Depoliticisation through employability: entanglements between European migration and development interventions in Tunisia

ABSTRACT

Accompanied by public demands to reduce migration by creating perspectives ‘at home’, employability projects have become an important component of migration and development policies. While research has revealed the sedentarism underlying these policies and questioned the effectiveness thereof, more recent work has found that stakeholders are, in fact, aware of the potential increase of migration. However, contrary to analyses that hold that such interventions are carried out because they meet the different interests of both migration and development actors, this paper argues that migration and development interventions are mutually implicated. Examining European employability projects in Tunisia and drawing on interviews with representatives of donors and implementing organisations as well as policy documents, this paper argues that employability activities operate through twofold depoliticised logics. Whereas the focus on employability enables isolating migration from politicised debates across Europe, these interventions promote depoliticised logics of neoliberal selectivity. In centring skills in these interventions, some subjects are rendered employable for the Tunisian and, potentially, European labour market. Others, in turn, are excluded from the participation in migration and development due to a lack of sought-after skills.

KEYWORDS:

• Tunisia
• Europe
• migration-development nexus
• employability
• depoliticisation

Introduction

Despite findings showing that development may increase migration (Clemens and Postel 2018), the ‘root causes of irregular migration’ discourse is featured prominently in contemporary migration governance (Zaun and Nantermoz 2022). Analysing this paradox, Zaun and Nantermoz (2022) reveal that actors have adopted this narrative to, among others, indicate an active response to migratory movements. Moreover, they argue, it combined the interests of stakeholders interested in migration control as well as stakeholders who wanted to maintain the core of European development policies. It is precisely this interplay between migration and development governance that marks the point of departure of this paper. However, rather than regarding these interventions as a comprise between two otherwise distinct policy spheres, I argue that interventions in the realms of migration and development are mutually implicated inasmuch as they propagate market logics. Not only do such interventions obstruct the mobilities of some and facilitate the mobilities of others, yet they also engage in the production of workers and expand neoliberal policies (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013). In taking this focus, this paper aims to illuminate the heterogenous governing rationalities underlying the migration-development nexus with a particular focus on employability projects (cf. Ortiga 2021).

Revealing the centrality of employability projects in filtering mobilities and nourishing market-oriented interventions in Tunisia, I hold that these interventions operate through depoliticisation (Kunz 2011). Whereas highly politicised policy areas, such as migration, are isolated from the political arenas in the Global North to render them governable, these interventions reproduce depoliticised logics of neoliberal selectivity and competition with regard to the participation on the domestic labour market and regular mobilities. This is not to suggest that such logics of selectivity are apolitical, but that they are presented as if they are apolitical and mere technicalities. In shifting attention to the entanglements between migration and development and examining the case of European employability projects in Tunisia this paper is situated in two academic debates.

First, taking an interest in the role of development interventions in governing migration, there is some academic work that has analysed what Bakewell (2008) has called ‘sedentary development’ (Dini 2018; Landau 2019; Nijenhuis and Leung 2017). While this body of literature has shown how development interventions aim to contain people and perpetuate ideas of stasis as the essentialised norm, I hold that these do not simply operate through containment (see also Freemantle and Landau 2022). Instead, I argue that such interventions produce workers, expand neoliberal development policies to the Global South and facilitate selected mobility to the Global North (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013). Hence, rather than working through containment alone, these interventions, to cite Pallister-Wilkins’ (2020) argument in relation to the humanitarian logics underlying the EU’s hotspot approach, ‘work as spaces and architectures of effective management’ (995).

Second, there is a considerable amount of research that has pointed to the importance of employability and skilling in migration policies (Awumbila et al. 2019; Bonizzoni 2018; Chatterjee 2015; Chee 2020; Haque 2017; Oishi 2021; Ortiga 2021; Rodriguez and Schwenken 2013). This rich body of literature has analysed how various actors address skills in countries of origin and destination but has paid less attention to the ways such activities have been actively incorporated into migration and development interventions of Global North actors in the Global South. What is more, there has been less focus on the ways employability activities work through sedentarism and mobility while feeding into neoliberal development policies in the Global South. However, as the context of Tunisia demonstrates, European stakeholders consider employability projects a vital link between migration and development policies.

The paper is structured as follows. In the first half, I provide an overview of previous research on the migration-development nexus and the sedentarism underlying such interventions. This is followed by a discussion of literature on how borders operate through selectivity, the role of neoliberal market logics and skills in this regard and the concept of depoliticisation. After describing the methods and the case of Tunisia, the second half of this paper proceeds with the empirical analysis. Applying the notion of depoliticisation, I first analyse the rationales behind these interventions beyond a focus on containment. I then turn to the centrality of skills in circulating logics of selectivity. Finally, I conclude this paper.

