Acting strategically, speaking normatively: The European Union partnership with Niger since the 2014 "migration crisis"

Most of the academic literature on EU global identity over the past two decades has questioned whether the EU should be considered a normative or a strategic actor. Contemporary scholars tend to concede that EU actoreness results from a mix of these two roles. Legitimacy and instrumentalist dynamics co-exist and interrelate, with varying outcomes depending on the issue and the region at stake. Yet the literature exploring the reasons (why) and the modalities (how) through which the EU blends together normative and strategic postures in the external migration field is still scarce. This paper aims to fill this gap by taking stock of the EU-Niger relations on migration since the 2014 “migration crisis”. It shows how EU normative discourse, far from being decoupled from strategic interests, proves useful in legitimising repressive migration policies. The EU institutions dealing with migration: 1) actively pursue (asymmetric) partnerships with third countries. These are particularly effective in delocalising risks and responsibilities outside the EU borders; 2) exploit the humanitarian discourse on migrants to legitimise extra-territorial containment measures. EU actors often corroborate restrictive migration policies appealing to a normative duty to protect migrants from hazardous journeys — thus contributing to the further securitization of migration. In order to explore the relationship between strategic and normative stances, I investigate the goals, means, and impact of EU cooperation with Niger on migration. I examine the migration-security-development nexus, a device through which migration and development policies intermingle with and are driven by security objectives. On the ground, this nexus is substantiated by instruments such as the Migration Compacts and the EUTF. To summarise, the paper aims to shed light on how the EU exploits its normative image and speaks “normatively” to legitimise its strategic role in the field of external migration, with a focus on securitisation practices.