis (Tunisia). 25. Interview, member of REMDH Tunis, April 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 26. The 5+5 Dialogue is a multilateral sub-regional cooperation initiative established in 2002, which focuses on migration in the Western Mediterranean. 27. Interview, member of one of the Tunisian organisations participating to the REMDH migration and asylum working group, May 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 28. Interview, civil society organisation member, April 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 29. For a critique of the DCFTA, see Haythem Guesmi, « L’Europe veut imposer aux Tunisiens un projet de dépendance économique totale », 17 May 2019, Le Monde: https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/ article/2019/05/17/l-europe-veut-imposer-aux-tunisiens-un-projet-dedependance-economique-totale_5463436_3212.html 30. Interview, member of REMDH Tunis, April 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 31. Interview, REMDH member, November 2016, Brussels (Belgium). 32. Interview, member of REMDH Tunis, April 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 33. https://lemma.tn/a-propos/ 34. Interview, Expertise France project manager, November 2016, Tunis (Tunisia).

50 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

35. Manuel Manrique Gil et al., « Mediterranean flows into Europe: Migration and the EU’s foreign policy », March 2014, https://migrantsatsea.files. wordpress.com/2014/03/ep-dg-ep-analysis-med-migration-expo-join_ sp2014522330_en.pdf 36. Carrera et al., « EU migration policies after the Arab Spring: the pitfalls of home affairs diplomacy », CEPS, 2 May 2013, https://www.ceps. eu/ceps-publications/eu-migration-policy-after-arab-spring-pitfallshome-affairs-diplomacy/

References Bartels, Inken. 2015. Reconfiguration of Tunisian Migration Politics After The ‘Arab Spring’ – The Role of Young Civil Society Movements. In Youth, Revolt, Recognition – The Young Generation During and After the “Arab Spring”, ed. Isabel Schäfer, 62–79. Berlin: Mediterranean Institute Berlin. Ben Khalifa, Riadh. 2013. L’émigration irrégulière en Tunisie après le 14 janvier 2011 Le problème des disparus: pouvoirs publics et société civile. Hommes et migrations 1303: 182–188. ———. 2015. Le harga au prisme de la presse tunisienne (janvier 2011-mai 2013). In La Méditerranée au prisme des rivages. Ménaces, protections, aménagements en Méditerranée occidentale (XVIeXXIx siècles), ed. Anne Brogini and Maria Ghazali, 139–156. Paris: Editions Bouchêne. Boubakri, Hassan. 2009. L’administration des migrations irrégulières par l’Etat tunisien: dispositifs règlementaires et relations avec l’Europe. In La politique européenne d’immigration, ed. Abdelkhaleq Berramdane and Jean Rossetto, 285–309. Paris: Karthala. ———. 2013. Revolution and International Migration in Tunisia. MPC Research Report (Migration Policy Centre). Cassarino, Jean-Pierre. 2018. Le gouvernement des migrations en Tunisie: vers un nouveau paradigme? In Tunisie, une démocratisation au-dessus de tout soupçon? ed. Amin Allal and Vincent Geisser, 295–308. Paris: CNRS Editions. Chamayou, Gregoire. 2018. La société ingouvernable, Une généalogie du liberalisme autoritaire. Paris: La Fabrique. Chouikha, Larbi, and Eric Gobe. 2015. Histoire de la Tunisie depuis l’Indépendance. Paris: La Découverte. El Qadim, Nora. 2015. Le gouvernement asymétrique des migrations. Maroc/Union Européenne. Paris: Dalloz. Guiraudon, Virginie. 2011. Schengen: une crise en trompe l’oeil. Politique étrangère 4: 773–784. Infantino, Federica. 2016. Outsourcing Border Control  – Politics and Practice of Contracted Visa Policy in Morocco. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

4  REVOLUTION AND MIGRATION IN TUNISIA: A MATTER OF CIVIL SOCIETY? 

51

Limam, Mohamed, and Raffaella Del Sarto. 2015. Periphery Under Pressure: Morocco, Tunisia and the European Union’s Mobility Partnership on Migration. EUI Working Paper RSCAS, European University Institute. Natter, Katharina. 2015. Revolution and Political Transition in Tunisia: A Migration Game Changer? Migration Information Source  – Migration Policy Institute, May. ———. 2018. Immigration Policy Theory: Thinking Beyond the ‘Western Liberal-­ Democratic’ Box. IMI Working Paper 125. Oliveri, Federico. 2016. “Where Are Our Sons?” Tunisian Families and the Repolitization of Deadly Migration across the Mediterranean Sea. Migration by Boat: Discourses of Trauma, Exclusion and Survival, May: 154–177. Paoletti, Emanuela. 2011. Migrations and Revolutions: Reflections on the Recent Events in North Africa from an International Relations Perspective. Carnets de l’IFRI, October. Rodier, Claire. 2012. Xenophobie business. À quoi servent les contrôles migratoires. Paris: La Decouverte. Roman, Emanuela. 2019. U’s Migration Policies in the Eyes of “Partner” Countries’ Civil Society Actors: The Case of Tunisia. Global Affairs 5 (3): 203–219. Souiah, Farida. 2019. Corps absents: des fils disparus et des familles en lutte? Le cas des migrants tunisiens. Critique Internationale 2 (83): 87–100. Tazzioli, Martina. 2018. “From One Shore to the Other”: Other Revolutions in the Interstices of the Revolution. An Interview with Imed Soltani and Federica Sossi. Antipode 50 (3): 804–812. Yousfi, Hèla. 2017. “Civil Society” in Tunisia: The Ambivalence of a New Seat of Power. Orient XXI, January 24. https://orientxxi.info/magazine/ civil-society-in-tunisia-the-ambivalence-of-a-new-seat-of-power,1677

CHAPTER 5

“Sweetening the Pill”: “Civil Society” as a Tool of Sedentarisation

Abstract  This chapter analyses the forms of externalisation of EU migration policy through outsourcing to the civil society of projects aimed at constructing Tunisians as “non-mobile.” Those measures have a strong moral component and contribute to creating cleavage between “good” and “bad” Tunisians. Capacity building programmes for civil society aim at creating a suitable actor to implement those projects in Tunisia. Civil society becomes an intermediary between organisations such as Expertise France or the IOM and the “target groups,” be it the “return migrants,” the “members of the diaspora,” or the “potential candidates for irregular migration.” Keywords  Sedentarism • Diaspora • Development • Return • IOM awareness campaigns • Irregular migration Since the outbreak of the Revolution in 2011, Tunisia has seen a drastic increase in institutional initiatives on migration participating in the big picture of containment of mobility, including projects on migration and development, diaspora investments, voluntary return, and reinsertion, as well as awareness campaigns against irregular migration. “There are many actors that work on the topic of migration in Tunisia, it is a transversal topic,” says one Expertise France project manager.1 “The ICMPD, the IOM, the UNDP, Mainstreaming, GRDR. The bilateral cooperations, the © The Author(s) 2020 S. Dini, C. Giusa, Externalising Migration Governance Through Civil Society, Mobility & Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39578-0_5

53

54 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

Germans, the Swiss, the French. There is a “migration working group” coordinated by the EU and Switzerland that is responsible for the global coordination. We have meetings every two three months. (…) Tunisia is becoming a ‘migration hub’, everyone is active, everyone wants to do projects. I arrived in Tunisia in 2014 and I am still here, so it means there is work.”2 Indeed, since 2011, Tunisia has become a “migration hub,”3 with capacity-building programmes for Tunisian institutions on the issue of migration financed mainly by the EU and the Swiss cooperation and implemented by international and intergovernmental organisations. “State capacity-building” seems to be the catch-all term behind the implementation of these projects (Chandler 2010, 2013), but instability at the institutional level, as well as the lack of coordination on the Tunisian authorities’ side, are underlined by actors implementing migration policies in Tunisia. “At the institutional level, there have been quite a lot of changes… In August 2016, a new Secretary of Migrations and Tunisians Abroad was put in place, the third, so well in terms of durability, stability… (…) but there is a hope for durability, for a mechanism of unified inter-ministry coordination. It is good for Tunisia and good for all the operators like us, as it simply allows everyone to be more efficient, to have a real vis-à-vis and to be able to make our actions more sustainable. It is actually always this that we look for.”4 To implement projects, and set up long-term strategies, operators need institutional stability, which is lacking in Tunisia since the fall of the dictatorial regime. An IO officer working on migration projects in Tunisia states in an exchange5: “It is difficult to work with Tunisian civil servants… One day, one of them told me, ‘Migration is an out-of-date theme’. Can you imagine? They would come to meetings just to get USB sticks, and some of them don’t even know the difference between trafficking and smuggling. (…) Ideally we should facilitate the task, help the Tunisian government set up a strategy of reappropriation of the migration dossier, but for now, almost nothing has been done…. There is no coordination inside and between the ministries.” International migration governance, with its policy categories, such as “trafficking” and “smuggling,” is presented as the only way to rationalise and coordinate Tunisian institutional actions on migration. Nevertheless, on the Tunisian authorities’ side, the lack of coordination of foreign actors and the multiplication of projects that end up being very similar is underlined: “All the Ministries have an international cooperation delegation that deals with this kind of projects. The authorities say: please, no atelier this week because we already have 50 ateliers with the GIZ and all that, and we also have a job which is called manage the Tunisian state. So if we go to all your

5  “SWEETENING THE PILL”: “CIVIL SOCIETY” AS A TOOL… 

55

conferences we don’t have time to do our job.”6 This quote from an interview conducted with a “migration and development” project manager in Tunisia testifies to the reluctance of the Tunisian authorities to participate in these multiple similar initiatives, perceived as very time-consuming and eventually not effective. Against this background, working with a “responsible and accountable” civil society seems like a more effective option to implement migration projects in post-2011 Tunisia. In the aftermath of the Revolution, Tunisia witnessed a “boom” of civil society organisations: an increase in funding, great international focus, and an ongoing institutionalisation process, all have contributed to an increase in the number of registered civil society organisations (Yousfi 2017). The EU, France, and Swiss cooperation are at the forefront of these efforts to re-institutionalise Tunisian civil society after 2011 through the funding of capacity-building and support programmes. This idea of responsibility and accountability of Tunisian civil society is conveyed through programmes such as “Soyons actifs” / “Let’s be active,” a civil society capacity-building programme partnering Tunisian and French civil society organisations, which aims to “contribute together to the reduction of inequalities for a durable human development.” The PASC Programme,7 part of the SPRING programme for the Southern Neighbourhood “to answer to the Arab Spring” with the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI), was launched in 2014 to foster cooperation between civil society organisations and public actors in Tunisia. Jamaity is a resources and information platform for Tunisian civil society established in 2014. Lab’ess, another programme of civil society capacity-building created in 2012, focuses more on general associations structuration through trainings on communications, funding research, project design, evaluation, and follow-up. In an interview, a former Lab’ess volunteer explains: “There were hundreds of associations. They had to be registered through a call for applications on social media to be trained in project management. There had been an associative boom, everyone lacked experience and means, they were coming to in fine be able to look for funding, know how to approach a funder by putting themselves in the network.”8 Civil society is thus trained to be able to receive international funding and become more easily identifiable. In sum, civil society would potentially become a suitable partner to implement projects in different areas of expertise such as migration. The interview continues: “There had already been a lot of general trainings between 2011 and 2014. After that it was more about trainings that were integrated into projects, for example migration, violence against women. (…) Nobody has ever thought