Links between migration and development

The relation between migration and development has been widely discussed in migration research and policymaking (see Faist and Fauser 2011). Commonly referred to as the ‘migration-development nexus’, it encompasses an interest in both development or lack thereof as drivers of migration on the one hand, and the impact of migration on development on the other. This includes debates on the benefits of migration for development, stressing the added value of temporary and circular migration, diaspora involvement and the role of migrants as agents of development (Faist and Fauser 2011). Against this background, many researchers and practitioners have highlighted triple-win scenarios, and thereby the benefits for receiving countries, origin countries and migrant themselves. Simultaneously, research has shown that more development often results in more migration, given that transnational relations and social and financial remittances may further increase stayers’ aspirations and capabilities to migrate (Clemens and Postel 2018; de Haas 2021).

Yet while previous research has made valuable contributions to the understanding of the reciprocal linkages between migration and development processes, the governing rationalities underlying the migration-development nexus have received less attention. In focussing on these rationalities, I seek to offer a different angle on the nexus and build on research that has highlighted the ‘sedentary bias’ underlying migration research and policy (Bakewell 2008). Due to this bias, mobility is considered exceptional and a disruption of the essentialised borders of the nation-state and, conversely, sedentary behaviour is regarded as the norm (Glick Schiller and Salazar 2013). Notwithstanding the enthusiasm in the 1990s and 2000s, development interventions in the Global South have thus been rooted in the idea of territorial belonging whereby people should stay in their places of origin (Bakewell 2008). This sedentarism is reproduced in the SDGs (Nijenhuis and Leung 2017) as well as capacity-building activities targeting Global South stakeholders (Dini 2018).

These interventions mount up to what Landau (2019) coined ‘containment development’, rendering absent the often promised ‘chronotope of modernity, entanglement, and hypermobility’ (170). As Landau notes, one significant factor in contemporary interventions is that European actors have increasingly made migration cooperation a precondition to grant development aid to their African counterparts. At the same time, Landau argues, the reduction of the ‘root causes’ of migration has become European actors’ main yardstick as to whether development interventions are deemed successful. But while most of this academic work focuses on how development interventions promote containment alone, Freemantle and Landau (2022) have identified future movements as an important point of reference. In European interventions, African subjects are thus made ready for potential global circulation by engaging in ‘development at home’ (Freemantle and Landau 2022). This, they note, reconciles European restrictive migration policies with its self-understanding as a beacon of individual freedom and progress.

As becomes clear, sedentary ideas of development play a crucial role in contemporary migration governance. However, migration governance through development is not a one-way relationship, as the European Union (EU) Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF), for instance, has been shaped by the involvement of both migration and development actors (Zaun and Nantermoz 2022). Unlike Zaun and Nantermoz (2022), however, I do not understand interventions in these two policy areas as guided by separate interests. On the contrary, inspired by Mezzadra and Neilson’s (2013) work, the argument advanced in this paper is that borders serve the purpose of both migration and development policies by channelling mobilities, expanding market-oriented interventions and creating adaptable workers for labour markets. Analytically, as I show next, such a focus necessitates an engagement with various theoretical perspectives outside of the migration-development nexus debate.

Beyond containment development

Despite the omnipresence of calls to reduce migration, I argue, contemporary migration and development policies cannot be reduced to mere containment. This raises two important questions. How can we better grasp the synergies between containment and selective mobilities, and what are the reciprocal linkages between these synergies and visions of development propagated in countries of origin? In order to address these questions, it is necessary to unpack the operations of borders. While borders have often been solely associated with the hindrance of mobility, they facilitate selective mobility and filter the mobilities of people, goods and capital (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013). Looking at borders through the lens of sedentarism and containment alone would omit the diverse logics underlying border management (cf. Pallister-Wilkins 2020), including the role of regular migration schemes in the governance of migration (Vives 2017). Conversely, acknowledging this heterogeneity of border activities, such as employability projects in the case at hand, reveals that a crucial functioning of borders is to shape a labour force ‘according to the changing and elusive needs of flexible economic systems and labor markets’ (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013, 174).

Acknowledging that border activities channel and filter mobilities for labour markets in the Global North requires to avoid viewing development interventions merely as serving the purpose of containment policies. Simultaneously, however, another important, yet often overlooked, aspect is that these interventions also rest on particular visions of development for the Global South. This renders it necessary to carefully pay attention to the governing logics underlying these development interventions. Consequently, the argument I present here is that as much as these interventions propagate selective migration policies, they also reproduce ideas of neoliberal selectivity in countries of origin.

The notion of neoliberalism has evoked various discussions across the social sciences, rendering it important to acknowledge the diverse meanings attached to this term. For instance, as Ferguson (2010) notes, while in the Global North neoliberalism is associated with the production of self-governing citizens and the insertion of market logics into the spheres of the state under Thatcher and Reagan, in the Global South it is primarily associated with structural adjustment programmes in the 1980s. Despite the ongoing importance of efforts to propagate free trade, privatisation and other market-oriented measures in the case of Tunisia, this article primarily takes an interest in neoliberalism as a governing rationality that propagates ‘market principles of discipline, efficiency, and competitiveness’ (Ong 2006, 4). Notwithstanding, this is not to deny the significance of the former, for ideas of individual responsibility underlying employability projects are intertwined with broader market-oriented measures propagated in Tunisia and elsewhere (see Ferguson 2010).

