Fanning fears, winning praise: Egypt’s smart play on Europe’s apprehension of more undocumented immigration

ABSTRACT

This article adds the case of Egypt to the themed section’s overall research interest, examining the extent to which the Egyptian government has reacted in its migration policies to incentives provided by the EU. It shows that Egypt’s 2016 ‘Anti-Smuggling Law’ (ASL), praised as a ‘milestone’, was crucial for the regime’s further power consolidation. Building on Tsourapas’s concept of ‘migration interdependence’, Egypt’s migration policy rather fulfils the purpose as ‘dramaturgical act’, aimed more at pleasing an international audience than improving migrants’ living conditions. Thus, the article also contributes to the widely debated ‘illiberal paradox’ in migration policies.

KEYWORDS:

• Egypt
• migration
• Anti-Smuggling Law
• state security
• European Union

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Francesco Cavatorta, Peter Seeberg and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Annex

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Notes

1. An unofficial translation of the 1954 Memorandum of Understanding between the Egyptian government and UNHCR can be found in Badawy (2010, Annex I). The signing of the MoU on 10 February 1954 occurred two months before the ‘United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees’ (Geneva Refugee Convention) came into force on 22 April 1954, to which Egypt became a party only in 1981.

2. See the text of the law at http://www.refworld.org/docid/58b68e734.html.

3. See the project fiche at https://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/egypt/45632/improving-action-support-national-coordinating-committee-combating-and-preventing-trafficking_en.

4. It is important to differentiate between ‘smuggled’ and ‘trafficked’ people: While the former have been brought across a border with their consent, the latter have been brought across a border against their will, or in a way which they did not consent to. For this group of irregular migrants, Egypt had already passed ‘Law No. (64) of 2010 regarding Combating Human Trafficking’ in which trafficked persons are also understood as ‘victims’; see the text of the law at https://www.wiego.org/sites/default/files/migrated/resources/files/Egypt-Law-No-64-Regarding-Combating-Human-Trafficking-2010.pdf.

5. Roll, 2018, p. 61) rightly argues that crossing a border irregularly remains an unlawful act of behaviour, as the ASL does not expressis verbis declare this as ‘legal’. Thus, before irregular immigrants might reach the UNHCR contact point in Cairo where they could pledge an asylum application, they remain without proper legal protection in case they get arrested by the police.

6. See https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/files/20.08.2018_madad_fund_signed_contracts.pdf.

7. Reibman (2014) links further Western interests, namely fighting terrorism, keeping the region stable and holding Russia as rival sponsor at a distance, as additional reasons why ‘Egypt could leverage these political circumstances to extract more favorable conditions from the IMF’.

8. See http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/glo-act/countries.html#egypt.

9. In January 2017, NCCPIM and NCCTIP got merged to the now ‘National Coordinating Committee for Combating and Preventing Illegal Migration and Trafficking in Persons’ (NCCPIM&TIP); see the committee’s website at http://nccpimandtip.gov.eg. Chairperson of NCCPIM&TIP remained Naela Gabr.

Additional information

Funding

This work has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No [706113].