56 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

that a one-­day training could form them, but it can give leads. And they were ending up with a stock of certificates about human rights, women rights.”9 Capacity-­building and support projects for civil society allow putting forward priorities, themes, and domains of intervention through the specific trainings organised. In the case of projects related to migration, the instrumental role of civil society appears at the micro level as an “intermediary” between implementing organisations and different “target publics,” identified with categories such as the “return migrants,” the “members of the diaspora,” or the “potential candidates for irregular migration.” The inclusion of and working with “civil society” is, in the words of a former migration project employee,10 a way of “sweetening the pill.” The “bitter pill to swallow” here concerns immobility and sedentarism (Bakewell 2008; Dini 2018; Pécoud 2015a, b), and, more specifically, the idea that “good,” “responsible” Tunisians are sedentary people or, at least, respect the law and do not take the risk of irregular migration, and are ready to voluntarily return when found irregular in the EU. Moreover, they should be tied to their nation when part of the diaspora, with a perspective of “circular migration” aimed at returning to their country of origin. Those measures have a strong moral component and contribute to creating a cleavage between “good” and “bad” Tunisians. Moreover, involving civil society becomes even more effective in a context where working with institutions is considered difficult by the implementing actors. The following examples show how intertwining the inclusion of civil society, the use of consensual language and the “more development, less migration” rhetoric allows migration projects operators to “sweeten the pill” of sedentarisation. The Mobility Partnership support project LEMMA focuses mainly on the issues of emigration, in line with the Tunisian government’s priorities. Still, the EU’s priorities of return and sedentarisation are more or less subtly conveyed. We analyse here the “diaspora mobilisation” and the “return and reinsertion” components. Both projects include sub-projects supporting civil society actors as a way of “sweetening the pill” of immobilisation. In the LEMMA project description, the topic of investment is clearly mentioned: individual self-empowerment is at the core of the conception of those types of projects where the Tunisian diaspora is invited to participate in the construction of post-revolutionary Tunisia through remittances and investments. “The idea behind the project on diaspora mobilisation is to engage the diaspora in the development of their country of origin, to

5  “SWEETENING THE PILL”: “CIVIL SOCIETY” AS A TOOL… 

57

value the people coming from the diaspora as agents of economic development, as actors in the development of their country. It is a way to establish a positive link between migration and development. They already participate informally, individually through remittances, but there are no results at the level of state structure.”11 Here, the issue of empowering individuals as agents of development is clearly stated (for a critique, see Bréant 2013), and one may be led to think that the programme is focused on the participation of the diaspora in the development of Tunisia “from abroad.” Yet, in the interview with Expertise France,12 the project is described in the following way: “The Tunisian state needs to develop a diaspora engagement strategy. It is complicated because a Tunisian who studied abroad could ask himself if, returning to Tunisia, he would be treated to his right value (…) How is it going to do to encourage them to return? (…) The word definitively is erased from the vocabulary. (…). The national strategy wants to focus on qualified Tunisians abroad who want to invest in Tunisia. It is focused on entrepreneurship, but maybe there is something else…” So the question for Expertise France, and the EU more generally, becomes how to include the topic of return in the debate on the participation of the diaspora in the development of their country of origin, knowing that “definitive return does not exist for Tunisians, people want to come and go.”13 In the project documents of this component, this discourse is reinforced through the use of such terms as “circular migration,” which substitutes terms such as “definitive return,” putting forward the idea of a circle that is supposed to be closed once Tunisian migrants accept to return. In this context, civil society organisations on both sides of the Mediterranean—Tunisian organisations in Tunisia as well as Tunisian diaspora organisations that are active on the issue of Tunisian diaspora investments in the country of origin—are included in the project. The LEMMA project supports civil society organisations with the aim of improving the communication with the Tunisian diaspora and finding new ways of fostering diaspora mobilisation and, potentially, return. If the injunction to return is more subtly conveyed in the context of the LEMMA “diaspora mobilisation” component, the “return and reinsertion” component addresses the issue directly: “The aim is to bring the Tunisian authorities to include return in the National Migration Strategy. But it’s not their favourite topic,”14 explains a French Office of Immigration and Integration (OFII) officer, the institution in charge of the implementation of the project. The project aims at rationalising the “voluntary return and reinsertion” programmes in Tunisia, put in place by France,

58 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

Switzerland, and Italy and implemented by the OFII and the IOM in cooperation with Tunisian civil society organisations, as well as with Italian NGOs based in Tunisia. “The OFII device has two main targets: people with an irregular status and in precarious situations, but also students finishing their degree and with their residence permit that is expiring. We need to publicise it broadly!”15 Cooperation with Tunisian diaspora organisations and French NGOs supporting migrants in France (for the case of Belgium, see Vandevoort 2016) as well as with Tunisian civil society organisations in Tunisia is a way to get the programme known and to publicise it. In 2011, France had put in place a “voluntary return program” for Tunisian harragas who had received an Italian humanitarian permit and who had managed to reach France, notwithstanding the Franco-Italian dispute (Guiraudon 2011) over Schengen and the interruption of train circulation by France at the border with Italy to prevent Tunisian harragas from crossing the border. Around 1400 Tunisian migrants irregularly residing in France participated in the programme. Some interviewees16 who had participated in the programme recall being informed by French and Franco-Tunisian NGOs supporting migrants’ rights in Paris. “The device to support returns  – ‘aide au retour’, is an alternative to deportation,”17 explains another OFII officer in an interview. This quote assumes the idea behind this kind of project: encourage migrants to return “voluntarily” to avoid “involuntary return.” Often, those ‘voluntary’ returns are forced on migrants by difficult circumstances and the impossibility of finding durable living solutions in host countries (on return programmes in Tunisia, see Cassarino 2012). The voluntary dimension is questioned in some interviews conducted with voluntary returnees. “I had to accept the voluntary return, I had no choice,”18 explains Said as he recalls being in an extremely precarious situation for many months in Italy, France, and Switzerland before accepting to participate in the programme. If most of the Tunisians residing in the EU irregularly are deported, there are no projects in Tunisia to support deported migrants and deportations happen, as we have seen in the previous chapter, in an invisibilised context (for an account of deportations of Tunisian citizens from Italy, see Suber 2019). On the contrary, “voluntary return and reinsertion” programmes are made visible and funded by EU Member States, and the use of the term “voluntary” makes those programmes more acceptable than deportation (for a critical analysis of the return/expulsion terminology, see Cassarino 2019). Voluntary return is considered less expensive in terms of

5  “SWEETENING THE PILL”: “CIVIL SOCIETY” AS A TOOL… 

59

the effective costs, as well as in terms of the public image of the institutions in charge of returns. Moreover, the “reinsertion” rhetoric allows for the coupling of the topic of return, depoliticised because it is “voluntary,” with the topic of development, shifting the focus onto the idea of local development and participation (Allal 2016) through the funding of individual micro-projects. Individual empowerment is thus seen as a way of resolving the problem of unemployment, excluding the collective economic and social dimension of inequality and the responsibility of the government. The idea conveys a neoliberal vision of individual achievement, which does not question the role of socio-economic policies. The communications support provided under the “voluntary return and reinsertion” programmes insists on the idea that individual projects of reinsertion through the funding of small projects would prevent people from thinking about migrating again. “We give support to set up a business, to create work, to help look for a job, we do social aid.”19 For those Assisted Voluntary Return and Reinsertion (AVRR) programmes, the operators rely on civil society as an “intermediary.” The OFII trains organisations in finance management and provides them with technical support to be able to orient voluntary returnees, who have to present a business plan with expenses for their project to be approved. The “development will stop migration” paradigm (for a critique of this approach, see Geiger and Pécoud 2013) lies behind the implementation of projects to create employment to prevent people from thinking (again) about the possibility of migrating. This is also the case of programmes such as the IOM Stabilization of Communities at Risk (START)  programme, which aims to create new job opportunities in “migration risk regions,” Kairouan, Kef, Jendouba, and Siliana, through cooperation with civil society organisations in the fields of honey production, ecotourism, entrepreneurship, rural development, cultural development, and handicraft promotion. Communication strategies, such as the use of neutral categories like not only “circular migration,” “voluntary return,” and “reinsertion” but also “readmission” in the case of deportations, are key to convey the message of return as positive (Cassarino 2012), contributing to development at the macro and individual levels. As these examples show, the use of neutral and consensual language to speak about contested issues concerning migration allows to depoliticise them (Pécoud 2015a). The inclusion of civil society as a way of mobilising and supporting the “target population,” the use of consensual language, and the

60 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

institutionalisation of the “more development less migration” mantra, all contribute to the invisibilisation of the real issues. Quoting a person active in a civil society organisation who was present at the conference on reinsertion organised by the OFII in Zarzis as part of the “Blue Season,” events organised by the Alliance Française in Tunisia on the valuing of the Mediterranean in 2017. “People came to the event because the OFII had worked with a local association that mobilised a lot of people.”20 The conference took place on the same day of the trial of the Tunisian fishermen from Zarzis criminalised in Italy for helping migrants at sea,21 but nobody said a word about that issue: “The public from Zarzis was angry, they were intervening in a way that we don’t see in Tunis anymore. They see boats leaving every day, they are there, on the spot, and they hear all those big words of funders who try to cloud the issue. The speakers were trying to diffuse: we want to put in place these kinds of programs so that those tragedies don’t happen any more, the authorities have to do their job, we are trying to work with the government… But what do they have in front of them? Young people who want a job or to leave, who say that the big industrial projects are screwing their life, their health, and the corruption… all those topics were mentioned.” In Tunisia, irregular migration by boat remains one of the only options for young people disillusioned with the short-term possibilities for socio-­ economic change and a reduction in inequality.22 This issue is addressed by the IOM through information projects, as well as awareness campaigns on the risks associated with irregular migration by boat, where civil society plays an important role (for a critical analysis of those types of awareness campaigns, see Pécoud 2012; Nieuwenhuys and Pécoud 2007; Rodriguez 2019). In 2016, the IOM had a project for an information desk on migration for young people in cooperation with the National Observatory of Youth. When visiting the desk in spring 2016,23 the room was empty, except for two employees. At the entrance, a pack of brochures with information on how to migrate to different countries was there to welcome the potential migrants. The brochures, which looked like passports and were partly out of stock—the French ones are no longer available—could make one think that the objective of this desk was to help potential migrants realise their mobility projects. In reality, however, the brochures were in contrast with the objectives of the desk: “The aim is to help them, to put an end to their migratory project, to reorient their careers. Our task is the vulgarisation and awareness of the dangers and risks of irregular migration.”24 During an

5  “SWEETENING THE PILL”: “CIVIL SOCIETY” AS A TOOL… 

61

interview with IOM officials in May 2016 at the IOM office in Tunis, working with state institutions in the context of the Information Desk project, which is supposed to exist in different cities, is described as complicated in terms of access to the population: “For now, we only have one desk based in Tunis (…) we know that we have to be closer to the young people. Waiting in an office for them to come, especially if it is a Ministry, is not great.” “It’s not feasible,” adds her colleague, “it doesn’t always work.”25 If access to the population solely through institutions does not seem to be the most effective option, the inclusion of civil society in these types of projects provides several advantages. This section focuses on a specific IOM project on raising awareness on the risks of irregular migration in Tunisia, to underline the interest in including civil society as an intermediary between the IOM and the “potential candidates to irregular migration.” Pécoud (2012) analyses the IOM information campaigns against irregular migration as governmentality devices promoting a “culture of immobility” and employing a consensual discourse of dignity, protection, and human rights, rather than of security and control, which allows cooperation with civil society actors. The IOM awareness programme against irregular migration in Tunisia—Solidarity with the children of the Maghreb and the Machrek (SALEMM), which echoes the Arabic word salam, or peace, started in December 2012 with the signature of an agreement between the Milan Province Fund for International Cooperation (FPMI) and the EU. IOM officials explain in an interview that the project was a response to the post-2011 revolution departures from Tunisia. “The idea of the project came because of the big number of migrants who left in 2011, mainly young people and minors.”26 In terms of civil society organisations that have participated in the project, the interview underlines the involvement of organisations working in different domains. “So actually, it was, let’s say, gradual. (…) we started by looking for NGO’s that worked from near or far on the topic of migration, and there were very few of them. This was at the very beginning, and little by little, actually there has been an interest from associations, well, newly constituted ones, often after the revolution, which work on topics linked to economic and social rights, to the question of education, to the question of the family, protection of children, others that work more, for example, on the question of  – how is it called?  – of psycho-social assistance through art.”27 These projects are an opportunity for associations that are not necessarily exclusively working on migration issues but on related topics linked to economic and social rights. In an interview with a member of