Importantly, firmly embedded in market logics (Peck 2008), neoliberal governing rationalities also frame political and social phenomena as apolitical (Ong 2006). More generally, such depoliticising moves can be observed across policy areas but have been particularly prominent in migration and development policies (İşleyen and Kreitmeyr 2021; Kunz 2011; Li 2007; Suliman 2017). On the one hand, in depoliticising identified problems, stakeholders can remove certain highly politicised issues, such as migration, from the political arena to render these governable (Kunz 2011). However, depoliticising moves should not be read as void of politics, but in themselves promote neoliberalism as a political project that carries an ideological commitment to market logics (İşleyen and Kreitmeyr 2021). Hence, on the other hand, in turning issues into technical problems other depoliticised logics are disseminated. They are guided by neoliberal market principles that put ideas of competition at the centre.

This brings me back to the workings of borders vis-à-vis migration and development policies. Against the backdrop of the selectivity underlying such interventions, it is necessary to understand how labour power is reproduced and which specific neoliberal solutions are propagated by stakeholders working in the realms of migration and development. Here, I suggest paying more detailed attention to the notion of employability, as it intensifies ideas of selectivity and individualises the ability to find employment (Ortiga 2021; Williams 2009). Specifically, against the backdrop of Mezzadra and Neilson’s (2013) observation that ‘just-in-time and to-the-point migration now shapes migratory policies’ (138), it is necessary to grasp how employability projects create people with specific skillsets as early as in origin countries in order to filter and channel mobilities.

In migration research, the question of skills has been widely discussed, for skills have become significant criteria for the participation in regular migration. Indeed, some scholars have noted the importance of pre-departure trainings in shaping would-be migrants’ subjectivities and skills in countries of origin (Awumbila et al. 2019; Chee 2020; Ortiga 2021; Rodriguez and Schwenken 2013). Other scholars, again, have primarily focused on the ways receiving countries redefine and address skills (Bonizzoni 2018; Chatterjee 2015; Haque 2017; Oishi 2021). This scholarship has aptly shown how a variety of actors are involved in the production of skills, whereby ‘categorisation processes rely on complex power relations between social actors with competing objectives’ (Hercog and Sandoz 2018, 454). Such a focus reveals that in presenting skills as an apolitical outcome of merits rather than a socially constructed process embedded in racialised, classed and gendered hierarchies, the categorisation of migrants legitimises the exclusion of most (Liu-Farrer, Yeoh, and Baas 2021).

But the majority of this research has focused on how subjects are governed towards being the ‘ideal migrant subject’ (Rodriguez and Schwenken 2013) in origin and destination countries, and has paid less attention to the implications for market-oriented policies in countries of origin. One important exception is the work of Ortiga (2021) who focuses on the notion of employability in relation to the Philippine’s labour-export oriented professions. Specifically, Ortiga shows that in the wake of decreasing global labour demands the state attempts to increase nurses’ employability through reskilling for the domestic labour market and thereby outsources the responsibility to find employment. This thus shows that the notion of employability does not only require the ability to adapt to changing needs in receiving countries (see Williams 2009), but also has implications for the labour market participation in origin countries. Such a focus, I contend, is particularly required in view of European employability projects that circulate market logics as part of the governance of migration and development in Tunisia.

The question that arises, then, is what this implies for the visions of development propagated in countries of origin. Here, I suggest focussing on how discussions around the ‘skills mismatch’ (Adely et al. 2021) serve as a justification used by development actors as to why countries in the Global South are lagging behind economically. For instance, Adely et al.’s (2021) analysis of this discourse in Jordan reveals the hegemony thereof and the consequent omission of socio-economic inequalities and the reliance on low-wage jobs. This, therefore, entails a depoliticisation of the factors shaping the participation in the labour market, whereby ‘the existing political, social and economic status quo is left untouched’ (İşleyen and Kreitmeyr 2021, 252). Such an understanding is anchored in individualistic ideas of labour market participation (Adely et al. 2021) and feeds into development interventions that disseminate market logics of competition (Li 2007). Both the participation in ‘development at home’ (Freemantle and Landau 2022) and regular migration are thereby contingent on seemingly depoliticised ideas of skills and employability that disguise such interventions' neoliberal ideological foundations.

Building on this previous work, I hold that employability projects mark a depoliticised response that invokes market logics in the governance of migration and development. In governing subjects towards competitiveness, the responsibility to be economically successful, both in the country of origin and abroad, is placed on each individual subject (see also Farrugia 2019). These projects thus become central activities that filter mobilities and feed into market-oriented development policies in the Global South. Consequently, in taking the centrality of skills and employability into account, the limitations of a focus on mere containment become evident. Following the discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of this article, I now turn to the data collection and situate these interventions in the European governance of migration and development in Tunisia more broadly.

