1,721,067 research outputs found
Youth as a New Foreign Policy Challenge in Middle East and North Africa: A Critical Interrogation of European Union and US Youth Policies in Morocco and Tunisia
No full textIt is not only since January 2011 and the so-called ‘youth revolutions’ that youth has become a key concept through which Europeans and Americans are viewing the Arab world. Since the 2000s, youth has increasingly entered European Union (EU) foreign policies in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and the revised neighbourhood policy has in fact devoted an entire section to youth unemployment. But are EU policies contributing to the inclusion of youth? Based on discourse analysis and a comparative approach with US policies, this article argues that the EU and the United States have framed youth exclusively in relation to their ideal vision of a liberal order in the region as an asset, challenge or threat. This has in turn justified foreign policies which are pushing for a further liberalization of the labour market in these countries and which reproduce gendered images of young Muslim men as terror threats and threats to women, young Muslim women as victims and non-productive. While the Arab uprisings have resisted this discourse and practice of Western actors, they have not succeeded to change them; Western policies remain resilient
US and EU Human Rights and Democracy Promotion since the Arab Spring. Rethinking its Content, Targets and Instruments
No full textThe momentous changes in the Middle East and North Africa have brought the issue of human rights and democracy promotion back to the forefront of international politics. The new engagement in the region of both the US and the EU can be scrutinised along three dimensions: targets, instruments and content. In terms of target sectors, the US and EU are seeking to work more with civil society. As for instruments, they have mainly boosted democracy assistance and political conditionality, that is utilitarian, bilateral instruments of human rights and democracy promotion, rather than identitive, multilateral instruments. The content of human rights and democracy promotion has not been revised
Contesting Europeanness at the Aegean border: a contrapuntal reading
No full textto be undergoing a rupture. The von der Leyen European Commission has proclaimed a geopolitical EU, whichseems difficult to reconcile with its previous identity. This raises the question: How is the process of identityformation currently unfolding in the European Union? To address this question, the article focuses on migrationpolicy, which has become a central political discourse and practice in the constitution, production and main-tenance of European identity. Using the broader Aegean borderland and the 2020 migration crisis as casestudies, it contrapuntally examines: 1) how policymakers, civil society and refugees have provided contestingidentifications with Europe; 2) how such identifications are bundled and stabilised in – and experiencedthrough – policies; and 3) which alternatives might destabilise them. The study finds that theEU as deterrenceemerges as a dominant articulation by EU policymakers, although it is audibly contested by European civilsociety organisationsí articulation of the EU as liberal and rules-based. The notions of EU as deterrence and theEU as liberal and rules-basedare intertwined with the EU as humanitarian compassion by policymakers and civilsociety. Nonetheless, EU as deterrence dominates the experience of refugees. Humanitarian compassion issomewhat experienced by refugees, but the EU as liberal and rules-based is scarcely evident. Refugees alsoarticulate an alternative, namely the EU as part of shared humanity, which acknowledges their agency, poten-tial and contributions.
Keywords: European Union, Liberal Order, Identity, Crisis, Migration
 
Concept Paper: MedReset, a Comprehensive, Integrated and Bottom-Up Approach
No full textEuro-Mediterranean policies, as well as research on them, have been characterized by a Euro- centric approach based on a narrow geopolitical construction of the Mediterranean. Moreover, stakeholders, policy instruments, and policy issues have been defined from a European standpoint, marginalizing the perspectives and needs of local states and people, and ignoring the role played by new and powerful regional and global actors. In an increasingly multipolar world, overcoming this Euro-centric approach is key for Europe to play a more meaningful role in the region. Thus, MEDRESET aims to reset our understanding of the Mediterranean and develop alternative visions for a new partnership and corresponding EU policies, reinventing a future role for the EU as an inclusive, flexible, and responsive actor in the region. This will be achieved through an integrated research design which is in three phases: it 1) de-constructs the EU construction of the Mediterranean, 2) counters it by mapping the region on the geopolitical level and in four key policy areas (political ideas, agriculture and water, industry and energy, migration and mobility) alongside a three-dimensional framework (stakeholders, policy instruments, policy issues), which directly feeds into 3) a reconstruction of a new role for the EU, enhancing its ability to exert reflexive leadership and thus its relevance in the region. Embedded in an interdisciplinary research team, as well as in a civil society and media network, MEDRESET evaluates the effectiveness and potential of EU policies by investigating whether current policies still match the changing geopolitical configuration of the Mediterranean area. The perceptions of EU policies and the reasons for their successes or failures are assessed by surveying top-down and bottom-up stakeholders on both shores of the Mediterranean. Country-tailored policy recommendations for the EU will be given for four key countries: Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia
Introduction:Entanglements in EU-Middle East Relations
No full textHave relations between the European Union (EU) and the Middle East really changed substantially or is there actually more continuity than usually assumed? The aim of this introductory chapter is to take stock of the continuities, ruptures and entanglements in EU-Middle East relations. Since the end of the Second World War, the decolonization process in the Middle East, the challenges of pan-Arabism, the US hegemony over the Middle East, the Venice Declaration, the aftermath of the Cold War, the intensification of US-European military presence in the Middle East and the Arab uprisings have all contributed to key moments of rupture in these relations. All these events represent flashpoints which expose vulnerabilities, weaknesses, fallacies and incoherencies in these relations. This introduction frames and presents the 41 chapters of this Handbook which are organized in six parts – Historical Constructions/Perspectives; Theoretical Approaches/Perspectives; Multilateralism and Geopolitical Perspectives; Contemporary Issues; Peace, Security and Conflict; Development, Economics, Trade and Society. Each chapter and collectively these contributions highlight how EU-Middle East relations are multifaceted, varied and complex. This Handbook provides a useful entry point for an informed exploration and nuanced understanding of the multiple themes, actors, structures and processes that mould these relations
Contesting ‘EU as Empire’ from Within? Analysing European Perceptions on EU Presence and Practices in the Mediterranean
No full textIn a context of ongoing popular resistance in the Arab world, the question of how this has affected the view of the EU’s role in the region by European stakeholders has not yet sufficiently be inquired into. How is the EU – and its presence and practices particularly – perceived within its own core, by its policymakers on one hand, and by the European civil society it also involves in its policies, on the other? Institutional stakeholders see the space the EU occupies in the Mediterranean as rather limited with other powers growing in the region. In contrast to this, resistance of European civil society to the current EU role is growing. Not only is the EU now criticized of massive human rights violation itself, specifically in the area of migration, but its whole development model is called into question, including within Europe itself. At the same time, civil society presents a strong alternative imagination of the EU as a non-colonial presence whose practices are based on a universal human rights approach with a strong focus on socio-economic rights/social justice and the inclusion of a variety of actors
Towards a More Reflexive EU in the Mediterranean. Final Policy Recommendations of MEDRESET
Full text linkIn MEDRESET’s final policy recommendations, aimed at the new European Parliament, Commission and High Representative, we propose that the EU should become a more reflexive actor in the Mediterranean. Three related steps are key to take into this direction: (1) Substance: Begin to have periodic screening reports of EU policies and the possible harmful effects they have, and set up a study commission to reflect on a new development model for the whole Mediterranean, Europe included. (2) Actors: Work with local non-co-opted civil society and include it in all stages of policy-making towards third countries. (3) Instruments: Come forward with a reconciliation, “do no harm” and dialogue policy
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