62 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

an IOM partner organisation, whose primary focus was not migration, he states, “There is an interest in migration from the funders side (…) we’ve understood that the topic of migrations could give us work for ten years.”28 A volunteer working for one of the partner organisations of the SALEMM project says at the end of the interview, “We could actually do better. The procedures to go to Italy are too complex (…) Why don’t we do trainings on how to fill in the immigration forms? Access to information is difficult. Anyways, I look for solutions for others but I actually look for solutions for myself too, I want to go to Italy. I have been to Italy with the IOM.”29 In other words, working with the IOM is also a way for people who are part of the partner associations to travel, to find ways to go abroad. It is interesting to note that cooperation with civil society can result in outcomes that are unexpected to the institutions. Those events and projects can become a way for Tunisians to make contacts and find opportunities to travel abroad. In the project documents, the IOM mobilises the concept of “participatory governance” (Allal 2016; Neveu 2007; Petric and Blundo 2012) working simultaneously with “neighbourhood houses,” civil society, and the government. Making different ministries involved in migration-related issues and civil society work together presents several advantages: “(…) the idea here was also to put them together to work towards the same objective, to better raise awareness among young people, the target public, the families. (…) The government, they have the means, the establishments, the structures, they have centres for young people (…) and on the other hand, there is civil society which is much more flexible, that is full of ideas, that has a certain creativity but they don’t have the structures, the funding. So to associate them is something really… it has worked very well in this project.”30 Thus, if the government can assure the provision of an institutional structure for the initiatives, the flexibility and creativity of civil society is mentioned as a powerful tool to raise awareness among the “target public,” young potential migrants and their families, and to fight against irregular migration. One of the interests of including “creative” civil society actors is that they have a presence in the field, and they can mobilise the local population. “We have done three information sessions (…) it was perfect. We were everywhere. We had set up tents close to the mosque and to the port. We would welcome people, speak with them, ask them their point of view on irregular migration, if they think it is beneficial or dangerous.”31 The IOM organises trainings for the organisations to learn how to approach young people, how to gain their trust. In this quote, a volunteer working on an education project for young people financed by the IOM

5  “SWEETENING THE PILL”: “CIVIL SOCIETY” AS A TOOL… 

63

explains how, in addition to financial support for the fees for school material, transportations, sportswear, and supplementary studies sessions, each session had time for discussion often focused on the dangers of irregular migration and on the importance of staying and finishing one’s studies: “It’s very important, especially appearance, for young people, teenagers. If someone goes to speak with them with a suit, he is not going to tell him what he really thinks. He automatically has a prejudice. The IOM organised trainings for us as social interveners, so I know how to speak with them, how to catch their attention.”.32 To underline the importance of creativity in project implementation, the IOM officials emphasise the variety of actors involved as partners in the SALEMM project, working with young people through arts (for the use of “culture” as a tool to fight against irregular migration, see Pécoud 2019). The awareness campaigns of the SALEMM project also include a filmmaking project: “The cine-debate works very well, they react to this (…) we have included young people, a sort of peer-to-peer education, a message that is passed on among young people (…). For the selection criteria we did not need them to have a technical training on film making. We have done a training, we wanted young people engaged on the topic, or who have lived the topic. It is a plus… if someone in the family has left, or has disappeared.”33 At the “Europe Days” organised in Tunis in 2016 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the EU-Tunisia cooperation, the IOM presented one of those short films.34 It is interesting to analyse the language used by the IOM staff and by the public during the discussion.35 The terms used to present the project were “fight”, “prevention”, the “target public” being young people, “who don’t have the level to understand all the migratory trajectory.” The use of this vocabulary conveys a stereotyped vision of irregular migrants. The IOM awareness programme against irregular migration, supposing the “ignorance” of their public (Pécoud 2012), makes moral judgments over the choice of young people to take the boats to go to Europe, delegitimising their acts and claims. Another example of effectiveness given by IOM officials in the interview is that of an association working with the Theatre of the Oppressed: “and this as well, more and more at the end of the project, we have involved associations that have done a lot of work with young people on the forum theatre, the theatre of the oppressed. – I don’t know if those are concepts that you are familiar with – it actually allows to really free speech and to address topics linked to migration, or rather, to the causes of migration, precisely through role playing games, through artistic expression and… theatrical expression. And this… this has worked very well!”36

64 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

The Theatre of the Oppressed has a radical history rooted in radical movements in Brazil, and the idea behind it is to put the audience in place of the oppressed, and the oppressor, to better understand a situation of domination. The forum theatre, in particular, is a theatrical form that includes the role exchange and the presence of a joker. In the case of the performance set up by Jamal, addressing the issue of the harragas in Tunisia, the public is involved in the decision-making process that leads (or not) a young man to decide to take a boat to Europe through the mediation of the joker. The public is allowed to stop the performance through the joker and to change (or not) the course of the story by discussing the choices and situations of oppression faced by a young man in Tunisia willing to leave. Jamal describes his engagement in these terms: “There is this negative image about harga,37 caused by unemployment, the third world. But in the workshops we have proven that it is about the different forms of oppression, the families, the policemen, and also, a young 17-year-old boy who wants to have the right to travel. He wants to visit, he sees Europe every day in movies, ads, clips… and he asks himself: Why am I not like everyone else?”38 In short, the aim is to make the audience better understand the reasons that lead young Tunisians to migrate irregularly to Europe and to underline oppressions and inequalities, as well as the claims for freedom of movement. The initiator of the project describes the cooperation with IOM as such: “I have done some ateliers for the association but I did not know that the aim was an information session with the IOM. I trained some young people from the neighbourhood, but the day of the session I was not called. From what I heard from the young people I knew, there was no joker, the rules of the theatre forum were not followed.” Eliminating the joker is a way of weakening the impact of this particular theatrical form that aims at a deep understanding of the deep motivations that lead to difficult choices in situations of oppression. We can question here the reappropriation by organisations such as the IOM of a theatrical method that had a subversive dimension to adapt it to the needs of the awareness projects. The IOM enlarges its range of tools, more diversified than before, and hijacks a form of theatre that is supposed to help us understand the causes rather than judge them. The question is: do those programmes really work? A couple of days before the interview with the IOM in 2016, Issam, who had participated in one of the information sessions, gives his opinion of the event, “I disagree with them” he said, “I am 24 and there are no solutions for me in Tunisia.”39 One member of the associations that worked with the IOM to organise the

5  “SWEETENING THE PILL”: “CIVIL SOCIETY” AS A TOOL… 

65

session asks: “But, if there were solutions for you in Tunisia, you wouldn’t leave, right?” After having thought about it for a couple of seconds, he adds: “Sure you would want to travel because you would have the money to do it…” The rhetoric of “more development, less migration” is put into question. Later, while walking back with Issam to Beb Bhar through the Medina, he says, interrogating inequalities in the right to freedom of movement: “Why is it that you can come here and I cannot go to Italy? Tunisia is good, behia,40 Italy as well. My father’s brother and more of my family are in Italy. I am going to take a boat in July, a small boat for 15 people from Hawaria. It costs 3000 dinars.”

Notes 1. Interview, Expertise France Project Manager, November 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 2. ibidem. 3. ICMPD and Expertise France have very little field office but one in Tunis. 4. Interview, Expertise France Project Manager, November 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 5. Participant observation, IOM Summer School, September 2015, Tunis (Tunisia). 6. Interview, project manager of a ‘migration and development project’, December 2018, Tunis (Tunisia). 7. Programme d’Appui à la Société Civile. 8. Interview, Lab’ess former volunteer, December 2018, Tunis (Tunisia). 9. ibidem. 10. Interview, former migration project employee, December 2018, Tunis (Tunisia). 11. Interview, Expertise France project manager, November 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 12. ibidem. 13. Interview, former director of the Office of Tunisians Abroad, May 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 14. Interview 2, OFII officer, May 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 15. ibidem. 16. Interviews with three participants, October 2012, Tunisia. 17. Interview 1, OFII officer, April 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 18. Interview, Said, May 2016, Tunisia. 19. Interview 2, OFII officer, May 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 20. Interview, December 2018, Tunis (Tunisia).

66 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

21. Zagaria, Valentina, When rescue at sea becomes a crime: who the Tunisian fishermen arrested in Italy really are, Open Democracy, 15 September 2018: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/whenrescue-at-sea-becomes-crime-who-tunisian-fishermen-arrested-in-italyreally-a/ Mzalouat, Haïfa, “Les pêcheurs tunisiens, nouvelle cible de l’Italie,” Inkyfada, 10 September 2018, https://inkyfada.com/fr/2018/10/09/ pecheurs-tunisie-passeurs-italie/ 22. See FTDES report https://directinfo.webmanagercenter.com/2016/ 12/03/45-des-jeunes-tunisiens-se-disent-prets-a-emigrer-memeillegalement/ 23. Observation, Migration Information Desk, May 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 24. Interview, Information Desk employee, May 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 25. Interview, IOM Tunisia officials, May 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 26. ibidem. 27. ibidem. 28. Interview 1, member of an IOM partner organisation, May 2016, Tunisia. 29. Interview 2, member of an IOM partner organisation, May 2016, Tunisia. 30. Interview, IOM Tunisia officials, May 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 31. Interview 3, member of an IOM partner organisation, May 2016, Tunisia. 32. ibidem. 33. Interview, IOM Tunisia officials, May 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 34. “El Frank,” realised by Faycal Marrakchi, one of the IOM “ambassadors” of the awareness campaign “20 young people, 20 views on migration.” 35. Observation, Europe Days, May 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 36. Interview, IOM Tunisia officials, May 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 37. The act of “burning the borders.” 38. Interview, Jamal—Initiator of the theatre of the oppressed project, March 2019, Tunis (Tunisia). 39. Interview, Issam, May 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 40. “Good” in Tunisian Arabic.