Empirical material and methods

The empirical analysis in this paper relies on physical and online data collection conducted between 2019 and 2022. This includes semi-structured interviews, participation in workshops and informal conversations in Tunis in August 2019 and between January and March 2020. Due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, further interviews were conducted online via interviewees’ preferred video calling platforms. The interview material consists of 26 semi-structured interviews with 27 representatives of donors, development agencies, IOs, and INGOs working in the context of Tunisia. The interviewees represent the main stakeholders financing and implementing employability projects as part of European migration and development policies. In order to ensure the anonymity of interviewees, I do not mention their organisation nor the specific European context in which they are working.

In this paper, I analyse 15 projects funded by European stakeholders that address skills, primarily in relation to employability but also as part of activities targeting entrepreneurship. Importantly, these interventions do not form a coherent 'European' migration and development policy, but reflect different interest and follow different strategies. This also means that some European states, such as Austria and the Netherlands, merely finance activities locally, whereas others, as I illustrate, stress the importance of regular migration. In the interviews, the representatives of stakeholders were asked about the role of migration policies in their development programmes and vice versa more generally and the specific role of skills development therein. This allows for a better understanding of the rationales behind and aims of these interventions as well as how migration and development are problematised. At the same time, this enables locating the importance ascribed to the notion of skills in both policy areas. The interview data are complemented with policy documents, including action plans, programme evaluations and reports. Prior to the empirical analysis, however, I now give a brief historical account of European interventions in the fields of migration and development in Tunisia.

European governance of migration and development in Tunisia

For a long time, Tunisia has been high on the agenda of European interventions in the fields of migration and development. The long-standing history of migration between Tunisia and Europe ranges from so-called ‘guest worker programmes’ in the 1960s to undocumented migration and the harqa since the 1990s.¹ In the wake of the implementation of the Schengen Agreement in 1995, Tunisia became an important partner in European stakeholders’ efforts to externalise migration control. The closer cooperation between Italy and the EU with the Ben Ali administration in the 1990s paved the way to Law 2004–6. Adopted by the Tunisian government in 2004, this restrictive migration law criminalised human smuggling and irregular migration, and thereby, turned the Tunisian government into a ‘cerberus of European borders’ (Ben Jémia 2007).

The emergence of Tunisia as a key regional partner in the fight against irregular migration as well as terrorism was deeply intertwined with a neoliberal development model (Mullin and Patel 2015). Embedded in the narrative of an ‘economic miracle’, Tunisia quickly turned into a poster child of economic liberalisation as of the late 1980s (Hibou, Meddeb, and Hamdi 2011). In repeatedly financing and thereby legitimising the Tunisian government’s activities donors, most notably the EU were, in Hibou, Meddeb, and Hamdi's (2011) words, ‘at the heart of the miracle’ (35). However, the staggering numbers of unemployed graduates as of the 1990s stood in stark contrast to the self-proclaimed ‘economic miracle’ (Paciello, Pepicelli, and Pioppi 2016, 11). Consequently, from the outset of Ben Ali’s presidency, the state depicted itself as the vanguard of youth policies and implemented various initiatives to integrate youths into the labour market (Murphy 2017, 676). But these initiatives were accompanied by a paternalistic discourse which presupposed that youths need guidance on the one hand, yet also must be responsible and self-sufficient citizens who are not reliant on the state on the other (Idem: 686).

In reality, however, these various initiatives did not improve the socio-economic situation of young people (Paciello, Pepicelli, and Pioppi 2016). Instead, youths had to find low-waged employment, particularly in export-oriented sectors, engage in precarious self-employment in the informal economy and rarely got hired after completing youth employment initiatives (Idem). As in many other contexts, these measures have thus led to further precarisation and informalisation, especially among the youth but also among other marginalised groups (Feltrin 2018), and continue shaping the social and political landscape in contemporary Tunisia. At the same time, what can be observed since the 1990s is a shift in the composition of migrants, where increasingly Tunisians with higher formal education engage in the harqa (Herbert 2022), while doctors, ICT specialists and engineers are actively targeted by recruiters (M’charek 2020). Undoubtedly, migration governance remains a contentious issue in these relations, where positions differ between the EU and Tunisia as well as among European development and security actors (Lixi 2019). As I show in the empirical analysis, it is this complex setting that forms the backdrop of current European employability projects.

Depoliticising the participation in migration and development

In the EU trust fund, it is very clear: ‘fighting the root causes of irregular migration’. First of all, ‘fighting the root causes’ does not mean to prevent migration, but to prevent irregular migration, because this is associated with a lot of risks and so on. Scientifically speaking, what we are doing is very limited, because we know that the more we enhance the situation on the local labour market here in Tunisia and increase the income level – just to boil it down to these indicators – then we can scientifically see that migration also increases simultaneously. Perhaps the irregular ways will decrease a bit – I doubt this as well, because having a job here does not equate with getting a work visa in Europe. But what definitely increases is the opportunity to leave, no matter which way. And therefore, it is actually a fallacy of development policies to say: ‘If we create jobs and increase the income levels in their countries, then they will not cross the sea anymore'. But unfortunately, we have to work with these policies and have to try to make sense of them in a meaningful way as good as possible. (Interviewee 12, Implementing organisation project officer, August 2021).

