Abstract

The article analyses the major crisis that, before and in the course of the pandemic, have overwhelmed European policies on asylum to analyse their determinants and political repercussions. Comparing different crisis and chaotic events demonstrates how these can be seen as failures produced by the shift of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) towards security logics and paradigms of management. We refer to a broad series of transformations projected at the geopolitical level, of the networks of actors entrusted with the control of borders and from the point of view of receiving societies. At all these levels clearly emerge identities, networks and patterns of spatial governance that paradoxically undermine EU authority and integration by exploiting its same policies, resources and representations