References Allal, Amin. 2016. “Penser global, agir dans un bocal” Participation locale, régulation néoliberale et situation autoritaire en Tunisie (2006–2010). Gouvernement et action publique 2 (2): 153–181. Bakewell, Oliver. 2008. “Keeping Them in Their Place”: The Ambivalent Relationship Between Development and Migration in Africa. Third World Quarterly 29 (7): 1341–1358. Bréant, Hugo. 2013. What if Diasporas Didn’t Think About Development?: A Critical Approach of the International Discourse on Migration and

5  “SWEETENING THE PILL”: “CIVIL SOCIETY” AS A TOOL… 

67

Development. African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 6: 99–112. Cassarino, Jean-Pierre. 2012. La migration de retour en Tunisie. Les carnets de l’IRMC, December 18. https://irmc.hypotheses.org/680. Accessed 18 Apr 2019. ———. 2019. Expulsion or Return? A Plea for Terminological Clarity. UNESCO Chair on International Migration Policy Brief. Chandler, David. 2010. International Statebuilding: The Rise of Post-Liberal Governance, Critical Issues in Global Politics. Abingdon: Routledge. ———. 2013. “The Semantics of Crisis Management: Simulation and EU Statebuilding in the Balkans.” In The Semantics of Statebuilding: Language, Meanings and Sovereignty, by Nicolas Lemay-Hébert, Nicholas Onuf, Voijn Rakić and Petar Bojanić. London: Routledge. Dini, Sabine. 2018. Migration Management, Capacity Building and Sovereignty of an African State: International Organization for Migration in Djibouti. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44. Geiger, Martin, and Antoine Pécoud. 2013. Migration, Development and the ‘Migration and Development Nexus’. Population, Space and Place 19: 369–374. Guiraudon, Virginie. 2011. Schengen: une crise en trompe l’oeil. Politique étrangère 4: 773–784. Neveu, Catherine. 2007. “Introduction.” In Cultures et Pratiques Participatives, Perspectives comparatives, by Catherine Neveu ed, 13–32. Paris: L’Harmattan. Nieuwenhuys, Céline, and Antoine Pécoud. 2007. Human Trafficking, Information Campaigns, and Strategies of Migration Control. American Behavioral Scientist 50 (12): 1674–1695. Pécoud, Antoine. 2012. Les campagnes d’information de l’organisation internationale pour les migrations. Actuels 1 (1): 36–49. ———. 2015a. Depoliticising Migration: Global Governance and International Migration Narratives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2015b. Liberté de circulation et gouvernance mondiale des migrations. Éthique publique 17 (1). ———. 2019. Quand la lutte contre l’immigration irrégulière devient une question de « culture ». The Conversation, February 26. https://theconversation. com/quand-la-lutte-contre-limmigration-irreguliere-devient-une-questionde-culture-112200. Accessed 19 Apr 2019. Petric, Boris, and Giorgio Blundo. 2012. “Good Governance and Democracy Promotion: Empirical Perspectives on Transnational Powers.” In Democracy at Large, NGOs, Political Foundations, Think Tanks, and International Organizations, by Boris Petric ed., 1–24. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Rodriguez, Anne-Line. 2019. European Attempts to Govern African Youths by Raising Awareness of the Risks of Migration: Ethnography of an Encounter. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 45 (5): 735–751.

68 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

Suber, David Leone. 2019. “Fallire i rimpatri: il caso tunisino.” In Migrazioni nel Mediterraneo. Dinamiche, identità e movimenti, by Giuseppe Acconcia and Michela Mercuri. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Vandevoort, Robin. 2016. Between Humanitarian Assistance and Migration Management: On Civil Actors’ Role in Voluntary Return from Belgium. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 43 (11): 1907–1922. Yousfi, Hèla. 2017. “Civil Society” in Tunisia: the Ambivalence of a New Seat of Power. Orient XXI, January 24. https://orientxxi.info/magazine/ civil-society-in-tunisia-the-ambivalence-of-a-new-seat-of-power,1677

CHAPTER 6

“Tunisie Terre d’Asile”: Constructing Tunisia as a “Destination Country”

Abstract  After the 2011 revolution, pressure increased on Tunisia by the EU and EU Member States to become the new border of Europe, as its strategic position in the Mediterranean makes it an important “ally” in the externalisation process. The Tunisian authorities remain reticent to accept this role. It is, therefore, important to find other ways to make Tunisia a “safe country of destination.” This chapter discusses the ways in which civil society contributes to the visibilisation of the question of immigration and asylum and to the perception of Tunisia as a “destination country.” Keywords  Immigration • Asylum • Externalisation • Destination country • Civil society • Tunisia The externalisation process of the EU’s border controls revolves around the possibility to create a belt of protection and containment of migration movements from the African shore of the Mediterranean. In this context, the EU’s efforts to make post-2011 Tunisia accept the role of new border guard of the EU are often mediatised. In June 2018, the Tunisian Ambassador to the EU, Tahar Chérif, declared, in response to the European demand that Tunisia establishes retention centres for irregular migrants on its soil: “We don’t have neither the capacities, nor the means to organise those retention centres. We already suffer a lot from what is going on in Libya.”1 In the same vein, the Tunisian Prime Minister, Youssef Chahed, © The Author(s) 2020 S. Dini, C. Giusa, Externalising Migration Governance Through Civil Society, Mobility & Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39578-0_6

69

70 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

declared during an official visit to Germany in February 2017, in which the idea of setting up camps in Tunisia for migrants rescued in the Mediterranean had been raised: “Tunisia is a young democracy and I don’t think this is going to work, nor will we have the capacity to manage the migrants camps here.”2 These declarations clearly show the reluctance of Tunisian authorities to formally and publicly accept the role of the “border guard” proposed by the EU, at least in regard to highly mediatised and symbolic measures of externalisation, such as “disembarkment platforms outside Europe” proposed by the EU for migrants leaving the Libyan shores and attempting to reach the EU borders.3 Those platforms, in the words of the Belgian Secretary of State for Migration and Asylum, Theo Francken, would stop the flux “straight away. Migrants will not pay thousands of euros to end up in Tunisia, Egypt or Morocco.”4 The process at stake could be similar to the one identified by Perkowski (2012) in her analysis of official Frontex documents, where a rights-based discourse has become more prominent as a response to growing criticisms of the Agency’s activities. Despite the increasing use of human rights language in recent years, many observers remain sceptical regarding a veritable shift in Frontex’s practices that seem to contribute more to the increase in restrictiveness of the migration and asylum system in Europe than to a shift towards fundamental human rights (Perkowski 2012, 27). The same analysis can be applied in this context. Under the guise of protecting migrants from the hazardous journey across the Strait of Sicily, “disembarkment platforms” would contribute to the development of an externalised asylum system that would prevent migrants from leaving the North African shores. The humanitarian rhetoric seems to disguise a tendency towards the intensification of externalisation measures that ultimately fail to take into account the migrants’ need for protection. There is a “humanitarian argument at the forefront, whereby migrants are saved by being intercepted and essentially prevented from crossing into EU territorial waters. This ignores the fact that the person might very well be trying to apply for asylum” (Triandafyllidou and Dimitriadi 2014, 15). During summer 2018, in a context marked by the refusal of the far-­ right Italian Minister of the Interior, Matteo Salvini, to open Italian harbours to boats carrying migrants rescued in the Mediterranean,5 the case of the Sarost 5 is another example of the pressure put on Tunisia to become the EU’s new border. Following the refusal by France, Italy, and Malta to accept the disembarking of 40 migrants rescued in the Mediterranean by

6  “TUNISIE TERRE D’ASILE”: CONSTRUCTING TUNISIA AS A “DESTINATION… 

71

a Tunisian boat, Tunisia decided to allow them to disembark in Zarzis, on the south-eastern coast, for “humanitarian reasons” after two weeks of uncertainty and refusals.6 Such mediatised attempts of externalisation are either publicly refused by the Tunisian authorities or accepted only in extreme conditions. Against this background, negotiations over the EU-Tunisia readmission agreement have been marked by Tunisia’s consistent resistance to accept the readmission of “third country nationals.” The readmission agreement proposed by the EU concerns the return not only of the Tunisian nationals residing illegally in the EU but also of “third country nationals” residing illegally in the EU and who are supposed to have “transited” through Tunisia on their way to Europe. The Tunisian authorities are overall opposed to this clause, which would allow the EU to externalise the management of those migrants and would require Tunisia to put in place an asylum and immigration system and, potentially, a system of detention and deportation to the country of origin for those who do not meet the immigration or asylum requirements to stay in the country. In an interview with IOM Tunisia in 2016, an official explains: “Tunisia does not have funds to put in place systematic deportations to the countries of origin of irregular migrants.”7 The signature of the readmission agreement would accelerate the process of Tunisia becoming a “safe country of destination,” with similar policies as those implemented by EU Member States to manage regular and irregular migration inside their borders. However, there seems to be institutional resistance by a post-­revolutionary government that has different policy priorities, such as emigration (Natter 2018). The topic of immigration and asylum is mentioned in the draft Tunisian national migratory strategy,8 but the question of immigration and asylum is indeed marginal in the Mobility Partnership support programme— LEMMA—implemented by Expertise France: “The return and reinsertion component of the project concerns Tunisians returning to their country but also migrants in Tunisia willing to return to their country of origin. Nevertheless, this last aspect is only marginal, let’s say 5% of the programme. It is a sensitive topic. It wasn’t easy to make the Tunisian authorities accept adding this element to the project.”9 This addition echoes what Natter (2018, 20) defines as “external agenda setting,” or pushing the Tunisian authorities to gradually incorporate new migration-related issues into their agenda. The government’s attitude is criticised by IGOs and organisations implementing migration programmes in Tunisia: “The national migration strategy is almost entirely focused on Tunisians abroad.”10 “Tunisia does not

72 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

have a real migratory strategy, except for the Tunisians abroad and the visas.”11 Quoting a member of the Ministry of Employment in Tunis, “I do not understand why they are so critical of our immigration policies (…) This is not the right moment, we didn’t understand why. In Tunisia we have an unemployment problem.”12 At the same time, the Tunisian authorities know that it is important to show to the EU that the issue of immigration and asylum is included in the national strategy and that it is a priority and can be used as an argument in negotiations: “I wanted the Secretary to be called Migrations Secretary, precisely because Europe needs to know that we do our part.”13 European and Tunisian civil society have been mobilising against these attempts by the EU to externalise its borders and to make Tunisia a “safe country.” On February 21, 2017, following the European proposal to create detention centres on Tunisian soil, several German, Italian, and Tunisian organisations, organisations of the diaspora from Tunisia and the Maghreb, as well as regional networks and associations, published a declaration titled “The shipwreck of the right to asylum: Intolerable pressures on Tunisia.” The declaration underlines the fact that Tunisia does not meet the criteria to be defined a “safe country” of origin or destination according to European legislation. “Tunisia does not have any legislation on the right to asylum nor the capacity to welcome people in need of international protection. There is no guarantee for protection against the incrimination for ‘crime of non-authorized emigration’, which violates the fundamental right to leave any country, nor any procedural guarantee for people not wanting to claim asylum and who risk being deprived of their freedom and deported in inhumane and degrading conditions.”14 Some of the same organisations who take a stand against the EU externalisation policies actively campaign, alongside others, for the reform of the Tunisian legal system concerning migration and asylum, for the respect of the rights of migrants in Tunisia, as well as for specific issues such as rejected asylum seekers at the Choucha camp and the migrants rescued at sea. In February 2019, the FTDES—Forum Tunisien pour les Droits Economiques et Sociaux—declared in a press statement: “The FTDES reiterates its refusal to set up a reception platform for migrants in Tunisia and advises for the protection of their rights, given the already difficult accommodation conditions caused by the overcharge of the reception capacity and the lack of sanitary treatment. Migrants, who are in a vulnerable situation, thus become an easy target for human trafficking networks.”15 In the same month, the UGTT announced the opening of a juridical support