Stakeholders are aware of the potential increase of migration through development interventions, and the above quote is but one of many examples of this realisation. Replying to a question as to whether their activities can be seen as an antithesis to the aim of the EUTF to prevent migration, the project officer from an implementing organisation in Tunisia clarifies that the EUTF attempts to prevent irregular migration instead of migration per se. Conversely, the interviewee points out that while it is a ‘fallacy of development policies’ to prevent migration through development, they must work with such political demands.

This political salience of migration across European destination countries and consequent demands to reduce (irregular) migration through development is also mentioned by the following interviewee, who explicitly draws a connection to domestic politics:

I mean, that is how we sell the development cooperation to the population in our country. And that is surely how Miss Merkel does it in Germany as well. But we know very well that the more development cooperation we carry out in these countries, the more people come to our countries. Until a certain limit, it increases people’s ability to find a job in Europe, to make a life in Europe. And only after a certain threshold they can actually lead a good life in their country. Until now they will migrate rather more than less. (Interviewee 3, Former donor project officer, January 2020)

The project officer’s explanation as to why such interventions are financed and implemented resonates with Zaun and Nantermoz’s (2022) findings. Precisely due to the political salience of migration in the donor country and other contexts, such as Germany, stakeholders attempt to actively intervene in the fields of migration and development. These interventions are thus also a result of nationalistic politics across European countries and widespread anti-migrant sentiments. Echoing this sense of political urgency, another representative of a donor links the start of their employability programme in Tunisia to what has been framed as a migration crisis in 2015. The project officer points out that ‘it came up in 2015 when there was this peak of migration to Europe. Migration became, well, for everybody the main area to work on policy wise’ given that ‘the migration issue covered all the headlines in all international media’ (Interviewee 10, Donor project officer, June 2021).

As becomes clear, the issue of migration plays a key role in European interventions and, as a donor project officer notes, requires a holistic approach towards migration:

Migration is a phenomenon. You are not going to stop it. You can try to manage it, but it will continue because it has always existed. It’s true that it has to be seen as a global, I would say opportunity, some would say a global threat, but as a global opportunity and as such it should be managed. The existence of a centralised team in Brussels helps in having a kind of holistic approach to migration from security to development. (Interviewee 13, Donor project officer, September 2021)

In emphasising that migration is a phenomenon that some actors regard as a ‘global threat’ the interviewee points to the political salience of the issue across Europe and elsewhere in the Global North. Nonetheless, the project officer holds that this marks a one-sided response which omits the necessity to govern migration holistically in order to reap the benefits of migration for economic development in Tunisia and Europe. At the centre of this holistic governance of migration is the idea of migration management, for it calls for an approach towards migration that must go beyond mere containment.

However, while migration is a highly politicised topic in policy and public debates in Europe, stakeholders implementing projects in Tunisia can detach their activities from these political arenas and the focus on migration containment. Consequently, the depoliticisation of migration through a focus on development renders it a governable field of intervention on the ground. What can, therefore, be observed in such interventions is the strategic deployment of logics of de/politicisation in relation to the issue of migration depending on the target audience. A project officer from an implementing organisation explains this as follows:

It is actually about the explicit interest [of the donor] in migration containment. Speaking from my perspective, if we would not be dependent on the donor, me and my colleagues on the ground would not declare containing migration as a goal. But, of course, it is the overarching goal of the project, but in the actual project implementation it is about the creation of perspectives, dignified living conditions and self-fulfilment, these whole aspects. […] But, as I said, in the implementation on the ground it is not as if we promote and implement it in the sense of ‘We are implementing a project to contain migration’. That is also not how we communicate it, of course with our partners, but not with our beneficiaries at the end of the day, because, I think, that would only make little sense in the implementation. (Interviewee 14, Implementing organisation project officer, September 2021)

Accordingly, the donor finances the project as they are explicitly interested in containing migration. This requires the implementing organisation to embed their project in the broader political discourse of migration containment. In practice, however, this goal is side-lined when carrying out project activities. Instead, the implementing organisation is primarily interested in ‘the creation of perspectives, dignified living conditions and self-fulfilment’ which, as I show in the next section, entails the dissemination of market logics of competition. Despite the political salience of migration, implementing organisations are thereby partially able to cut themselves off from the political discussions in the donor country.

