UNIC & ISS21
Dr Gustavo de la Orden Bosch, University of Deusto
Friday 24th Feb 2023, 3pm-4pm (4pm-5pm CET)
Online Event
This paper analyses the situation at the Franco-Spanish border in the Basque Country. Since 2015, in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, France has temporarily reintroduced border control on several occasions and implemented strict police controls on non-EU migrants in the city of Hendaye. As a result, many people are being detained and returned to Spanish territory when trying to cross the border between the cities of Irun and Hendaye. The legality of returns is justified in the readmission agreement signed between both States in Malaga in 2002. However, the operational difficulties in the implementation of this agreement lead to border agents carrying out de facto returns without a legal procedure. “Hot returns” are executed in break of national and international legal framework. In addition, as a preventive mechanism, many migrants are detained by Spanish police. Trying to avoid the selective police controls performed on racial bias, people cross “clandestinely” the internal border swimming the Bidassoa river, 50 meters in distance between Spanish and French shores. Three migrants drowned in 2021. Another four lost their lives when hit by a train while sleeping on the tracks. The exceptionality of internal border controls poses a set of problematic issues: the inoperability of the Schengen Area in practice, the arbitrary enforcement of extraordinary measures, the suspension of Schengen rules at internal borders, the reinforcement of securitization and criminalization of migration, and the denial of rights to protection to asylum seekers.