JEANDESBOZ Julien

Units

REPI Recherche et Études en Politique Internationale

REPI is a research unit, mainly dedicated to research and studies in international politics at the Université libre de Bruxelles. It is linked to the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences. REPI fosters fundamental research in the field of international relations and aims at providing a high quality framework for the research in this field (PhD dissertations, publications, conferences...). Depending on available resources, members of REPI can also provide specific expertise for national and international institutions. Furthermore, the research centre encourages the dissemination of knowledge in international relations to a larger audience and represents a convenient space for discussing the teaching of international relations within the university. REPI also organises seminars and summer schools for professionals and young scholars.

Its scientific activities focus on two major areas of international politics: the study of security issues and international public policy (environment, health, international economics, development, etc.). These activities are rooted in several research traditions and schools of thought: foreign policy analysis, political sociology of international affairs, critical approaches to security, international political economy, etc., with the aim of better understanding power issues in international relations at different levels. The research agenda also includes the study of the European Union's external action and the main international institutions.

Director : Christian Olsson

Projetcs

ADMIGOV

ADMIGOV aims to promote an alternative migration governance model and takes seriously the principles laid out in the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 (2015), the New York Declaration (2016) and later UN documents. We study how alternative approaches to migration governance can be better designed and put into practice. However, rather than proposing a top-down study of existing migration policies, ADMIGOV studies the reality of existing polices and practices on the ground to improve migration governance in line with the principles set out by the UN.

This is the unique analytical feature of ADMIGOV. We bring together analyses of migration governance in practice and in key times and spaces and relate these analyses to the key structuring principles of migration governance as laid out by the UN. This is done to better understand the current gaps between principles and practices and in order to provide insights and recommendations for migration governance in the future.

ADMIGOV is methodologically unique. We bring analyses from along the migration ‘chain’, from entry through to exit and incorporating key issues such as labour migration, protection needs and development goals. ADMIGOV has chosen several case studies of key times and spaces in migration governance, including the Greek islands, Lebanon, and Turkey, to better understand the most important and most problematic processes at play. Additionally, through the involvement of the Danish Refugee Council, ADMIGOV has access to possibly the largest dataset on migrants on the move today. The 4Mi data of the Danish Refugee Council will give ADMIGOV access to and help us generate more data than a single research team could normally collect.

In short, ADMIGOV is designed to combine the analyses of existing policies and practices on the ground in key times and spaces with the wide- ranging 4Mi data to generate new indicators of good migration governance, helping the EU put the UN principles into practice.

Offshoring/outsourcing control: mapping the international and domestic actors of border and migration control in Tunisia

The project examines the structure and organisation of the professional world of border and migration control in the Mediterranean, following the 2010-2011 uprisings in North Africa. A longstanding trend in the border and migration control policies and practices of the European Union (EU) and its Member States is the offshoring and outsourcing of controls to third countries. 

The project asks two interrelated questions. First, how is this offshoring and outsourcing realised in practice, beyond the prescriptions adopted in Brussels? Second, how do practices of offshoring and outsourcing segue with the evolutions of a state apparatus confronted with major socio-political transformations? 
The project thus aims to generate new empirical knowledge, but also to systematise the examination of the radicalisation hypothesis. This is done by studying the social space within which the offshoring and outsourcing of border and migration control takes place in Tunisia, through the conduct of 30 to 50 semi-structured interviews with international and domestic actors dealing with these questions. By way of these interviews, the project collects, categorises and serialises the viewpoints of these actors on general prescriptions related to their work and how they go about it in practice, and builds their prosopography or collective.