Closing the Door to Migrants and Refugees: Assessing Justice in the EU-Turkey Statement

Published on 9 December 2021 in Michela Ceccorulli and Enrico Fassi (eds.), EU’s external governance of migration: Perspectives of Justice. London: Routledge.

Abstract

This chapter, delineating the background and content of the deal signed between the European Union (EU) and Turkey in March 2016, claims that the deal partly complies with an understanding of justice as non-domination. It also shows that the deal does not conform with the understandings of justice as impartialityor justice as mutual recognition due to the lack of protection of both individual and group rights, and as far as involved actors’ voices have been given full hearing. The EU’s lowering of its international protection standards for (and pressure on) third countries as part of its containment and externalization-based policies of international protection is not enough to prevent global problems such as uncontrollable migration streams and security issues related to the threat of terrorism. Based on the findings driven from the empirical research and desk research, this chapter concludes that the parity between the EU and Turkey comes at the expense of the EU’s normative role as well as of migrants’ rights and specific needs in a way that shows a negative score in terms of justice as impartiality and mutual recognition.

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