Mahad Hussein Sallam (bio), Mediapart, Aug. 1,
2025
Translated
by Tlaxcala
Outsourcing
borders, prisons, wars: the major powers are delegating crisis management to
authoritarian regimes, private companies, and militias. This strategy removes
democracy from debate and accountability, sells off its principles, and comes
at a high cost to citizens and the most vulnerable. It is a historic shift
toward distant power that shirks its own consequences.
Faced
with major challenges such as migration, security, justice, armed conflict, and
foreign policy, the major powers are no longer repairing, they are
transferring.
Subcontracting
to authoritarian regimes, outsourcing to gray areas, sending people to distant
peripheries: everything is decided far from the public eye, far from rights. In
the name of technocratic efficiency, states are neglecting the essentials, to
the point of jeopardizing the very foundations of democracy. By delegating,
they are giving up their right to govern. By shirking responsibility, they are
undermining the democratic contract.
This
text questions a global strategy of political abandonment, where outsourcing
and transfer become a mode of governance. A mode of denial.
Emergency
governments and the neglect of politics
For
more than a decade, a watchword has prevailed in the management of major
contemporary crises, such as migration, security, justice, and war: delegate
rather than resolve.
Faced
with the rapid pace of history, states, particularly in Europe but also
elsewhere in the global North, are adopting a reflex that has become doctrine:
outsourcing. Transfer the burden, outsource responsibility, relocate the
consequences. Rather than tackling the root causes—conflicts, structural
inequalities, climate change, postcolonial divide—the powers that be prefer to
entrust the management of chaos to others: often authoritarian third countries,
dictatorships, private companies with no democratic mandate, local militias,
agencies far removed from citizen control.
This
emergency governance, disguised as pragmatism, frees itself from politics. It
sidesteps debate, circumvents popular sovereignty, and trivializes a form of
management by delegation that empties institutions of their meaning.
Presented
as an “effective” solution, this strategy is above all a way of avoiding
responsibility. And, implicitly, a silent dismantling of the democratic
project. Behind this strategy lies a slow, invisible but very real
disintegration of our democratic ideal.
What
becomes of a democracy when it outsources the exercise of its sovereignty?
This
is the central question, the one that is uncomfortable but must be asked: what
remains of a democracy when it delegates the very exercise of its sovereignty?
When
decision-making, coercion, and control no longer belong to the public sphere
but to external actors who are often unknown, opaque, and unelected, what is
the value of the principle of government by and for the people?
This
text explores three areas where this disarticulation of democratic power has
become systemic:
• migration management, transformed into an
outsourced logistical operation, often subcontracted to authoritarian regimes
or private structures with no political mandate;
• criminal justice and prisons,
increasingly delegated to commercial operators or emergency territories where
the rule of law is absent;
• security and armed conflict, where the
privatization of sovereign functions and their delegation to non-state actors
create zones of political unaccountability.
Each
time, the symptoms are the same: growing opacity, documented but unpunished
abuses, structural inefficiency, and above all a radical break with the very
meaning of political action.
Behind
the façade of technocratic efficiency, sovereignty emptied of its democratic
content is taking hold.
Sovereignty
without people, without debate, without control
Migration: externalizing borders, making exile invisible, and
denying the very foundations of human rights.
The
2016 EU-Turkey agreement: the matrix of European cynicism
March
2016. To muted applause in Brussels, the European Union seals a pact with
Ankara. The stated objective: “to stem the flow of migrants.”. The real
objective: to deter, repel, and make invisible.
In
exchange for €6 billion, promises on visas, and a vague hope of reviving
accession negotiations, Turkey agreed to take back all “irregular” migrants
arriving on Greek shores. Donald Tusk, then President of the European Council,
saw this as a “fair and balanced” compromise.
The
reality is quite different: a fool's bargain, in which Europe trades its demand
for rights for the outsourcing of its humanity. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan quickly
turned the agreement into a tool for blackmail, threatening to “open the
floodgates” to force Brussels to bow to his geopolitical interests.
Behind
the hushed language of diplomacy, a rupture has taken place: the outsourcing of
migration crisis management is becoming the norm, sovereignty is becoming a
transaction, dignity is becoming an adjustment variable. Far from being an
isolated case, this pact is becoming a replicable model of deliberate
renunciation.