Consequently, these discussions across Europe differ from the implementation on the ground in Tunisia, as a project officer from another implementing organisation points out:

So, we are the smallest unit. Prior to us, a lot of other people have discussions at different levels right up to Brussels. And their discussions probably differ from our discussions locally at the EU delegation. And I always think that I would like to get everyone from Brussels or the rest of Europe to Tunis and place them here. Of course, we are all driven because that is where the money comes from. But nevertheless, there is a small space where we can do things differently, maybe not completely, but practise differently, implement differently, discuss differently with the partners. (Interviewee 12, Implementing organisation project officer, August 2021)

The interviewee points to an important distinction between the political discussions in Brussels and elsewhere in Europe and the implementation in Tunisia. Indeed, another project officer from an implementing organisation points to their advantageous position, for they are ‘the ones that work on the field, like on the ground with the young people’ (Interviewee 5, Implementing organisation project officer, February 2020). Whereas implementing organisations are regarded as the ‘smallest unit’, the fact that they can partially detach themselves from the contentious debates in Europe allows these actors to concentrate on projects beyond a mere focus on containment. Yet this raises the question of what it means to, as the above interviewee stresses, ‘do things differently’ and ‘discuss differently with the partners’.

On the one hand, stakeholders consider the focus on development an antipole to security activities, such as border patrols and readmission agreements, in order to ‘maintain a balance between all the border policies’ (Interviewee 12, Implementing organisation project officer, August 2021); see also Vives (2017) for an analysis of the interplay between different strategies in the case of the cooperation between Senegal and Spain). Consequently, this not only allows for a removal from the political arenas in donor countries, yet also marks a concession towards Tunisian authorities and their constituencies (see also Lixi 2019). This, interviewees hold, means that containment policies alone would not get a hearing among Tunisian officials, but calls for policies that channel investments of diasporas and European companies and allow for the opening of certain sections of European labour markets.

Such components that include the mobility of labour and capital can, therefore, be found across EU-funded projects, such as ProGreS Migration that, amongst others, established a diaspora incubator, or a programme termed ‘Towards a Holistic Approach to Labour Migration Governance and Labour Mobility in North Africa’ (THAMM) which facilitates labour migration to Belgium, France and Germany.² Besides these EUTF funded programmes, individual European states have also financed similar skills development activities, such as various activities that offer limited circular or permanent migration to Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. This balance between development and security activities becomes particularly important because, as one donor representative phrases it, ‘when all the migrants want to go to Europe then the [Tunisian] government is very much seeing it as a European problem, not a Tunisian problem’ (Interviewee 21, Donor project officer, February 2022).

On the other hand, while the depoliticisation of migration renders it a governable field of intervention, such an approach simultaneously feeds into other depoliticised logics. More specifically, migration and, importantly, also development are presented as technical issues that need to be governed through a focus on competition and selectivity. Talking about youths who got intercepted when attempting to engage in the harqa, one interviewee captures the core of these logics in the following way:

Because you need to find a solution, alternative solution for them so they stay, and they don’t try [to migrate irregularly]. And also, to raise awareness about the risk and that the solution is not to emigrate because if you emigrate in an irregular situation, you will be deported. […] Because unfortunately in Tunisia people when they come from Europe, they give the image that it’s there, you go, and you find money and collect money and come back. They don’t describe the real situation, that by working hard, as you can work in Tunisia, you can succeed in Tunisia and you can succeed everywhere. […] I mean, they need to trust the country; they need to trust themselves and they can go but you need to go through regular channels. (Interviewee 7, Implementing organisation project officer, February 2020)

The project officer from an implementing organisation holds that economic success in Tunisia and, potentially, Europe must be achieved through hard work. This, according to the interviewee, represents an antithesis to how migrants depict economic prospects in Europe upon return to Tunisia. Instead, operating through a discourse that segments and categorises workers, solely hard-working subjects who ‘trust themselves’ shall get the opportunity to migrate through regular means. Importantly, this means that youths are made individually responsible for being employable, meeting market demands, and having the right skillsets to do so. While this presents the participation in migration and development as a mere technical result of hard work, such an understanding renders invisible the ideological foundations of categorising workers and migrants according to market logics. It is this discourse of selectivity that is located between skills mismatch and supply I turn to in the next section.

Between skills mismatch and supply

The depoliticisation of migration and development, I show in this section, involves a strong focus on Tunisians' skills as well as the mismatch between skills and labour market demands. Although the skills mismatch discourse has allowed actors working in the field of migration to advocate for the integration of immigrants into the Tunisian labour market, the focus here lies on the interplay between migration and development policies vis-à-vis the employability of Tunisians. With this focus on skills Tunisians are consituted as subjects who are responsible for rendering themselves desirable on the labour market and thereby participate in development and the effective management of migration. Reproducing this discourse of selectivity, a variety of actors are involved in the production and categorisation of skills, such as implementing organisations, private companies that select labour migrants or authorities granting visas.

