Description
This paper concerns recent political plans in Denmark and the United Kingdom striving to externalise asylum and refugee residence to non-European territory. After defining ‘externalisation’, the paper traces the policy drive’s evolution since the 1980s, linking it to the Australian ‘Pacific Solution’ and the American Guantanamo project. It then examines the political-bureaucratic processes and the engineered mediatization in Denmark occuring around the introduction of Law 226 in 2021. It then engages with the scheme’s implications for priorities in the foreign policy arena, and identifies several arguments advanced for the policy: i) legitimacy, ii) responsibilityfor asylum systems, iii) cost-efficiency, and iv) humanitarian agency. These arguments are assessed critically with reference to developments in the United Kingdom and criticism from the EU Commission, the African Union and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. By tracing the renewed efforts to externalise asylum through the prism of Danish foreign policy the paper discusses a highly topical development in European politics.
