Paper short abstract:

Dealing with migration has been prioritized in the EU-AU common agenda in recent years. But a de facto emphasis on the securitization of migration management increasingly diverts the EU approach from African frameworks geared towards mobility and legal migration.

Paper long abstract:

Since the 'refugee crisis' crossed the frontiers of Europe, a common EU-AU agenda of dealing with the challenges of migration has visibly gained in importance. In 2015, more than 60 heads of states and government met in Valetta for the first summit between the EU and AU solely dedicated to the topic of migration. In reality however, consultations go back at least a decade with common approaches addressed on a bilateral, regional and continental level. But how does the EU-Africa Action Plan on Migration and Mobility differ from the Valletta Summit Action Plan or the Khartoum Process? Moreover how do these diverge from institutional frameworks developed in the AU and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) including the Migration Policy Framework for Africa?

This paper sketches out a comprehensive picture of the different policy approaches developed by the EU-AU and African institutions, arguing that whilst on paper EU-AU policies advocate a migration-development nexus, in reality migration management is shaped by an increasing emphasis towards securitisation. This is not least because the EU-AU policies focus on extra-African migration despite the preponderance of intra-African migration and fails to comprehensively conceptualise their distinction between 'irregular migration' and 'forced displacement'. The practice of emphasising the security-migration nexus risks reverting long traditions of mobility within the African continent that are reflected in the AU and RECs migration management frameworks.