Migration Policies and Negative Extraversion. Making sense of Euro-African cooperation on migration and its effects

Segnaliamo l’articolo di Ferruccio Pastore (Direttore FIERI) e Emanuela Roman (Ricercatrice FIERI) pubblicato all’interno del vol.36 n. 1/2020 della rivista REMi.Revue européenne des migrations internationales.

Vai all’articolo


Following the crisis of 2015-2016, the European Union and its member states have increasingly prioritised the external dimension of their migration policies. The impact of such key policy development on non-European polities, especially African ones, has so far been neglected by research. Building upon the work of Jean François Bayart, the authors analyse this emerging configuration through the concept of “extraversion”, by expanding its original focus on the intermediation role of post-colonial African leaderships in the exploitation of natural resources by foreign actors. In what the authors call “threat-based extraversion”, governments of non-European migration-sending (and/or transit) states capitalise on securitised international perceptions of migration by positioning themselves as proxy implementers of restrictive migration policies dictated by potential destination states in Europe. The article identifies some potential perverse effects of threat-based extraversion and sketches an agenda for future research.