Europe’s Many Shades of Migration Diplomacy: Unintentional and Enabling?

This talk highlights Europe’s under‑acknowledged role in shaping migration diplomacy by recentering European agency both historically and in the present. Rather than viewing Europe primarily as a target of pressure from states in the Global South, the talk argues that Europe has long acted as an introducer of migration diplomacy through imperial systems of population management, an enabler through externalization and structured cooperation with third countries, and an unintentional practitioner whose policies create diffuse and often unforeseen diplomatic effects. Efforts to control mobility in North Africa, the Sahel, and Turkey repeatedly generate five patterned unintended consequences: greater harm to migrants, exposure to migration blackmail, reputational backlash as partners contrast themselves with Europe, the spread of restrictive EU practices to other regions, and political erosion when European funding strengthens illiberal actors. By broadening the concept beyond deliberate strategy, the talk shows how European migration diplomacy operates through fragmented, indirect, and sometimes concealed forms of power that raise important questions about agency, accountability, and responsibility in global migration governance.

About the Speaker: Juliette Tolay is Associate Professor of Political Science at Penn State Harrisburg. Her research focuses on international migration governance, migration diplomacy, and the politics of asylum. Her work combines conceptual and historical analysis with comparative field research (Europe, Turkey, Latin America) to examine how migration policies function as instruments of power, legitimacy, and international positioning. She has published in leading journals including Millennium, Review of International Studies, Journal of Refugee Studies, and International Migration. Her current research explores temporary protection regimes, post-imperial mobility governance, and the evolving limits of migration diplomacy.