6  “TUNISIE TERRE D’ASILE”: CONSTRUCTING TUNISIA AS A “DESTINATION… 

73

programme for foreign workers in Tunisia.16 This should not be seen as a paradox from the organisations’ point of view, as they are transnationally and simultaneously engaged in the struggle for the respect of the rights of migrants on both shores of the Mediterranean. What is more interesting and worth analysing is the possible use of civil society to construct Tunisia as a “destination country,” in a context where the negotiations with Tunisian institutions have become more contentious compared to the Ben Ali era. In this chapter, we do not discuss the reality of immigration and asylum in post-2011 Tunisia (about this, see, for example, Garelli and Tazzioli 2016; Boubakri 2015; Nasraoui 2017; Rouland and Jarraya 2019; Geisser 2019). Rather, we focus on the ways in which civil society contributes to the visibilisation of the question of immigration and asylum and to the perception of Tunisia as a “destination country.” As analysed in the previous chapter, the issue of emigration from Tunisia has entered the public debate and has been politicised as a result of the departures of Tunisian harragas to Europe in the aftermath of the fall of Ben Ali in 2011. Furthermore, the Libyan crisis and the displacement of people fleeing the Libyan conflict across the Tunisian border have given more visibility to the question of immigration and asylum in Tunisia. The decision of the Tunisian transitional government to keep Tunisia’s borders with Libya open in 2011; the solidarity shown by some Tunisians at the Ras Jedir border crossing, welcoming and assisting Libyans as well as migrants of other African nationalities fleeing the conflict (Boubakri and Potot 2012); the Choucha camp set up by the Tunisian Army, the UNHCR and the IOM to “manage mixed migration” caused by the displacement of the Libyan conflict (Mottet 2016), all have been highly mediatised. In 2011, when the Tunisian revolution broke out, it was the Tunisian people, and not Tunisian civil society, which was praised for its solidarity. “Proud to be Tunisian” was the headline of one article published in June 2012 in Forced Migration Review, a publication edited by the Oxford Refugee Studies Centre in collaboration with the IOM and the UNHCR.  The article, written by three members of the UNHCR Tunisia office, speaks about the welcoming by Tunisia of people displaced by the war in Libya. At the institutional level, the article praises the decision of the transitional government to keep the Southern border open to allow people to flee into Tunisia and underlines the mobilisation of the Tunisian population: “Tunisians who wanted to help in the relief effort found every means to do so, ranging from a company providing huge quantities of milk to an elderly woman travelling by bus to bring home-cooked food for the refugees. (…)

74 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

Tunisian generosity came without instructions or high-level orchestration – people simply acted, responding not with fear but with compassion.”17 These acts of solidarity shown by ordinary people who had just experienced the fall of their own dictatorship was reported in the news,18 and was highlighted as being in stark contrast with the European Union’s reaction to the displacement that followed the Libyan war. However, this rhetoric of Tunisian solidarity can be instrumentalised to serve another agenda, that of containment of mobility. Thanks to Tunisian generosity, people fleeing the Libyan conflict as well as other migrants can find a space of hospitality and protection, instead of continuing the journey to Europe. More generally, programmes implemented by the EU in Tunisia since the start of the Libyan crisis in 2011 focus on the issue of “protection”: providing humanitarian, financial and logistic support, and assistance. The EU has offered few resettlement and relocation programmes for refugees fleeing the Libyan conflict (Garlick and van Selm 2012) and has opted for the implementation of Regional Protection Programmes in North Africa in 2011, aimed at the enhancing of the capacity of North African states to deal with the issues of protection of refugees and asylum seekers. Since 2011, the UNHCR, the IOM, and the Tunisian Red Cross have implemented programmes to manage migrants rescued at sea in the South East of Tunisia migration borderscape (Cuttitta 2016). The IOM START programme “Stabilisation of communities at risk and reinforcement of migration management to accompany the transitions in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya,” as well as border control programmes, such as the IBM— Integrated Border Management—aim to support the Tunisian authorities with a focus on “protection”—the term “protection” is used here to substitute the terms immigration and asylum. Voluntary return programmes for foreign nationals in Tunisia returning to their country of origin are implemented by IOM Tunisia on an individual basis and for “vulnerable” cases such as unaccompanied minors or human trafficking victims. In those projects, the IOM cooperates with NGOs and civil society organisations that inform migrants about the possibility to participate in the programmes. This practice of cooperation with NGOs is similar to the one witnessed in voluntary return programmes implemented in EU Member States (Ambrosini and Van der Leun 2015; Vandevoort 2016). The rhetoric of humanitarianism (Fassin 2012; Ticktin 2006)—protection and vulnerability—and crisis management (Chandler 2013) is thus mobilised to promote Tunisia as a “safe” space of protection and asylum.

6  “TUNISIE TERRE D’ASILE”: CONSTRUCTING TUNISIA AS A “DESTINATION… 

75

In this context, where EU projects implemented by IOs and IGOs in Tunisia focus on protection and crisis management, the topic of Tunisia as a “destination country” entered the Tunisian public space in 2011. Quoting the president of AESAT, the Association of African Students and Interns in Tunisia, the Libyan crisis has “made the issue of foreigners visible in Tunisia.”19 In the interview, he links this visibilisation of the question of foreigners in Tunisia with the emergence of the “Tunisian civil society” and the politicisation of the migration issue: “There is a foreign population in Tunisia since a long time, the establishment of the African Development Bank in Tunis, the private universities, but Tunisia does not consider itself as a destination country, but as a transit country. So when we spoke about immigration in Tunisia, the sense given to this expression was more about the Tunisians who would leave to Europe or to other territories. (…) In 2011, Tunisian civil society appeared. There was also the war in Libya and the displacement of sub-Saharan populations living in Libya. The migratory question is inscribed in the agenda, and Tunisia will start admitting that it is not, since a long time now, a land of transit but of destination.”20 The topic of Tunisia as “country of destination’ is addressed by a specific kind of civil society organisation, in a very specific form of outsourcing that seems to be applied to topics that are more arduously addressed in the Tunisian context. The example of the NGO Terre d’Asile Tunisie (TAT), a branch of the French NGO France Terre d’Asile (FTDA), which has offices in Tunis and, since 2017, in Sfax, is instructive in this respect. It exemplifies the role of Western NGOs as a new type of “intermediary” (Dezalay 2004), funded by the EU and EU Member States to put in place a different form of externalisation. The characteristics of this “intermediary” contribute to make the funders invisible and push forward the role and the will of the Tunisian people. The name used in the official brochures and publications is “Terre d’Asile Tunisie” and in Tunisia, the NGO is often referred to as “Tunisie Terre d’Asile”—(TTA). While the majority of actors involved in migration issues in Tunisia may be aware of the French identity of the NGO, the name can be misleading, as it does not refer directly to FTDA and could be thought of as a Tunisian association.21 The project Terre d’Asile Tunisie is based on a cooperation between a team belonging to TTA and local migrant organisations that were already present before the revolution in Tunisia. France Terre d’Asile has associated with local migrant organisations settled in Tunisia for a long time, which has allowed TTA to have access to the migrant population, as well as a legitimate place in the

76 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

nebulous of civil society actors in Tunisia. For its first project, “La Maison des droits et des migrations,” which started in November 2012, France Terre d’Asile, through its “Tunisian” section, TTA, partnered with existing organisations working on the issue of (im)migration and asylum in Tunisia—the AESAT, Association of African students and interns in Tunisia, founded in 1993, and another Tunisian association, CTRM, Tunisian Council for Refugees and Migrant, which, at the time of fieldwork in 2016, no longer existed. In the words of a member of AESAT, “the deal was that the AESAT would have its office in the premises of MDM.”22 The TTA project is presented as follows in its promotional material distributed at different events: “Since 2012, France Terre d’Asile, through its Tunisian entity Terre d’Asile Tunisie, acts to build the capacity of civil society as an actor of migrations and asylum.” This focus on the capacity building of civil society as “an actor” underlines the responsibility and accountability dimension of a civil society that is expected to act. In an interview conducted with members of the TTA team in 2016, the lack of projects and initiatives concerning migrants in Tunisia is underlined: “We have the impression to be the only ones who really do something for the migrants here.”23 The first project implemented by Terre d’Asile Tunisie, “The House of Rights and Migrations,” was supported by the UNHCR.  It started in 2012 and aimed at the visibilisation of the immigration phenomenon in Tunisia, focusing on the issue of rights. “The aim of the project was to contribute to add all the migratory questions to the agenda, so all the questions linked with the migratory issue (…). The project aims to pose the debate amongst the authorities, migrants and Tunisian civil society with the objective of pacifying the exchanges and allowing the integration of sub-Saharan populations who have been living in Tunisia for many years and, at the same time, to allow the authorities to become imbued of the needs of those populations and of some of the realities that they live. (…) The first project, founded by the EU, consisted of supporting associations and raising awareness at an individual level.”24 The project involves Tunisian associations and media and proposes a space for debate, resources, and trainings, as well as the organisation of public events on the issues of immigration and asylum in Tunisia. Brochures with practical information for refugees, asylum seekers, and students in Tunisia detailing steps to follow to regularise their situation in the country were also produced. The second project, which started in 2014, was a “support platform of unconditional reception of people in need.”25 The main aims of the

6  “TUNISIE TERRE D’ASILE”: CONSTRUCTING TUNISIA AS A “DESTINATION… 

77

platform were “information, orientation and mediation of migrants” through social, medical, and juridical assistance. Still, one of the expected outcomes of the project was to “contribute to put on the institutional agenda the questions of migration and of access to the rights of migrants’. In 2016, TTA published a report, ‘Portraits of Migrants’, which described immigration in Tunisia ‘through the migrants followed by the support platform of TTA from January 2014 to March 2016’. The aim of the report was to produce knowledge on the ‘destination dimension’ of Tunisia through the analysis of the profiles of 314 people followed by the platform. The report identifies different categories of migrants in Tunisia: people seeking international protection, foreign students, migrant workers, victims of human trafficking, footballers who became victims of fraud networks, mixed families, unaccompanied minors, as well as foreigners in transit and in detention. In the interview with TTA, the aim of the report is described as follows: “What we are trying to show in the report is (…) we want to deconstruct the idea that Tunisia is a transit country, deconstruct this label. It is a destination country.”26 This process of knowledge production is similar to the one put in place by IOs and IGOs in Tunisia concerning migration. Bartels (2018) has shown how knowledge is produced and disseminated by IOs through analysing “international conferences and workshops as constitutive situations of disseminating knowledge on migration and its management to Tunisia.” We take here the example of the IOM “Summer Schools on Migration,” which have been organised in Tunis since 2015 to show how the topics shifted from thinking about migration in both senses, as “emigration” and “immigration,” towards a discussion about how to think about Tunisia as a destination country. While the first summer school dealt with the “challenges and opportunities of migration in the Tunisian context,” the 2016 edition focused on “migration and sustainable development.” In 2017, there was a shift to “migration and health in Tunisia,” and in 2018, to “integration of migrants in destination society,” with a clear focus on Tunisia as a country of destination. Terre d’Asile Tunisie is criticised by some activists for focusing on immigration and asylum issues and not taking a stand against externalisation policies and for the right to mobility.27 In the following examples, the issue of the rejected asylum seekers of Choucha shows how the visibilisation of the question of asylum and immigration does not necessarily lead to questioning the global externalisation process put in place by the EU.

