Spatial imaginaries and selective in/visibility: Mediterranean neighbourhood and the European Union’s engagement with civil society after the ‘Arab Spring’

Abstract

As part of a repertoire of the European Union’s (EU’s) geopolitical practices, the imaginary of Mediterranean Neighbourhood is a means with which to manage dissonance between the EU’s self-image as a normative power, changing political situations in the region and the Realpolitik of security. We argue that this also involved a ‘politics of in/visibility’ that promotes democratization and social modernization through structured cooperation while engaging selectively with local stakeholders. In directing attention to EU readings of and responses to the ‘Arab Spring’, we indicate how both a simplification of the issues at stake and highly selective political framings of local civil societies have operated in tandem. Drawing on a review of recent literature on civil society activism in the southern Mediterranean, we specifically deal with Eurocentric appropriations of civil society as a force for change and as a central element in the construction of the Mediterranean Neighbourhood. EU support for South Mediterranean civil society appears to be targeted at specific actors with whom the EU deems it can work: apart from national elites these include well-established, professionalized non-governmental organizations, and westernized elements of national civil societies. As a result, recognition of the heterogeneous and multilocal nature of the uprisings, as well as their causes, has only marginally translated into serious European Neighbourhood Policy reform. We suggest that an inclusive focus on civil society would reveal Neighbourhood as a contact zone and dialogic space, rather than a project upon which the EU is (rather unsuccessfully) attempting to superimpose a unifying narrative of EU-led modernization.

Framing migration in the southern Mediterranean: how do civil society actors evaluate EU migration policies? The case of Tunisia

“…Conversely, the genuinely local grassroots organisations, which are less organised and resourceful, have a limited international profile (or none at all), and are often unable or unwilling to access EU funding and participate in decision-making processes, were involved in our research to a more limited extent. This proves that, as observed by other authors, the EU support to South-Med civil society is selective, and targets specific actors with whom the EU deems it can worknamely national elites and well-established, professionalised and westernised CSOs (Bürkner & Scott, 2018).…”

“…Apparently, the EU has so far displayed a contradictory strategy towards civil society stakeholders in South-Med countries, and Tunisia in particular. Besides involving CSOs on a selective and ad hoc basis (Bürkner & Scott, 2018), the EU has tasked local civil society with a dual function: on the one hand to cooperate in the implementation of EU policies (e.g., the MP), thus legitimising them despite their Euro-centric, top-down and securitising approach; and on the other hand to promote human rights and democracy at the domestic levelwith the risk to create a short circuit between the two functions. But the EU does not seem to have so far tasked civil society actors with an actual co-production function in the migration policy field.…”

Non‐governmental/civil society organisations and the European Union‐externalisation of migration management in Tunisia and Egypt

“…Indeed, “trade unions or professional associations […] often do not self‐identify as NGOs, but rather as CSOs” (Tomlinson, 2013, p. 214), and some regard NGOs “as a subset of CSOs involved in development cooperation, albeit often one with no clear boundaries” (Tomlinson, 2013, p. 214). According to Bürkner and Scott (2018), “‘CSO’ […] denominates all forms of civil self‐organisation that may assume formalised structures but often remain informal and temporary,” as opposed to those “‘non‐governmental organisations’ operating either at a national level within a formalised organisational structure […] or at a global scale as part of a larger organisation” (p. 11). This paper uses both terms, either jointly (“CSOs/NGOs”) or separately.…”

“…Similarly, migration-related activities in countries of transit and origin can be delegated to IOs (Lavenex, 2016;Wunderlich, 2012) and NGOs/CSOs. More specifically, the EU and its member states have identified NGOs/CSOs in the Southern Mediterranean neighbourhoodespecially the more professionalised and westernised ones (Bürkner & Scott, 2018)-"as natural partners" (Bürkner, 2018, p. 180) in the process of region-building of which the externalisation of migration control is a part: European "funding instruments for migration-related projects in third countries [show] a strong geographical focus on […] the southern Mediterranean" (Den Hertog, 2016, p. 1), and "[i]n many cases, […] the recipients are actually NGOs" (El Qadim, 2019, p. 353; see also Irrera, 2019).…”

“…By focusing on diverse non-state actors, and by drawing on ethnographic research in two North African countries, the paper also tries to adopt a less univocal, state-centric, and European perspective, thus addressing recent calls to avoid Euro-centrism in the study of externalisation and EU-neighbourhood policy (Bürkner & Scott, 2018;Casas-Cortés & Cobarrubias, 2019;Celata & Coletti, 2016;Üstübici, Stock, & Schultz, 2019-2020Gaibazzi, Bellagamba, & Dünnwald, 2017b;Genç, Heck, & Hess, 2018;_ Işleyen, 2018b;Tazzioli, 2015). Indeed, EU-externalisation "is not a smooth top-down process" (Bartels, 2018, p. 64) and "cannot be understood entirely in terms of an old style geopolitics of dominance" (Collyer, 2016, p. 610).…”