TY - JOUR

T1 - The use of pseudo-causal narratives in EU policies

T2 - the case of the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa

AU - Zaun, Natascha

AU - Nantermoz, Olivia

N1 - Funding Information: This paper is based on the research funded by the Norwegian Research Council (Project No. 288372). The authors would like to thank their interview partners for sharing their insights. Moreover, they would like to thank André Bank, Ingunn Bjørkhaug, Kamel Doraï, Christiane Fröhlich, Luicy Pedroza, Guri Tyldum, Karin Vaagland as well as three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - The EUTF aims to address the ‘root causes of migration’ by providing development assistance to countries of origin and transit. While it is allegedly based on scientific evidence, scholarly consensus suggests that development assistance is ill-suited to address irregular migration–which is something that some of the actors who designed the EUTF were aware of. We advance a new framework for understanding the emergence and success of pseudo-causal narratives (i.e., narratives relying on unproven and/or disproven causal claims) in EU policymaking. Using frame analysis, we argue that the pseudo-causal ‘root causes’ narrative was adopted against better evidence because it was plausible, compelling and had been used in EU external migration policies before. Faced with the salience of migration and the urgency to act in late 2015, and due to the absence of any clear ideas of what other measures could work, EU actors adopted this narrative to demonstrate that they were actively responding to the ‘crisis’. The narrative met little contestation, since it met the concerns of both those who were keen to stop migration and those who wanted to preserve the core of previous EU development policy.

AB - The EUTF aims to address the ‘root causes of migration’ by providing development assistance to countries of origin and transit. While it is allegedly based on scientific evidence, scholarly consensus suggests that development assistance is ill-suited to address irregular migration–which is something that some of the actors who designed the EUTF were aware of. We advance a new framework for understanding the emergence and success of pseudo-causal narratives (i.e., narratives relying on unproven and/or disproven causal claims) in EU policymaking. Using frame analysis, we argue that the pseudo-causal ‘root causes’ narrative was adopted against better evidence because it was plausible, compelling and had been used in EU external migration policies before. Faced with the salience of migration and the urgency to act in late 2015, and due to the absence of any clear ideas of what other measures could work, EU actors adopted this narrative to demonstrate that they were actively responding to the ‘crisis’. The narrative met little contestation, since it met the concerns of both those who were keen to stop migration and those who wanted to preserve the core of previous EU development policy.

KW - development aid

KW - EU external migration policy

KW - European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa

KW - evidence-based policymaking

KW - framing

KW - policy narratives

KW - Politics

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85101940000&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/13501763.2021.1881583

DO - 10.1080/13501763.2021.1881583

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:85101940000

VL - 29

SP - 510

EP - 529

JO - Journal of European Public Policy

JF - Journal of European Public Policy

SN - 1350-1763

IS - 4

ER -