ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses migration as one of the most contested topics in the fields of human rights and European and national policies. During the last years, the rise of sovereignism in migration and refugee policies, in spite of the communitarization of European policies regarding entry, and the extreme politicization of the topic, has led to many controversies (such as during the so called “refugee crisis of 2015”). The controversies are illustrated by the gap between public opinion, political parties, positions in terms of repression and dissuasion and actors defending the cause of migrants’ rights but also economic enterprises asking for more open borders, as well as demographic arguments and other scientific analyses. Many paradoxes are also behind the contested debate: the choice of political solutions (mainly securitization) preferred to liberal economic ones, the choice of short-term solutions instead of long-term approaches building European societies with new citizens, and the option of development as a solution to migration, which has been shown to be a false one. The form of expression of these contested positions is explored in various forms of transnational mobilization, along with global experiences of multilateralism (such as the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) and the Marrakech Forum), linking “strange bedfellows” in the migration cause. A lleot of decisions regarding justice such as the “délit de solidarité” have appeared in France and Italy (Cédric Hérou and Domenico Luccani), showing the fragile political and legal decisions dealing with human rights (the “fraternity principle” recognized in France by the Constitutional Council in 2018). The chapter will draw the landscape of contested justice in the field, but also analyze the actors and existing agencies.
