A comparative analysis of Italy, Hungary and France's migration policies through a biopolitical and necropolitical framework

The topic of immigration from the Global South in Europe has gained significance in the public debate, mostly since the unprecedented influx in 2015, which led to drastic changes in migration policies. The EU and its member states have governed mixed migration flows through a border regime focused on securitization and militarization. Such policies have cost lives at the borders and also in EU territory, and have raised concerns of migrants human rights violations. This thesis will explore both, the de jure and the de facto situation of migration and human rights in Europe, focusing on three countries: Italy, maily the southern area concerned with the influx from the Central Mediterranean Route; Hungary, mainly the serbian-hungarian border, concerned with the influx from the Western Balkan Route; and France, mainly the northern area, in which migrants attempt to take the Channel Route. The scope of this thesis is to assert that the human rights violations are systematic and consequential of the current migration policies; and to explore whether the governance of migration through ‘violent inaction’ is enabled by the EU framework. This qualitative comparison of case studies through most similar cases design follows a constructivist approach and is based on the concepts of ‘necropolitics’, by Mbembe; ‘biopolitics’, by Foucault; and ‘state of exception’ by Schmitt. Several similar ‘inhuman and degrading’ practices are found among the case studies, implicating that public policies on migration must change in order to comply with international and EU law’s fundamental principles of human dignity, prohibition of torture and inhuman treatment, state of law and non-refoulement.