© ARR
Jean-Pierre Cassarino
Research project
Functions and implications of the Mediterranean readmission system
Summary of the research project
The number of bilateral agreements facilitating the removal or readmission of illegal aliens has risen sharply over the past two decades. This research project aims to analyse these unprecedented developments, focusing on the Euro-Mediterranean area. A new analytical framework is needed to understand the scope of this “readmission system”. This system has not only a coercive function, but also a regulatory and legitimating function. One of the major contributions of this project is precisely to look beyond the system of readmission. It proposes to historicize the conditions of its anchorage in the links of international interdependence in order to understand its expansion, parallel to the establishment of selective programs of temporary recruitment of foreign workers. Second, it postulates that its coercive function, which has been extensively treated, cannot obscure the fact that readmission and its ethos today seem inseparable from a deeper questioning of the very meaning of work, participation and access to opportunities. This research project, conducive to interdisciplinary collaborations with several laboratories in Aix-Marseille, will test the hypothesis of a continuum between the increased regulation of temporary stay and employment of migrant workers (regulatory function of the readmission system) and the increasing deregulation of the labour market, as a model of current employment policies applied to employees in general (legitimation function).
Biography
I am currently a Senior Research Fellow at the European Neighbourhood Policy Chair of the College of Europe (Warsaw, Poland). I also run the Academy on International Migration while teaching and developing research on migration issues. My publications and main research interests focus on the expansion of international regulatory systems, the analysis of bilateral and multilateral cooperation, the dissemination and internalization of “governance” standards and practices international migration and its impact on the rights and conditions of migrants. Before that, I was a professor at the Robert Schuman Centre (European University Institute in Florence, Italy) where I directed several interdisciplinary research projects on migration policies while developing field surveys involving partner institutions in North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, the Mediterranean and the Caucasus.
