Migratory ‘Burden Sharing’. the Allocation of Responsibilities for the Management of ‘Mixed’ Migration Flows As Contentious Core of the European Multilevel System of Migration Governance

Governance typically becomes problematic either when a political good is coveted by two or more political entities or when a ‘political evil’ (i.e. a phenomenon which is dominantly perceived as detrimental) is simultaneously threatening them with some possibility to deflect it from one to another. In recent European history, unplanned migration taking place along irregular channels has gradually standed out as the key issue driving the development of a European system of multi-level governance of international migration.

At the core of such complex process is a widely shared perception of ‘mixed’ migration flows (those where ‘economic migrants’ and asylum seekers coexist) as a costly and undesirable ‘burden’. ‘Burden sharing’ - i.e. the distribution (across countries and institutional levels) of the tasks and costs associated with the treatment of such flows - has steadily emerged as a central objective in the wider field of European migration policies.

The presentation will first reconstruct the main steps in the development of a European system of migration governance, understood as a system for the allocation of responsibilities in the management of irregular and asylum migration. It will then analyze how some recent economic and geopolitical developments (mainly associated with the economic crisis and with major political upheavals in the Mediterranean) have eroded consensus around existing governance mechanisms and therefore destabilized them. Finally, the paper will assess some of the main approaches currently under discussion for the readjustment of what appears an increasingly unstable and ineffective system of multi-level governance.