Imagining Europe from the Outside: the role of perceptions on human rights in Europe in migration aspirations in Turkey, Morocco, Senegal and Ukraine

During the last decade, debates about the meaning of Europe have been prominent in various disciplines (Christiansen et al., 2001; Malmborg and Strath, 2002; De Teyssier and Baudier, 2006; Wilson and Millar, 2007). With the enlargement of the European Union (EU) to 28 Member states, discussions about what exactly Europe is and where it is going are gaining importance (Strath, 2006). However, perceptions of Europe are usually studied from within the EU. In contrast, perceptions of Europe from the viewpoint of non-EU states and their citizens remain largely unexplored — although the field is growing, as this volume demonstrates. The concept of Europe is now of interest not only to European societies but also elsewhere in the world (Wilson and Millar, 2007). Human rights and democracy are central features of the EU, also in its international policies and in its migration and asylum policies. The international EUMAGINE research project,3 which ran from 2010 until 2013 covering four major emigration and so-called transit countries, studied the links between such outside perceptions of the democracy and human rights of Europe and the desire to migrate to Europe. Given that democracy and human rights are core values of the EU, the focus on the role of perceptions of human rights and democracy in migration aspirations and decision-making fits in with (EU) policy as well as academic needs.