Canaries in a coal mine: The cayuco crisis and the europeanization of migration policy

Abstract

Understanding how the Spanish state and the Canary Islands dealt with the cayuco crisis and its aftermath is instructional for the current migrant crisis facing Europe. Employing the theoretical lenses of liberal intergovernmentalism and neo-institutionalism, this article studies how the EU has shaped the governance of migration policy using both hard and soft governance. Hard governance refers to coercive legally imposed mechanisms, whereas soft governance may be cooperation or voluntary adoption of EU models. During the cayuco crisis, as thousands of African migrants arrived to the Canary Islands, the Spanish government sought assistance from the EU and its member states via Frontex, and adopted the EU’s externalization of migration policy with Plan Africa, an aid package to stop immigration at its source. Both Frontex and Plan Africa were EU policy prescriptions, that exhibit EU soft governance and the Europeanization of migration policy. As a result, Spain achieved its goal of stopping the flow of irregular migrants, yet the state remained the main actor in migration policy, as liberal intergovernmentalists assert. However, the EU-inspired policies that Spain ultimately adopted during the cayuco crisis have been emulated in the current migrant crisis, inspiring a model for present and future migration policies in Europe.