Stakeholders intervening in the realms of migration and development consider the mismatch between skills and labour market demand a major factor explaining the lack of development in Tunisia, for, as one interviewee notes, ‘Tunisia did an economic reform in 2000 and before but didn’t do an educational reform. So, now you cannot really find what you need as a profile while you have 45,000 or 60,000 graduates each year’ (Interviewee 7, Implementing organisation project officer, February 2020). Although there were some educational reforms in the past, stakeholders hold that these do not match the needs of the private sector. A large number of graduates as well as wider sections of the population are thus categorised and devalued as unfit for the participation in the labour market and development. In a similar vein, as part of a report commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs to explore the potential match between the Dutch labour shortage and labour markets in Jordan, Nigeria and Tunisia, the authors note in view of the latter that ‘[d]espite these educational reforms, the employability of young Tunisians is low’ (Flayols, Jongerius, and de Bel-Air 2019, 1).

In identifying the lack of employability as a key challenge facing Tunisia, the long-standing involvement of European and other actors in market-oriented policies and their impact on the deteriorating situation of many segments of the Tunisian labour force is rendered invisible. At the same time, this individualising discourse puts an emphasis on the responsibility of Tunisians in rendering themselves in demand. Being less or more employable is thus considered a marker of difference that legitimises the exclusion from the domestic labour market and development activities. It is, therefore, first and foremost the Tunisian labour force that has to adapt to the flexible labour market needs, as one interviewee explains:

The way you see it is to give a solution to the high unemployment of young people with a diploma. Now you can see that the solution can come through both ways [staying in Tunisia or going to Europe] actually. Either because, for example, they have a diploma in, I don’t know, law but actually we don’t need lawyers in Tunisia, but we need, for example, people that have an important expertise in marche public [public procurement]. So, it means that you have a certain diploma. With this diploma you don’t get a job, even in Tunisia. But actually, if you are able to reskill your expertise – you already have your educational background and now with, for example, a training of 3 or 5 or 6 months you are able to obtain new expertise which is actually an expertise that is demanded by the employers in Tunisia. Then you will have more possibilities to have a job. […] Because we try to adjust to what is actually needed. If your final objective is to have a job, but your diploma right now is not useful 100%, you know, it is necessary to reskill or to upskill or to also be able to benefit from complementary training, for example, in soft skills or language skills. Even if it is not a 4-year career, but also only within a few months, your employability is going to increase in a strong way, you know. You are going to be more interesting on the labour market, you know. (Interviewee 20, Implementing organisation project officer, November 2021)

Addressing Tunisians’ employability thus means that their skillsets shall be adjusted to the needs of the private sector, be it by targeting hard skills through reskilling or soft skills through upskilling. Essentially, by prioritising private interests over workers such an understanding reproduces market logics. Accordingly, the ones who are not employable cannot participate in the labour market. Echoing this need of employability, another interviewee notes that ‘our aim is not necessarily to educate young people to be civil servants. There are enough civil servants in Tunisia’ (Interviewee 4, Donor project officer, February 2020). Pointing out the mismatch between the demand of the labour market and available skillsets, the interviewee further explains, that ‘the aim is to condition them for the private sector, that they have the necessary qualifications, that the private companies then also recruit people who have been trained in our project’.

Hence, the notion of employability captures the essence of selective development policies inasmuch as Tunisians’ successes on the job market are considered a result of the responsibility of each individual. This re- and upskilling, however, does not only take place in view of the needs of the Tunisian labour market, but also of European labour markets:

Everyone knows that Europe will have huge skills needs during the coming half-century. Although Tunisian skills are generally well trained, we believe that their employability could be improved. On the other hand, too many employment seekers lack any qualifications and no longer have their place in the labour market, neither in Tunisia, nor in Europe, talking about decent work, of course. (Interviewee 11, Implementing organisation project officer, July 2021)

According to the project officer, Tunisians are ‘generally well trained’ yet in need of higher employability. In highlighting that many Tunisians lack relevant skills for both Tunisian and European labour markets, stakeholders establish a discourse that naturalises the precarious labour market situations faced by many Tunisians in Tunisia and abroad. However, this also points to the entanglements between development and migration insofar as the ones that are not considered employable in Tunisia can also not meet the demands of European labour markets. Consequently, as much as interventions in Tunisia attempt to restructure the domestic labour market according to the needs of the private sector, these employability activities are also directed at what the above interviewee describes as ‘huge skills needs’ in Europe.

While employability activities, therefore, play an important role in market-oriented visions of development in Tunisia, some of these activities must also be situated in broader European interests in remaining competitive. In order to do so, another interviewee stresses the urgency of finding workers outside of Europe:

It’s important for the EU to advance in terms of attracting talents from abroad because, as you know, there’s a problem today. But, you know, in a few years it’s going to be even worse in terms of having sufficient talents for certain professions. (Interviewee 20, Implementing organisation project officer, November 2021)

The need to attract ‘talents from abroad’ is a response to current shortages of skills but is depicted as of particular importance for the future needs of European labour markets. This makes it necessary to situate these interventions in a renewed interest in facilitating regular migration to match labour market demands. This warning is also echoed by another interviewee:

