A presentation by Ana Bobic, Hertie School. This event is part of the Fundamental Rights Research Colloquium under the „Transforming Migration Governance: Towards a Solidarity-based Approach“ cluster hosted by the Centre for Fundamental Rights.
Human beings living in the territory of the European Union have been singularly affected by its existence and modes of governance. Multiple crises, wars, and the climate emergency of the past decade have profoundly affected migration patterns and the demographic make-up of the Member States. At the same time, the EU boasts to be a community of values, among them prominently freedom and solidarity. In Hegelian terms, freedom cannot come about through a liberal idea of freedom from interference and individualism, but is decidedly social, mediated through mutual recognition. In other words, we are free only once we recognise that the freedom of others is a condition for our own freedom. Rational political communities are, by extension, those with laws and institutions within which such mutual recognition is possible.
This paper offers a Hegelian critique of the EU’s credentials of freedom and solidarity. Because of the novel interpersonal encounters that EU law creates, the EU challenges traditional ideas of belonging and the other: it transforms traditional notions of national identity, at the same time taking away voice from third-country nationals who seek to partake in the project, either as economic contributors or because they need protection from harm elsewhere. Ana Bobic will argue that the EU, through its law, created a particularly acute hierarchy among human beings, sustained on two opposing logics: the market logic which promotes migration; and the security logic of exclusion and criminalisation.
The very categories which EU law uses for human beings – EU citizen as opposed to third-country national; free mover as opposed to migrant – limit its ability to be a community where mutual recognition is possible. The hierarchies that EU law creates are fluid and highly dependent on personal circumstances, given the Court’s volatile intervention into what is already a restrictive legislative framework. This is exacerbated by recent legislation, which normalises a generous use of detention and criminalises helping those in need. This permanent uncertainty about one’s status is another obstacle to meaningful mutual recognition. Under these conditions, it is evident that the EU as a political community does not respect the basic values that are arguably at the core of its identity.
The presentation by Ana Bobić will be followed by a discussant’s contribution by David Owen (University of Southampton) and a Q&A session with attendees.
