"L'agenciarisation de la politique européenne d'immigration et d'asile", 2020, pp. 17-27, collection "Confluences des droits", Aix-en-Provence, DICE, AMU.

Under the impact of an unprecedented combination of political, economic and social factors, the Mediterranean is one of those places where history has, over the last few decades, gone into overdrive.

It is against this backdrop that the "Middle Sea" has become the epicentre of what is loosely termed the "migrant crisis". These telluric movements are probably only in their infancy.

Yet the negative evocative power of the phrase is enough to illuminate the tension between the Union and the States that make it up. Confronted with a challenge that is clearly putting the very unity of the Union to the test, the EU has opted for institutional innovation. To anticipate, channel and manage these human flows, in 2004 it set up Frontex, now the European Border and Coast Guard Agency. This development is the result, in the field of migration, of a drive to modernise public action in order to make it more effective. We are thus entering a world where the quality of institutions is judged by their "performance", without being certain that their ability to respect fundamental rights is one of the relevant indicators. Basically, the question is whether the Union has managed to find a balance acceptable to all its members between the safeguarding imperatives inherent in its very quality as a democratic area and the attractiveness of an Eden that the damned of the earth are prepared to join no matter what the cost.

Breaking free from exclusively disciplinary analyses, this book takes us to the heart of the contradictions that undermine the process of agenciarisation as seen through the prism of the 'migrant crisis in the Mediterranean'.

Confluence des droits , Vol. 11 , 158 pages.