78 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

The Choucha camp, five kilometres from the border with Libya in the middle of the desert, was created in February 2011 for non-Libyans fleeing the Libyan conflict and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombings. The UNHCR and the IOM set up the camp under the authority of the Tunisian Army. The UNHCR closed the camp in 2014 while the rejected asylum seekers were still living in Choucha and the living conditions, already difficult, deteriorated further, with no access to water, food, and medicine. Since 2011, there have been civil society mobilisations in Tunisia and Europe to support Choucha asylum seekers, and rejected asylum seekers have organised many protests and mobilisations to ask for their case to be re-opened and for resettlement (Garelli and Tazzioli 2016; Mottet 2016). At the “Mobility and Diaspora Forum,” organised in 2017 by the French Embassy, the exhibition “Empire” by photographer Samuel Gratacap, telling the stories of the rejected asylum seekers of Choucha, was displayed.28 Gratacap had spent several months at the camp and followed the stories of rejected asylum seekers who were living in a specific part of the camp. The pictures were exhibited at the French Institute in Tunis. The IFT also organised, as part of the Forum, a panel discussion on the experience of Choucha. The panel took place at the IFT and the participants, around 30 people, were surrounded by Gratacap’s pictures. The testimonies of some of the rejected asylum seekers photographed by Gratacap were shown next to the pictures. The rejected asylum seekers questioned in some of those quotes the asylum determination process of the UNHCR: “The interview process is a perfect mechanism. This is just the way they use to contain us and now they are fed up with us and they want us to leave (…) The UNHCR brings in discrimination between people”; “I don’t understand, the UNHCR does nothing for us, refugees are dying in the desert to end up here… why so? Why?”; “Today, in 2013, activists and non-­ profit organisations are fighting for our rights and our freedom of movement.” The panel was introduced in the Mobility and Diaspora Forum brochure as follows: “Surrounded by the photographs by Samuel Gratacap, inscribing ourselves in his approach of “make visible,” we want to go back to the experience of Choucha giving voice to actors of the Tunisian and international civil society.” Although the short presentation insisted on the importance of making individual stories visible, an activist who participated in the event describes the situation in the following way, underlying the invisibilisation of the questions related to the more general context of externalisation of European policies that were not addressed in the discussion29:

6  “TUNISIE TERRE D’ASILE”: CONSTRUCTING TUNISIA AS A “DESTINATION… 

79

I felt slightly thrown off balance by yesterday’s discussion, actually. The participants were talking about stocks, flows, the vocabulary of crisis management (showcasing their organisation or even themselves), logistics, the distribution of water, food, care (including psychological care, as it was said several times). In the end we focused quite a lot on the question of asylum in Tunisia and it was hard to realise we were talking about people with their singularities, their stories, their own wills and so on. On the walls there were pictures and the impression to see faces blending into the decor. For instance, the words of Bright and of others and the question ‘Why?’ Why did Choucha exist, why does Choucha still exist, and thousands of others… In the end it is as if this question could not be asked, as if it was not legitimate. It fell into a kind of void, ‘I don’t know if we are entitled to answer that’ as a would-be answer. In the end I felt we were imprisoned in a framework, which could be a plan of Choucha, the arranging of a situation where people are blocked at a border, where people are divided between those who can move and those who can’t, and that everything could change, perhaps, if we reframed things, either as a close-up towards faces, or as an overview where we can question the existence of the camps.

The question of externalisation was indeed absent from the debate, and the European policies were not questioned during the panel. During the Q&A session, one of the speakers answered a question about Europe’s responsibility in the issue of Choucha and externalisation, saying that “it was a political question and it would be too long to answer it. Another question?” The activist comment also highlights a new dialectic between the invisibilisation of the dominated and abstraction, thus enacting unbalanced power dynamics. Marcus Rediker claims in the Slave Ship (Rediker 2007) that statistical methods of investigation tend to create, through the level of abstraction it entails, a veil over the actual individual lives and suffering of slaves. Therefore, his historical choices consist of unveiling the individual lives of social actors involved in transatlantic trade. The logic described by the activist goes against this logic. The work of art fostering pathos and dealing with the individual suffering of migrants is here transformed into a threshold, allowing the organisers to present, in a depoliticised manner, an asylum policy based on exclusion and immobilisation. In 2015, a group of Choucha-rejected asylum seekers from Chad, Sudan, and other African countries was arrested while demonstrating in front of the UNHCR office in Tunis and were deported to the Algerian border. The deportation was stopped by activists’ mobilisations and the group managed to go back to Tunis. A meeting was organised with activists and the Choucha rejected asylum seekers in Tunis in the days

80 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

following the arrest.30 A Terre d’Asile Tunisie employee was also present at the meeting. The meeting took place where the asylum seekers had found refuge, in a small two-story association building, with mattresses on the floor upstairs and a small kitchen, with a table and some chairs, and a bathroom downstairs. The migrants and activists had gathered in a circle sitting around the mattresses upstairs. The room was scarcely illuminated, cigarette smoke filled the air, and it was difficult to hear what was being said. The 12 rejected asylum seekers were asking for their case to be treated collectively for resettlement. The Terre d’Asile Tunisie employee laid out the possible solutions in English, after having consulted the IOM: voluntary return through the IOM, a three months’ temporary permit to stay in Tunisia (presented as a difficult option), or an individual procedure of resettlement not to Europe or the United States but to another African country (presented as a long and uncertain option). In the interview conducted with TTA in May 2016, the Tunisian asylum system that is “not suited to welcome refugees” was criticised, but the treatment of the rejected asylum seekers was not questioned: “Tunisie Terre d’Asile is ready to help with individual resettlement in Africa, but it is not a travel agency.”31 The TTA propositions were translated into Arabic by an activist and translated into other languages for the whole group. The migrants reacted, asking why collective resettlement outside Africa was not possible; the word “impossible” was repeated several times as an answer: “It is impossible to go to Europe.” A young man then stood up and, before going down the stairs, said, “I am not ready to go to Europe any more… Do you understand?” One of the activists intervened: “Unfortunately nobody can find a solution, only help making the situation a little more liveable.” Suddenly, the group asked, kindly, everyone to leave. They needed to discuss this among themselves and would let us know. We walked down the stairs and, while one migrant was saying: “I am exhausted, I would have rather died at the border with Algeria…But everything is fine, it’s a beautiful day…,” the activists gathered some Tunisian dinars and left them on the table. Outside the building, one of them said: “I felt embarrassed leaving the money like this in front of them after all what happened in the discussion, but we had to do it, they haven’t eaten all day.” The group eventually decided to accept the individual resettlement option. The tension, incomprehension, and extreme difficulty to communicate in front of suffering that this account has tried to highlight shows the situation that the rejected asylum seekers often have to face, where the only real option presented to them, exhausted, is to go back to the country they fled.

6  “TUNISIE TERRE D’ASILE”: CONSTRUCTING TUNISIA AS A “DESTINATION… 

81

Notes 1. Le Courrier de l’Atlas, Youssef Chahed: Pas de camps de migrants en Tunisie, February 14, 2017: https://www.lecourrierdelatlas.com/ allemagne-tunisie-youssef-chahed-pas-de-camps-de-migrants-entunisie-7450 2. Tunis Webdo, L’UE propose de nouveau un camp de migrants irréguliers en Tunisie, June 21, 2018: http://www.webdo.tn/2018/06/21/ lue-propose-de-nouveau-un-camp-de-migrants-clandestins-en-tunisie/ 3. Le Monde, La Tunisie face aux pressions de l’Europe sur le dossier migratoire, September 3, 2018: https://www.lemonde.fr/international/ article/2018/09/01/la-tunisie-face-aux-pressions-de-l-europe-sur-ledossier-migratoire_5348905_3210.html 4. Tunis Webdo, L’UE propose de nouveau un camp de migrants irréguliers en Tunisie, 21 June 2018: http://www.webdo.tn/2018/06/21/ lue-propose-de-nouveau-un-camp-de-migrants-clandestins-en-tunisie/ 5. La Stampa, Salvini: “Porti chiusi anche alle navi delle missioni internazionali.” La Difesa: “Non ha nessuna competenza,” July 8, 2018: https:// www.lastampa.it/2018/07/08/italia/porti-chiusi-solo-alle-ong-navemilitare-irlandese-con-a-bordo-migranti-attracca-a-messinaaXktc61WVTDwGyxp1vXVSI/pagina.html 6. Jeune Afrique, Migrants: le Sarost 5 va finalement pouvoir accoster en Tunisie, July 30, 2018: https://www.jeuneafrique.com/607875/societe/ migrants-le-sarost-5-va-finalement-pouvoir-accoster-en-tunisie/ 7. Interview, IOM Tunisia official, April 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 8. http://ote.nat.tn/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/SNM_FRA_ FINALE.pdf 9. Interview, Expertise France project manager, April 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 10. ibidem. 11. Interview, UNHCR Tunisia official, May 2016, Zarzis (Tunisia). 12. Interview, Tunisian civil servant, May 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 13. Interview—Former Tunisian Secretary to Migrations and Tunisian Abroad, April 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 14. Le naufrage du droit d’asile. Des pressions intolérables sur la Tunisie, February 21, 2017: https://www.lacimade.org/presse/le-naufrage-du-droit-dasile-despressions-intolerables-sur-la-tunisie/ 15. Kapitalis, Migrants en transit: le FTDES appelle l’Europe à sa responsabilité, February 19, 2019 http://kapitalis.com/tunisie/2019/02/19/ migrants-en-transit-en-tunisie-le-ftdes-appelle-leurope-a-sa-responsabilite/

82 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

16. HuffPost, L’UGTT s’engage dans la lutte contre l’exploitation des travailleurs étrangers en Tunisie, 14 February 2019: https://www. huffpostmaghreb.com/entry/lugtt-sengage-dans-la-lutte-contre-lexploitation-des-travailleurs-etrangers-en-tunisie_mg_5c657aaee4b0a ec93d3c3a47 17. Eyster E. et al. 2012. “Proud to be Tunisian,” Forced Migration Review, Oxford, P.28. 18. Le Figaro, La guerre civile libyenne déborde en Tunisie, May 20, 2011: http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2011/05/19/01003-20110519ARTFIG 00705-la-guerre-civile-libyenne-deborde-en-tunisie.php 19. Interview—AESAT president, May 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 20. Ibidem. 21. Terre d’Asile Tunisie is funded by the EU, the Swiss cooperation, and two German Foundations, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung and Friedrich Ebert. The EU has a disclaimer in each publication and flyer: “This publication has been realised with the help of the EU. The content of the publication is of the sole responsibility of TAT, Tunisian section of FTDA, AESAT and CTRM, associate in the MDM project. It cannot in any case be considered as reflecting the point of view of the EU.” 22. Interview—AESAT president, May 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 23. Interview—TTA employee, May 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 24. Ibidem. 25. Apart from the platform, TTA is also active on the issue of human trafficking and the voluntary return of foreigners in Tunisia in cooperation with IOM Tunisia. 26. Interview—TTA employee, May 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 27. Participant observation and interviews, World Social Forum, March 2015, Tunis (Tunisia). 28. https://www.institutfrancais-tunisie.com/sites/default/files/PROG_ Mobilites-et-diasporas.pdf 29. Email exchange with an activist mobilised on the Choucha cause, March 31, 2017. 30. Observation, September 2015, Tunis (Tunisia). 31. Interview—TTA employee, May 2016, Tunis (Tunisia).

