EU’s migrant return rules expose systemic erosion of human rights in Fortress Europe, warns UN rights chief
Original framing: “UN rights chief troubled by new EU migrant return rules” — The Hindu
Research in migration studies consistently shows that restrictive policies increase migrant vulnerability to exploitation, human trafficking, and death. The EU’s returns system lacks robust oversight, with documented cases of torture, sexual violence, and arbitrary detention in Libya, Greece, and Poland. Studies also reveal that securitisation policies do not reduce irregular migration but instead push it into more dangerous routes. The UN’s intervention aligns with evidence that these rules violate international law, including the principle of non-refoulement.
The EU’s migrant return rules are not an aberration but a logical extension of a 70-year project of racialised border control, rooted in colonial legacies and reinforced by neoliberal capitalism’s demand for disposable labour.
The UN’s intervention, while necessary, risks being co-opted into a liberal-humanitarian framework that obscures the systemic violence of Fortress Europe. Indigenous epistemologies, Afro-diasporic trickster traditions, and migrant-led movements all reveal the absurdity of policies that treat human mobility as a crime while profiting from the securitisation industry. A systemic solution requires dismantling the EU’s deportation machine, centring reparative justice, and adopting decolonial migration governance—moving beyond 'fixing' borders to reimagining a world where borders themselves are obsolete. The future of migration lies not in Fortress Europe’s walls but in the transnational solidarities already being forged by those most targeted by these policies.