The establishment of ETOs in the context of externalised migration control

Affluent states increasingly seek to control migration beyond their borders. One means of doing this has been to relegate migration administration to third states. To illustrate, Australia places asylum seekers offshore, while the EU-Turkey agreement has served to limit the number of Syrian refugees able to access other parts of Europe. In addition, states have set up cooperative arrangements with transit states with problematic human rights records, such as Libya. These practices raise the question whether states remain responsible under human rights law for protecting migrants whose stakes are governed by the third countries with which they cooperate. The first part of this chapter describes the concepts of externalisation and outsourcing of migration control and provides illustrations from state practice. The second part analyses to which extent migration control beyond the border can trigger the applicability of human rights instruments. It is shown how the notion of ‘human rights jurisdiction’ may be further developed so as to accommodate for human rights checks on these emerging practices in the field of migration control.