The European Migrant Crisis and the Future of the European Project

Abstract

The relentless news stories of recent years about the devastating numbers of lives lost in the Mediterranean, the living conditions endured by migrants seeking passage into and across Europe, and the incoherent political responses of European leaders, lead us to conclude that the European migrant crisis has been a case study in European political failure. The continued absence of effective responses to what are, clearly, inordinately complex problems reflects many of the wider political challenges facing elites and societies in Europe. But the ‘migrant crisis’ and its consequences are also a dimension of the ‘coming crisis’. Its political, economic and social implications are deeply troubling on their own, but all the more so when viewed alongside the long-standing economic crisis in southern Europe, and the political pressures for disintegration that surround an increasingly imperilled European project.