References Ambrosini, Maurizio, and Joanne Van der Leun. 2015. Introduction to the Special Issue: Implementing Human Rights: Civil Society and Migration Policies. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 12 (2): 103–115. Bartels, Inken. 2018. Practices and Power of Knowledge Dissemination, International Organizations in the Externalization of Migration Management

6  “TUNISIE TERRE D’ASILE”: CONSTRUCTING TUNISIA AS A “DESTINATION… 

83

in Morocco and Tunisia. Movements  – Journal for Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies 4 (1): 47–64. Boubakri, Hassan. 2015. Migration et asile en Tunisie depuis 2011: vers de nouvelles figures migratoires? Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales 31 (3–4): 17–39. Boubakri, Hassan, and Swanie Potot. 2012. De l’élan citoyen à la mise en place d’une politique migratoire en Tunisie: l’accueil des réfugiés de Libye en 2011. Migrations et Sociétés (CIEMI) 143 (5): 121–138. Chandler, David. 2013. The Semantics of Crisis Management: Simulation and EU Statebuilding in the Balkans. In The Semantics of Statebuilding: Language, Meaning and Sovereignty, ed. Nicolas Lemay-Hébert, Nicholas Onuf, Voijn Rakić, and Petar Bojanić. London: Routledge. Cuttitta, Paolo. 2016. The Migration Borderscape of South East Tunisia: Memories from a North African ‘Triple Frontier’. Border Criminologies  – University of Oxford, September 7. Dezalay, Yves. 2004. Les courtiers de l’international, Héritiers cosmopolites, mercenaires de l’imperialisme et missionaires de l’universel. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 151–152 (1): 4–35. Fassin, Didier. 2012. Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press. Garelli, Glenda, and Martina Tazzioli. 2016. Tunisia as a Revolutionized Space of Migration. New York: Palgrave Pivot. Garlick, M., and J. van Selm. 2012. From Commitment to Practice: The EU Response. Forced Migration Review (Oxford) 39: 20–22. Geisser, Vincent. 2019. Tunisie, des migrants subsahariens toujours exclus du rêve démocratique. Migrations Société (Centre d’information et d’études sur les migrations internationales) 3 (117): 3–18. Mottet, Aurore. 2016. Répartition et circulation: les enjeux de la catégorisation dans le camp de Choucha (Tunisie). Critique Internationale 3 (72): 21–34. Nasraoui, Mustapha. 2017. Les travailleurs migrants subsahariens en Tunisie face aux restrictions législatives sur l’emploi des étrangers. Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales 33 (4): 159–178. Natter, Katharina. 2018. Immigration Policy Theory: Thinking Beyond the ‘Western Liberal-Democratic’ Box. IMI Working Paper 125. Perkowski, Nina. 2012. A Normative Assessments of the Aims and Practices of the European Border Management Agency Frontex’. Refugee Studies Centre Working Paper Series NO.81 (Oxford). Rediker, Marcus. 2007. The Slave Ship: A Human History. New York: Viking Press. Rouland, Betty, and Mounir Jarraya. 2019. From Medical Tourism to Regionalism from the Bottom Up: Emerging Transnational Spaces of Care Between Libya and Tunisia. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

84 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

Ticktin, Miriam. 2006. Where Ethics and Politics Meet: The Violence of Humanitarianism in France. American Ethnologist 33 (1): 33–49. Triandafyllidou, Anna, and A. Dimitriadi. 2014. Governing Irregular Migration and Asylum at the Borders of Europe: Between Efficiency and Protection. Imagining Europe (Istituto Affari Internazionali) 6. Vandevoort, Robin. 2016. Between Humanitarian Assistance and Migration Management: On Civil Actors’ Role in Voluntary Return from Belgium. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 43 (11): 1907–1922.

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion

Abstract  This book has analysed the reconfiguration of European migration policies in Tunisia after the fall of the country’s dictatorship in 2011, with a focus on civil society as a tool to externalise migration governance. This concluding chapter puts forward the idea that this process leads to the exclusion and even, at times, the criminalisation, of a certain type of “uncivil society” that challenges the current migratory regime and (re) politicises the issue of freedom of movement. Keywords  Uncivil society • Migration struggles • Tunisia • Harragas As of 2019, migration management in Tunisia continues to attract funds from the European Union and to raise the interest of different actors. In 2016, the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa1 was de-blocked, with the aim of reinforcing the migration management capacities of countries on the southern shore of the Mediterranean. Almost 12 million euros were allocated to the programme “ProGreS migration” in Tunisia, which started in April 2018.2 Tunisia has also become the base for projects implemented in Libya that, due to security concerns, have established their headquarters in the neighbouring country that is considered more stable. On the Tunisian government’s side, a “Delegate Minister of Emigration and Tunisians Abroad” was named in November 2018,3 a sign that the Tunisian authorities continue to be concerned about the issue. All these initiatives have contributed to the construction of Tunisia’s image as a “migration hub.”4 © The Author(s) 2020 S. Dini, C. Giusa, Externalising Migration Governance Through Civil Society, Mobility & Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39578-0_7

85

86 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

In January 2011, after two years of “zero emigration”, emigration by boat from Tunisia drastically increased during the days of the fall of the Ben Ali regime. Border controls put in place by the Tunisian authorities and EU border controls in the Mediterranean were re-established in the following months. At the beginning of 2011, the number of departures from Libya was also significant and the Mediterranean route to the EU was the most crossed, and the deadliest, with high rates of death at sea. Between 2013 and 2016, it was the Balkan route to the EU that was all over the media, sparking discussions about a “European migration crisis.” As with the case of the 2011 “crisis,” academic literature deconstructed this new “crisis” label by historicising it (Lucassen 2018; Lüthi 2017; De Genova and Tazzioli 2016), pointing out the inadequacy of the European migration regime (Lendaro et  al. 2019; Canut 2016; Bojadžijev and Mezzadra 2015; Fernando and Giordano 2016). Since 2017, departures from Tunisia and Libya are at the forefront again, with shipwrecks causing hundreds of deaths at sea. The criminalisation of NGOs rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean (Stierl 2017, 2016; Schmoll and Bernardie Tahir 2018) has also become central to this debate, especially since the arrival of the extreme-right government in Italy in the spring of 2018. In this book, we have analysed the reconfiguration of European migration policies in Tunisia after the fall of the dictatorship in 2011, with a focus on civil society as a tool for externalising migration governance. Civil society is used as an operative category to depoliticise migration issues in Tunisia. The analysis has shown that praising and including “civil society” is not a neutral process but a political one aimed at imposing a pattern of sedentarism and mobility containment in Tunisia, not through coercion and control but through consensus. We attempted to deconstruct the myth of democratisation through civil society engagement by analysing what this support produces at the micro level in the field of migration. “Civil Society” is a notion that needs to be deconstructed to see what type of civil society is included and what is left out. Institutionalising the role of civil society in the democratisation process can be seen as a “neoliberal” way of conceiving the supposed democratic transition (Dakhlia 2016) because it is all about creating a civil society that can be controlled and whose claims can be institutionalised, while at the same time opposing what is designated as “uncivil society” (Allal and Geisser 2018; Glasius 2009). The authors of this book would argue that the “uncivil society” that is left out consists of those actors enacting migration struggles and resistance

7 CONCLUSION 

87

(Stierl 2019; Ataç et al. 2015, 2016; Cantat 2015), the disobedient mobilisations (Stierl 2015; Lendaro 2018) that question the sedentarisation and containment regime and politicise the issue of freedom of movement in the public domain (Anderson et  al. 2009; Pécoud and de Guchteneire 2006; Pécoud 2013; Heller et al. 2018). The following examples give a non-exhaustive review of independent and radical migration struggles inside and beyond the borders of Tunisia, in order to help clarify what this “uncivil society” may look like. Tunisian harragas continue to take boats to reach Europe. The question of departures and the harragas’ claims for freedom of movement are intertwined with protests against social and economic inequalities and claims for dignity in post-2011 Tunisia (Giusa 2018; Mastrangelo 2018; Souiah 2018; Khiari 2017). In December 2018, yet another Tunisian young man set himself on fire to protest against the difficult living conditions and unemployment in the interior regions of Tunisia,5 in the same city—Sidi Bouzid—where Mohammed Bouazizi sparked the Arab Uprisings with his self-immolation. This is yet another sign that “the social revolution in Tunisia has not yet happened” (Brésillon 2018). If the act of the harragas crossing the Mediterranean can be seen for itself as a “political act” (Monsutti 2017) challenging the Mediterranean border regime (Oliveri 2013; Garelli et al. 2013), the struggles of and for the harragas against the migration policies implemented by the EU represent a form of “uncivil” resistance. The hunger strikes and sewn mouths of harragas in Lampedusa to protest against deportation6; occupation of buildings by Tunisian harragas in France in 2011 calling for freedom, dignity, and regularisation (Giusa 2018); the demonstrations that took to the street after the shipwreck of June 2018 off the Kerkennah islands, where inhabitants of the neighbourhoods where the harragas who lost their lives came from protested7; Tunisian citizens setting up a graveyard in the city of Zarzis, at the border with Libya, for migrants who died at sea (Zagaria 2019); Tunisian fishermen criminalised in Italy for saving migrants in the Mediterranean in the summer of 20188… are only a few examples. Beyond the case of the harragas, other migration struggles concerning visa, return, and asylum are also forms of “uncivil” struggles: Tunisian students organising a sit-in in front of the Italian embassy in Tunis because their visas had been refused9; “voluntary returnees” demonstrating in Zarzis against the OFII because they had not received the promised money; Choucha-rejected asylum seekers demonstrating in front of the UNHCR office in Tunis for their cases to be reopened.10

88 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

These examples of national and transnational struggles for freedom of movement in Tunisia show that radical claims may end up being criminalised for challenging the current externalisation system. These “uncivil society” struggles go beyond the framework of what is accepted in the context of an institutionalised “civil society” and enact disobedience in order to claim dignity, equality, solidarity, and freedom.

Notes 1. “Emergency Trust Fund for stability and addressing root causes of irregular migration and displaced persons in Africa” https://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/regions/africa/eu-emergency-trust-fund-africa_en 2. Press Release, Tenue du 1er comité de pilotage du projet « ProGreS-­ Migration, SEAE, April 24, 2018: https://eeas.europa.eu/sites/eeas/ files/cp_seite_due_avril_2018_fr.pdf 3. HuffingtonPost Maghreb, Remaniement ministériel: Qui sont les nouveaux ministres, November 5, 2018: https://www.huffpostmaghreb. com/entry/remaniement-ministeriel-qui-sont-les-nouveaux-ministres_ mg_5be07cfce4b04367a87f2a62. Last accessed: July 2, 2019. 4. Interview, Expertise France Project Manager, November 2016, Tunis (Tunisia). 5. Le Monde, Nouveaux heurts en Tunisie après l’immolation par le feu d’un journaliste, December 26, 2018: https://www.lemonde.fr/international/ article/2018/12/26/nouveaux-heurts-en-tunisie-apres-l-immolationpar-le-feu-d-un-journaliste_5402403_3210.html. Last accessed: July 2, 2019. 6. Info Migrants, Lampedusa: des Tunisiens se cousent la bouche pour protester contre leur expulsion, January 31, 2018: https://www.infomigrants. net/fr/post/7302/lampedusa-des-tunisiens-se-cousent-la-bouche-pourprotester-contre-leur-expulsion. Last accessed: July 2, 2019. 7. Jeune Afrique, Tunisie: renforcement sécuritaire, manifestations, limogeages… Le drame de Kerkennah prend un tournant politique, June 6, 2018: https://www.jeuneafrique.com/566068/politique/tunisie-renforcement-securitaire-manifestations-limogeages-le-drame-de-kerkennahprend-un-tournant-politique/. Last accessed: July 2, 2019. 8. Le Courrier de l’Atlas, Mobilisation pour la libération de six pêcheurs détenus en Italie, September 7, 2018: https://www.lecourrierdelatlas.com/ tunisie-mobilisation-pour-la-liberation-de-six-pecheurs-detenus-enitalie-20566. Last accessed: July 2, 2019.

7 CONCLUSION 

89

9. Réalités Online, Précisions de l’ambassade d’Italie à propos du sit-in de jeunes tunisiens, 1à September 2018: https://www.realites.com. tn/2018/09/precisions-de-lambassade-ditalie-a-propos-du-sit-in-dejeunes-tunisiens/. Last accessed: July 2, 2019. 10. Nawaat, Camp de Choucha: les migrants manifestent à Tunis, January 28, 2013: http://nawaat.org/portail/2013/01/28/camp-de-choucha-lesmigrants-manifestent-a-tunis/. Last accessed: July 2, 2019.

