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Becoming Mediterranean: semantic shifts in German asylum and refugee discourse

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Abstract

The European ‘refugee crisis’ has seen the Mediterranean described as: a hot spot in need of better governance and border policing; the world’s deadliest border; and as a humanitarian catastrophe. In Germany, the initial default option was to treat the various articulations of crisis as localized. Keeping the Mediterranean (and thus the crisis) at arm’s length was facilitated by the Dublin II regulations stipulating that asylum claims would only be processed in the state where they were first made. Only in 2015, when large numbers of refugees arrived, the Mediterranean was rearticulated as concerning ‘us’ rather than ‘them’. Focusing on German asylum and refugee debates, this article traces such semantic shifts to show how, counter-intuitively, becoming Mediterranean is enabled by a tacit process of de-Europeanization which instrumentally calls for European solutions only when the ‘crisis’ reaches the national level.

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Notes

  1. This resonates with an understanding of discourse as a ‘social system of signification’ (Milliken 1999).

  2. On the politics of humanitarianism see also Fassin (2011), Barnett and Weiss (2008), Kennedy (2005), Hyndman (2000), Perkowski (2016).

  3. The extraordinary situation of September 2015 notwithstanding, the claim that Merkel had illegally opened the borders counter-intuitively presupposes closed borders within the Schengen space. Green Party MP Konstantin von Notz has referred to it as the Dolchstoßlegende unserer Zeit—the stab-in-the-back myth of our times (See https://twitter.com/konstantinnotz/status/1007187591869947904?). This is a reference to an influential far-right trope in the Weimar Republic according to which Germany lost World War I only because revolutionary sailers and workers had stabbed the army in the back. On temporalization and the problematic assertion of points of origin see also Zehfuss (2020).

  4. See Deutscher Bundestag (2013), Drucksache 18/27, Schriftliche Fragen mit den in der Zeit vom 22. Oktober bis 1. November 2013 eingegangenen Antworten der Bundesregierung, 1 Nov. 2013, here specifically question 8–10, Available at http://dipbt.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/18/000/1800027.pdf. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine.

  5. See https://presse.wdr.de/plounge/tv/das_erste/2013/10/20131017_monitor.html. Monitor, a news magazine programme on the public ARD TV channel known for its investigative reporting, had quoted Frontex executive director (until January 2015) Ilkka Laitinen saying that he could not deny that push-back operations had taken place even after the European Court of Human Rights had found them to be in violation of human rights because they would force refugees without case-by-case review to be returned countries where they might face torture. The European Court of Justice had subsequently rescinded their legal basis. Laitinen expressed his regret for push-back operations still taking place. The report had also mentioned that German officials were routinely involved in Frontex operations thus creating the plausible expectation that this should be a matter of concern for Germany.

  6. See Deutscher Bundestag (2015), Plenarprotokoll 18/145, 14279-14284B for Merkel’s speech and 14284B-14298C for the debate. Available at http://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btp/18/18145.pdf.

  7. Notably, even though the two issues are articulated together as expressive of Germany’s continuing commitment to Europe, they point in radically different directions. Authorizing Frontex as an independent supranational border police of last resort is a securitizing move par excellence. Calling for burden-sharing in the distribution of refugees among member states, on the other hand, is an initiative where Germany, having taken in more refugees than other member states, can take the moral high ground.

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  1. University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Benjamin Herborth

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Herborth, B. Becoming Mediterranean: semantic shifts in German asylum and refugee discourse. Int Polit 59, 525–540 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-021-00342-z

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