Capitalizing on a crisis: the European Union Trust Fund for Africa
| Published date | 01 December 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13540661241260606 |
| Author | Darshan Vigneswaran,Nora Söderberg,Natalie Welfens,Saskia Bonjour |
| Date | 01 December 2024 |
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JR
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https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661241260606
European Journal of
International Relations
2024, Vol. 30(4) 791 –817
© The Author(s) 2024
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DOI: 10.1177/13540661241260606
journals.sagepub.com/home/ejt
Capitalizing on a crisis: the
European Union Trust Fund for
Africa
Darshan Vigneswaran
Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands
University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
Nora Söderberg
European University Institute, Italy
Natalie Welfens
Hertie School, Germany
Saskia Bonjour
Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Abstract
How do foreign policies and transnational projects become resistant to critique?
This article seeks to better understand the legitimation of policies by studying the
work involved in justifying public funding of migration and development initiatives.
Government expenditures on migration and development have been increasing in
recent years, despite widely shared concerns regarding the merits of such initiatives. In
this article, we focus our attention on the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for
Africa (EUTF). The EUTF has been assessed by EU agencies as a successful intervention,
while never hiding its inability to achieve demonstrable progress toward its goals of
addressing the “root causes” of the 2015–2016 migration “crisis” in the Mediterranean.
We argue that this fund was legitimized as a valuable policy intervention through the
efforts of European officials and Monitoring and Evaluation experts to, borrowing from
Bourdieu, “convert capital”: translate one form of power resource into another form.
Based on document analysis and 25 key informant interviews, we trace how EUTF
officials successfully converted capital by, first, mobilizing political resources to generate
economic capital for migration-related projects in Africa; and second, transforming
Corresponding author:
Darshan Vigneswaran, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, 1018WV Amsterdam, The
Netherlands.
Email: d.v.vigneswaran@uva.nl
1260606EJT0010.1177/13540661241260606European Journal of International RelationsVigneswaran et al.
research-article2024
Original Article
792 European Journal of International Relations 30(4)
some of this economic capital into more lasting symbolic capital which justifies long-
term migration and development initiatives. In short, money becomes legitimacy. We
argue that this “conversion work” helps us to better understand the continued growth
and upholding of migration and development financing which consists not only of raw
funds but also involves continuous efforts to legitimize these expenditures as inherently
valuable policy interventions.
Keywords
Migration governance, development, EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, capital,
monitoring and evaluation (M&E), Bourdieu
Introduction
Migration management is reshaping European cooperation with Africa. As countries in
Europe have politicized the migration of people from the African continent, the European
Union (EU) and its member states have been diverting official development aid to migra-
tion management beyond their borders and making assistance contingent on recipients’
compliance with readmission agreements (Carrera et al., 2018; Den Hertog, 2016).
These policies, and the expenditures and projects that they generate, have been curi-
ously resistant to critique. Social scientific research and internal oversight agencies have
questioned the basic premises of projects that aim to limit migration through develop-
ment assistance, arguing that development may stimulate rather than curb mobility (e.g.
de Haas, 2005). And yet, the “narrative” of using aid to “address the root causes” of
migration (Zaun and Nantermoz, 2022) remains a powerful and seemingly common-
sensical device for legitimating Europe’s development assistance. Indeed, migration has
now been mainstreamed in European development budgets, with the dedication of 10
percent of Europe’s €79 billion Neighbourhood, Development and International
Cooperation Instrument for 2021–2027 to migration. It seems that expenditures on
development-migration projects have become valuable in and of themselves, regardless
of their success in curbing migration to Europe. How did they acquire such inherent
worth?
Our efforts to understand this outcome take inspiration from, and endorse, the argu-
ment that EU development funding serves a signaling role, assuring external and internal
observers that the EU is “doing something” about migration (Andreas, 2011; Boswell,
2007). We also note that even after implementation of projects, expenditures are being
evaluated as successful initiatives of migration management, despite a lack of demon-
strable progress in addressing mobility aspirations or patterns. What form of political
“magic” explains this outcome?
We became intrigued with this dimension of the problem in our study of the European
Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF). The EUTF is a temporary pool of
donor resources. It was established in November 2015, as part of the EU response to the
so-called “refugee crisis.” EUTF-funded programs and projects have been approved in
26 African partner countries to a value of €4.9 billion (European Commission, 2022a).
EUTF fund managers present an overall positive assessment of the performance of the
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