References Allal, Amin, and Vincent Geisser. 2018. Tunisie, Une démocratisation au-dessus de tout soupçon? Paris: CNRS Editions. Anderson, Bridget, Nandita Sharma, and Cynthia Wright. 2009. Editorial: Why No Borders? Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees 26 (2): 5–18. Ataç, Ilker, Stefanie Kron, Sarah Schilliger, Helge Schwiertz, and Maurice Stierl.  2015. Struggles of Migration as in−/Visible Politics, Introduction. Movements 1 (2). Ataç, Ilker, Kim Rygiel, and Maurice Stierl. 2016. Introduction: The Contentious Politics of Refugee and Migrant Protest and Solidarity Movements: Remaking Citizenship from the Margins. Citizenship Studies 20 (5): 527–544. Bojadžijev, Manuela, and Sandro Mezzadra. 2015. “Refugee Crisis” or Crisis of European Migration Policies? FocaalBlog, November 12. Brésillon, Thierry. 2018. Tunisie. La révolution à venir devra être sociale. Orient XXI. 2017 December. https://orientxxi.info/magazine/tunisie-la-revolution-a-venir-devra-etre-sociale,2821. Accessed April 17, 2019. Cantat, Céline. 2015. Migration Struggles and the Crisis of the European Project. FocaalBlog, December 18. Canut, Cécile. 2016. Migrants et réfugiés: quand dire, c’est faire la politique migratoire. Revue Vacarme, Juin 12. Dakhlia, Jocelyne. 2016. Peut-on penser dans la transition? Nachaz Dissonances. De Genova, Nicholas, and Martina Tazzioli. 2016. Europe/Crisis: New Keywords of “The Crisis” in and of “Europe”, New Keywords Collective. Zone Books – Near Futures Online. Fernando, Mayanthi, and Cristiana Giordano. 2016. Refugees and the Crisis of Europe. Cultural Anthropology, June 28. Garelli, Glenda, Federica Sossi, and Martina Tazzioli. 2013. Spaces in Migration. Postcards of a Revolution. London: Pavement Books. Giusa, Caterina. 2018. “On a fait la révolution pour être libres. Libres de partir”: les départs des harragas de la Tunisie en révolution. Mouvements (La Découverte) 1 (93): 99–106. Glasius, Marlies. 2009. Uncivil Society. In International Encyclopedia of Civil Society. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

90 

S. DINI AND C. GIUSA

Heller, Charles, Lorenzo Pezzani, and Maurice Stierl. 2018. Toward a Politics of Freedom of Movement. In Open Borders: In Defense of Free Movement, ed. Reece Jones. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Khiari, Sadri. 2017. Émigration clandestine, une forme de résistance. Nawaat. Lendaro, Annalisa. 2018. Désobéir en faveur des migrants. Journal des Anthropologues 152–153 (1–2): 171–192. Lendaro, Annalisa, Claire Rodier, and Youri Lou Vertongen. 2019. La crise de l’accueil. Paris: La Découverte. Lucassen, Leo. 2018. Peeling an Onion: The “Refugee Crisis” from a Historical Perspective. Ethnic and Racial Studies 41 (3): 383–410. Lüthi, Barbara. 2017. Agitated Times: Why Historians Need to Question the Rhetoric of the “Refugee Crisis”. Histoire@Politique 31. Mastrangelo, Simon. 2018. Revendiquer le droit à émigrer via l’expression du sentiment d’injustice. L’Année du Maghreb 18. Monsutti, Alessandro. 2017. Mobility as a Political Act. Ethnic and Racial Studies 41 (3): 448–455. Oliveri, Federico. 2013. “Our Europe Has No Borders”. Young Tunisians Acting as European Citizens. Acts, The Archives Project, September 11. Pécoud, Antoine. 2013. Libre circulation, de l’idéal au politique. Revue Projet 4 (335): 50–59. Pécoud, Antoine, and Paul de Guchteneire. 2006. International Migration, Border Controls and Human Rights: Assessing the Relevance of a Right to Mobility. Journal of Borderlands Studies 21 (1): 69–86. Schmoll, Camille, and Nathalie Bernardie Tahir, eds. 2018. Méditerranée des frontières à la dérive. Paris: Le Passager Clandestin. Souiah, Farida. 2018. “Brûler” les frontières: fuite ou contestation? In Tunisie, une démocratisation au-dessus de tout soupçon? ed. Amin Allal and Vincent Geisser. Paris: CNRS Éditions. Stierl, Maurice. 2015. The WatchTheMed Alarm Phone, A Disobedient Border-­ Intervention. Movements 1 (2). ———. 2016. A Sea of Struggle  – Activist Border Interventions in the Mediterranean Sea. Citizenship Studies 20 (5): 561–578. ———. 2017. A Fleet of Mediterranean Border Humanitarians. Antipode 50: 704–724. ———. 2019. Migrant Resistance in Contemporary Europe. Abingdon: Routledge. Zagaria, Valentina. 2019. « Une petite histoire au potentiel symbolique fort ». La fabrique d’un cimetière de migrants inconnus dans le sud-est tunisien. Critique Internationale 83 (2): 61–85.

Index

A The Association of African Students and Interns in Tunisia (AESAT), 75, 76 B Ben Ali fall of, 2, 4, 29, 73, 86 regime, 24, 35, 42 Boubakri, Hassan, 29, 30, 35, 36, 42, 73 Bourguiba, 24, 26 C Capacity-building, 44–46, 53–56, 74, 76 Cassarino, Jean-Pierre, 17, 26, 28, 35, 42, 58, 59 Chamayou, Gregoire, 17, 30, 31, 39, 48 Choucha, 79 camp, 30, 72–74, 79

rejected asylum seekers, 36, 77, 79, 87 Citizenship passive, 24 positive, 17 Civil society as an intermediary, 53, 56, 73 ministry of, 15 organisations, 13, 45 participation, 14, 38, 44, 45, 48 (re)institutionalization, 26, 45, 55 responsible, 43, 55 Containment of migration, 5, 53, 69, 74, 86, 87 Criminalisation of irregular migration, 28 of NGOs, 86 Crisis European migration, 86 labeling, 2 management, 74 migration, 2, 13 Cuttitta, Paolo, 2, 3, 13, 74

© The Author(s) 2020 S. Dini, C. Giusa, Externalising Migration Governance Through Civil Society, Mobility & Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39578-0

91

92 

INDEX

D Democratic transition, 4, 12, 42, 43, 48, 86 Depoliticisation, 13, 46, 48, 59, 86 Deportations, 38, 40, 45, 58, 59, 71, 79, 87 See also Enfidha, airport of Destination country, 73, 75, 77 safe, 71, 72 Disembarkment platforms outside Europe, 70 E Embassy in Tunis Italian, 39, 87 French, 39, 78 Emigration, 25, 26, 28, 29, 35, 36, 56, 71–73, 77 Minister of, 85 Zero, 86 See also Harragas; Tunisian diaspora; Tunisians Abroad “Empire” by photographer Samuel Gratacap, 78 Enfidha, airport of, 40 EU, 43 Civil Society Support Programme (PASC), 55 Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, 85 European Agency for the management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the (Frontex), 70 European Readmission Agreements (EURA), 17, 27, 45 Regional Protection Programs in North Africa, 74 Support to Partnership, Reform and Inclusive Growth (SPRING), 14, 55

Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, 26 Euromed Rights–Euro Mediterranean Human Rights Network (REMDH), 44, 45 EU-Tunisia Deep and Comprehensive Free-­ Trade Agreement (DCFTA), 45 Mobility Partnership, 43, 44, 46 Mobility Partnership Support Project (LEMMA), 46, 47, 56, 71 negotiations, 44 Readmission Agreement, 40, 43, 44, 46, 47, 71 Visa Facilitations Agreement (VFA), 44–47 EU-Tunisia readmission agreement, 71 “Exit voice loyalty” theory, 12 See also Hischman’s model Expertise France, 46, 47, 53, 57, 71 Externalisation, 3, 17, 27 F Foucault, Michel, 6, 15, 16 Freedom of movement, 37, 45, 64, 65, 78, 85, 87 See also Migration struggles French Office of Immigration and Integration (OFII), 46, 57–60, 87 G Governmentality, 11, 16, 17, 23, 61 H Harragas, 1, 2, 7, 13, 29, 36–38, 58, 64, 73, 87 Hirschman’s model, 29 See also “Exit, Voice, Loyalty” theory Humanitarianism/ Humanitarian, 70, 74

 INDEX 

I Immigration, 27, 76, 77 and asylum, 71–74 chosen, 27 country of, 21 Immobility/immobilization, 17, 56, 59 culture of, 61 International Organisation for Migration (IOM), 30, 58–60, 73, 74, 78, 80 awareness campaigns, 60 Solidarity with the children of the Maghreb and the Machrek (SALEMM), 61–64 Summer Schools, 36, 77 Invasion Rhetoric, 2 Invisibilisation, 39, 60, 79 Islamist groups, 4, 12, 26, 27 Italy, 1, 26, 37, 38, 40, 58, 60, 65, 70, 87 5 April 2011 agreement, 38, 39 K Knowledge production, 77

93

hubs, 5, 54, 85 irregular, 1, 3, 28, 32, 38–40, 43, 45, 47, 56, 58, 61, 71 (see also Harragas) management, 4, 16, 17, 26, 27, 31, 74, 77 struggles, 37, 73, 86 (see also Uncivil society and freedom of movement) Migratory conditionality, 27 Migratory security zone, 27 N Neumann, Iver B., 16–18 Nobel Peace Prize, 12 P Participatory governance, 62 Pécoud, Antoine, 16, 17, 56, 59, 61, 63, 87 Politicisation of migration, 36, 38, 75 Potot, Swanie, 29, 30, 73

L Lampedusa, 2, 3, 36–38, 87 Libya, 2, 29, 30, 36, 70, 73–75, 78, 86

R The Rassemblement Constitutionnel Démocratique (RCD), 24 Rediker, Marcus, 79 Resettlement, 74, 78, 80

M Migration agreements, 4, 17, 28, 38, 39, 43, 45, 71 and development, 25, 46, 55–57, 59, 60 asymmetrical government of, 42 circular, 56, 57, 79 cross-mediterranean, 1, 4, 13, 17, 36, 70, 86

S Sarost 5 case, 70 Sea deaths at, 36, 86 disappeared at, 36, 38, 42 Mediterranean, 1, 3, 5, 12 migrants rescued at, 60, 72, 74 Sedentarism, 17, 56, 86 Shipwrecks, 36, 37, 86, 87 Sending, Ole Jacob, 16–18

94 

INDEX

T Terre d’Asile Tunisie (TAT), 75, 76, 80 Theatre of the Oppressed, 63 Third country, 27, 30 nationals, 45, 71 TLS Contact, 39 Tunis, 39 Tunisia, South East of, 74 irregular migration, 60 Tunisian diaspora, 31, 36, 46, 56–58, 72, 78 exceptionality, 11, 12 General Labour Union (UGTT), 12, 24, 47, 72 National Dialogue Quartet, 12 National migratory strategy, 46, 54, 57, 71, 72 revolution, 17, 29 solidarity, 73, 74 transitional government, 3, 30, 39, 73

Tunisians Abroad, 25, 26, 42, 57, 71 Office of (OTE), 38 Minister of Emigration and, 85 State Secretary of Migrations and, 38, 42, 54 U Uncivil society, 86 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 30, 73, 74, 76, 78, 79, 87 V “Very governmental organisations,” 27 Voluntary return, 58, 74, 87 and reinsertion, 53, 59 Vulnerability, 74 Y Yousfi, Hèla, 13, 15, 24, 43, 55