Looking into EU-African Collaboration and Its Rabat Process through a Foucauldian Perspective: A Real Development Collaboration or an Intent to Curb African Emigration towards Europe?

Sammanfattning: The aim of Europe to tackle migratory movements already within the African continent thus minimizing African emigration towards Europe has been a prominent political debate in recent years. The migration-development-nexus is a very important factor to consider, when debating forms of development. De Sousa Santos shows that the critical term, he coins as the “Epistemologies of the South” is that “all of our theoretical thinking in the global North has been based on the idea of the abyssal line” referring to a space in which Northern knowledge constitutes valid knowledge and Non-Western knowledge is less valid and questionable. A causal chain that clearly stems from colonial times. This research deals with the EU-African Rabat Process as a case study by analysing how the notion of development is framed in the official communication of the 4th and 5th Rabat Process Ministerial Conferences in connection to curbing African emigration towards Europe and furthermore, during the migratory crisis by analysing the Valletta Summit 2015. The applied mixed method discourse analysis, a Concurrent Triangulation Strategy, is based on a quantitative word frequency method that is complemented by a qualitative Foucauldian discourse analysis informed by De Sousa Santos’ notion of the “Epistemologies of the South”. Analysis shows that due to diverging interests and the fathoming for cooperation options, the framing of development is based on discrepancies and strong European interests of managed migration and return policies; however, still more comprehensive than mere economic development especially after the UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development.