Post-truth and Demography in the “Refugee Crisis”: The Thanatopolitical “pleat” of the European Union

Abstract

Demographic pressure, along with nationalists threats and xenophobic populist movements, has become part of the story by which the so-called refugee crisis and threatens the architecture of the European Union, starting with the Schengen Treaty. This story is considered a construction of “post-truth”, which conceals that the crisis is the effect of designing a migration policy subordinate to the desire of an ideal unified labor market, that is dissociated from the reality of real migratory flows. This policy is the one that has given more and more space to security and fear, and that has legitimized the inaction before the humanitarian tragedy caused by what we call here “Thanatopolitics.” The use of the demographic argument, the role of Schengen in the construction of the fortress Europe and the refuge policy, and the emotional mobilization of public opinion during the crisis from a selection of the most reproduced images in the summer of 2015 are analyzed.

Keywords: Migration policy, Refugee, European Union, Geopolitics, Post truth.