We are basing ourselves on what experts say. We are running into an important shortage of qualified labour force from here to 2030. So, in that sense, our philosophy is that the way we can support Europe in tackling this challenge that is up and coming is – and it might not be priority one today, but it will become priority one – that we want to test the waters and try to come up with a durable and, you know, functioning solution to this challenge through migration. Which is not the only solution, but it’s part of the solution and it needs to be, again, safe, regular and orderly. (Interviewee 9, Implementing organisation project officer, June 2021)

The reference to experts points to a labour market analysis of a federation of ICT companies in a European state. Accordingly, current and prospective labour shortages should be met by ‘safe, regular and orderly’ migration. Similarly, the overarching report of the abovementioned study commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs identifies ‘medium and higher vocational professions […] such as engineering, ICT, health, and other professions for which there is high demand in Europe’ in Nigeria, Jordan and Tunisia as a potential source of labour power for the Dutch labour market (Oomes et al. 2019, v). Consequently, in putting skills at the centre of migration policies, desirable workers shall be filtered.

In an effort to meet the demands of European labour markets through market-oriented migration policies, European stakeholders, therefore, expand their activities to Tunisia and elsewhere. The reliance on skillsets available outside of Europe warrants selective migration policies rather than interventions that attempt to contain people in the Global South alone. This interest prompts the authors of the above report to recommend:

[i]f quality [of domestic VET programmes] remains an obstacle, then further study could be made to assess to what extent it is possible to either (a) provide support to strengthen domestic vocational programs, or (2) attract prospective future migrants from these countries at an early stage, by encouraging them to study in the Netherlands. (Oomes et al. 2019, 95)

What only marks a recommendation that sketches out a possible pathway for future studies by the authors is already a reality for many European states. Reflecting a general interest in attracting ‘talents’, this, therefore, reproduces a political interest in disseminating market logics that determine the value of Tunisians based on their ‘value to the labour force’ (Farrugia 2019, 1087). This dissemination of market logics establishes a technical discourse around the participation in ‘development at home’ that categorises workers based on their employability and thereby renders invisible a commitment to a neoliberal ideology. To conclude, let me come back to the above quote of a donor project officer who notes that Tunisia has ‘enough civil servants’ while stressing the importance of adapting their activities to the needs of the private sector. In categorising workers based on their added value to the private sector, this discipling discourse of employability seems like an obvious addition to efforts to promote market-oriented policies writ large. Specifically, this means that in the wake of donors’ demands to lift subsidies and reduce public sector hiring (Aliriza 2020), stakeholders call for a labour force that is responsible for adapting to changing circumstances. Not only does this omit how the seemingly objective notion of skills disguises the racialised hierarchies shaping migration governance (Liu-Farrer, Yeoh, and Baas 2021), but also masks global capitalism's reliance on such hierarchies (Chakravartty and da Silva 2012).

Conclusion

Employability projects have been a salient component of European migration and development policies in Tunisia and elsewhere and have gained further importance in the response to what has been framed as a migration crisis in 2015. These projects represent a depoliticised response within the areas of migration and development insofar as they allow for a removal of the contentious policy issue of migration from political debates across Europe that call for containment. Yet, simultaneously, these activities reproduce depoliticised logics of market-oriented selectivity and govern the participation in migration and development. Contrasting public and academic debates that allude to the image of ‘Fortress Europe’, this article has thus demonstrated that it is worth exploring migration and development policies from a perspective that exceeds ideas of containment alone. This shifts attention to the production of an adaptable labour force in Tunisia, as well as how these interventions faciliate the inclusion of some Tunisians to gain skills and be rendered employable abroad and, potentially, match labour market demands in Europe.

Importantly, these activities are not limited to Tunisia, but similar projects are featured across European interventions in the context of the EUTF and beyond. For instance, the so-called ‘Talent Partnerships’ launched in June 2021 that are part of the European Commission’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum explicitly mention the THAMM programme as a blueprint (European Commission n.d.). Whether and to what extent neoliberal subjectivities are formed through these and other activities in Tunisia and beyond remains outside of the scope of this article, but marks a possible pathway for future research. Furthermore, oftentimes implicit in this article was the role of private capital and the private sector. Particularly against the background of the importance of private investments ascribed by EU policies in addressing the ‘root causes of migration' (McKeon 2018), further work hence needs to unpack how private capital and investments benefit from an expansion of such skills. This would allow for a further understanding of the ways borders facilitate the expansion of the ‘frontiers of capital’ (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013).

Acknowledgements

Earlier drafts of this article were presented at the EISA PEC 2021 and at the ‘Transnational configurations, conflict and governance’ programme group seminar at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). I am grateful to Beste İşleyen and Polly Pallister-Wilkins for organising the conference panel and Darshan Vigneswaran for hosting me at the UvA, and would like to thank the participants, especially Jessica Soedirgo, as well as reviewers and editors for their valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Donationsstipendier and the Forskraftstiftelsen Theodor Adelswärds minne.

Notes

1 The harqa (burning) describes undocumented migration and is a common term used in Tunisia and the rest of the Maghreb (see M’charek 2020).

2 THAMM covers several North African countries, whereas ProGreS is solely implemented in Tunisia.