In “The Third Wave” Samuel Huntington highlights that “democratization in one country encourages democratization in other countries”. Huntington points out that demonstration effects were “strongest among countries that were geographically proximate and culturally similar.” Turkey’s democratic reforms and its economic success – the country rose to the world’s largest 16th economy- revived debates on its role as a model for the neighboring Middle East. Turkey’s democratic reform process was unleashed by the EU’s decision to open membership perspective. Political and legal reforms in light of accession to the EU curtailed the army’s powers, broadened civil liberties and improved the human rights situation, while adaption to the acquis communautaire further supported the neoliberal transformation of the Kemalist state. Given growing skepticism regarding Turkey’s “Europeanness” more and more EU states (e.g. France, Germany, Austria) began to foreground Turkey’s Muslim identity and to see its future role more as that of a multiplier of democracy and market economy in its “Islamic neighborhood” rather than as a future full-fledged member to the EU. Turkey has increasingly served as a model of a “good Islamic democracy”. The ruling AKP, a reformed Islamist party, itself a produce of Turkey’s neoliberal transition has been a key element. The AKP stands for de-ideologization, adaptation to globalized markets and pragmatic policy-making. It is an example for a successful marriage of post-modern Islamism with neoliberalism and democracy. The AKP’s integration with the democratic and economic system inspired reform oriented Islamists in the Arab world and helped them calm down arguments against their own struggle for political participation. Interestingly, in the wake of the Arab Spring, it has been mainly Arab secularists and liberals who have pointed out to the Turkish model, while many of the new Islamist governments have stated that the “Turkish model” is not replicable in the Arab world; mainly for its secular framework. Thus, Turkey has served as a model due to what it is perceived and not what it does. And, how Turkey has been perceived has very much varied in the eyes of the beholders. This made it possible to read different things into the “Turkish model” and to promote it for adverse interests. References to Turkey as a model for transitions in the Arab world have ignored the significant differences in the causes and the nature of the transition processes, and they have neglected the critical debates taking place within Turkey.

This paper examines the history of European migration-control practices and how these have influenced relations between Europe – defined here as the EU and its Member States – and Arab states. It analyses these relations through the lens of three interrelating concepts: securitization, externalization and privatization and argues that the combination of these three policy drivers has shaped European and North African/Arab migration-control practices over time and space. Since the 1990s externalized European migration-controls in Arab states have traditionally been understood in spatial terms as resulting from: the process of securitization that has dominated much foreign policy practice and debate and attempts by European actors to avoid their legal obligations under the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. However, this paper argues that this fails to adequately relay the complex power relations bound up in and responsible for particular practices of migration-control while also removing all agency from Arab states themselves. By presenting North Africa, specifically as an empty space in which Europe exercises its own policies and in focusing almost exclusively on the spatial externalization of controls as a by-product of wider trends in securitization, previous work on migration-controls has failed to take account of the agency of Arab states and the externalization or outsourcing of controls to private actors. This paper argues that the externalizing of controls to Private Security Companies (PSCs) has a role in shaping the interests of the EU, its Member States and Arab states. In looking at this blurring of public and private interests in determining migration-control policies and practices the paper points to the emergence of a borderscape industry in the Mediterranean, showing how this industry both relies on and transcends state-driven political economies.

The revolutionary upheavals and the winds of change that swept across the southern neighbourhood of Europe in 2011 prompted the EU to formulate a set of initiatives for a “partnership for democracy and shared prosperity with the Southern Mediterranean” based on meritocracy, performance and differentiation principles, offering “more” market access and mobility, as well as political, institutional and financial assistance “for more” democratization and reforms. But, as the Moroccan case illustrates, the European good intentions and inflated promises not only veil a shortage of assistance firepower in the context of a lingering economic crisis, soaring sovereign debts, and sluggish growth in the old continent but also an absence of a clear vision and strategy towards the south, divergence among member states, and a tendency to preserve vested interests. Not only has the EU Mediterranean policy become increasingly securitized, but the meagre increases in assistance packages, the continuing protectionist attitudes of some member states such as Spain and France, and the fuzziness of future prospects reflect a continuing inadequacy between Europe’s grandiloquence and its feats, and a widening gap between its value-laden blueprints and its accomplishments. The EU still keeps a largely positive trade balance towards Morocco and its recent “trade concessions” still allow European exporter a wider access to the Moroccan market while competitive Moroccan agricultural and fisheries exports are still subjected to calendar and quota restriction. On the other hand, the Moroccan case not only reflects the extent and efficacy of the EU’s predominantly rhetorical approach towards its southern neighbours but also provides an example of how the same discourse can be reproduced and instrumentalized to bolster the Kingdom’s own image internally and externally. In spite of the limited outcomes it reaps, the Moroccan state manages to capitalize on the “privileged partnership” and the “good pupil” reputation with the EU to project the image of a democratizing, modernizing and europeanizing country both for internal and external consumption. The skilful hype around the largely empty shell of Morocco’s “Advanced Status” agreement with the EU that was signed in 2008 with no concrete substance to date provides a revealing instance for this tendency.

Analysis of the causes of the Arab revolutions has understandably focused on the domestic pathologies associated with authoritarianism, whose symptoms were exposed and challenged by the popular uprisings. These include bloated security apparatuses, entrenched inequality, rampant corruption and cronyism, restrictive labour policies, systematic violations of civil and political rights, suffocated public spheres, and distorted wealth concentration. However, often overlooked in both academic and journalistic accounts of these revolutions have been the grievances expressed by protesters that touch on what Rashid Khalidi (2011) has referred to as their ‘collective dignity’. This form of dignity relates to the subordination of the political, economic, and social well-being of the people of the region to the dictates of foreign economic and geopolitical interests. In both the Tunisian and Egyptian contexts, this has been expressed as frustration at their country’s abbreviated sovereignty in a global economic order seen to be enforced by and for the benefit of international financial institutions and their western backers, and a global ‘security’ order that is perceived to have privileged the security and prosperity of the ‘west’ at the expense of the region’s own states and peoples. Furthermore, from the perspective of many of the activists involved in these uprisings, the structural inequality at the heart of relations between Arab and western states is a legacy of European colonialism, which was only partially overturned by their post-colonial leaders. Hence, for these activists, the Arab revolutions not only challenged domestic despotism, but also the post-colonial structures and international actors that enabled, maintained and benefited from this form of rule. This paper will engage various IR theories, including post-colonialism and constructivism, to conceptualise the dynamic relationship between the international and domestic spheres in the context of the Arab revolutions, focusing on Tunisia and Egypt in particular. It will consider the impact of collective memories of colonialism, as well as popular perceptions of more recent examples of European intervention, including diplomatic and military support given to repressive dictators in return for what are often viewed as indefensible domestic and foreign policy concessions. Of particular concern are states’ adoption of neoliberal policies seen to contribute to structural inequalities between Arab and European states, and government complacency, or even tacit complicity, in the face of Israel’s colonial project and regional aggression.