A
systemic strategy: migration deals with autocrats
Libya: more than €700 million paid between 2017 and 2023 to
coast guards accused of violence, racketeering, and slavery. Exiles intercepted
in the Mediterranean Sea are sent back to detention camps denounced as “lawless
zones” by the UN.
Tunisia: barely signed in 2023, a memorandum of understanding
with Kaïs Saïed (€105 million to “prevent departures”) has led to sub-Saharan
migrants being abandoned in the desert, on the brink of death.
Egypt: In March 2024, Brussels commits €7.4 billion to
Abdel Fattah al-Sissi's regime. Officially for “stability.” Unofficially to buy
an end to departures. All this while tens of thousands of political prisoners
languish in Cairo's prisons.
Sudan: without any official agreement, European funds are
being channeled through NGOs to areas controlled by the Rapid Support Forces,
led by Hemedti, who is accused of crimes against humanity.
This
is no longer a policy, it is a globalized system of delegating inhospitability.
A migration diplomacy built on rights violations, with checks and complicit
silence.
Rwanda:
a laboratory for outsourced asylum
There,
far from European eyes, a new milestone has been reached. The United Kingdom
and Denmark have signed a partnership agreement with Paul Kagame's regime:
rejected asylum seekers will be sent to Kigali, a country where the press is
muzzled, the opposition silenced, and there are no countervailing powers.
Officially,
it is a stable country. Unofficially, it is an authoritarian state transformed
into a deportation hub.
“Asylum
is no longer a right. It is a geopolitical adjustment variable,” warns Amnesty
International.
Delegating
hospitality: ethics turned on its head
The
mechanism is now well-oiled: pay to avoid taking people in, cooperate to better
offload them, negotiate at the cost of human lives.
The moral cost is invisible but profound:
•
The root causes of migration—conflict, global warming, structural poverty—are
neither resolved nor contained. Worse, they are often exacerbated by the very
policies of the powers that claim to be fighting them. And the height of
cynicism is that refugees who have fled repression, war, or the absence of the
rule of law find themselves handed over to the very regimes they left behind,
due to a lack of democracy, freedom, and protection.
• Exiles are turned into commodities, objects
to be bartered between chancelleries.
• European societies are sinking into
denial, lulling themselves into a fantasy of control while the far right
thrives on this mechanism of rejection.
Outsourcing
borders means refusing to look at what we are producing: lives destroyed,
rights trampled, democracy in decline. It means shifting exile elsewhere so
that we can better forget what it says about us.
Justice
and repression: prison as an outsourced service
Prisons
abroad: when Europe outsources its convicts
What
states refuse to take responsibility for on their own soil, they export. This
is the new frontier of contemporary punishment: outsourcing imprisonment.
Norway, 2015. The government rents 242 places in the Dutch
prison of Veenhuizen. Norwegian law is supposed to apply there, but the staff
are Dutch, as are the walls. Justice becomes a service, adjusted by contract.
Denmark, 2021. This is a step further: €210 million to
transfer 300 convicted migrants to a prison in Kosovo. The deal is clear: rid
the country of these “unwanted” prisoners.
Sweden, 2025. The government announces
plans to outsource part of its prison system to other European countries.
Belgium, already a pioneer between 2010 and 2016, spent €300
million to rent 650 cells in the Netherlands. A “partnership” in appearance,
punitive outsourcing in reality.
Behind
these figures lies a managerial logic of punishment. Imprisonment is becoming a
budgetary adjustment variable, an accounting item that can be exported at will.
Prison is no longer a place of rehabilitation or justice, but a human warehouse
with a changeable geography.
Outsourcing
punishment: a double social penalty
The
human cost is ignored:
• Removal = isolation. Prisoners sent abroad
are deprived of their family ties and all social roots.
• Reintegration compromised. How can you
rebuild your life from a cell hundreds of miles from home, in another country,
sometimes in another language?
• Permanent legal uncertainty. Between two
legal systems, prisoners' rights become uncertain, contestable, invisible.
In
this system, prison sentences cease to be an act of justice. They become a
logistical service, outsourced and trivialized. The convicted person becomes an
object circulating in a deregulated penal space.
Readmission
agreements: exclusion under contract
But
prison outsourcing is only the tip of the iceberg. At a deeper level, states
are organizing another form of punitive delegation: readmission agreements.
A
telling example is Switzerland and Swaziland (now Eswatini). An agreement
allows Bern to return people deemed “undesirable” to Swaziland, even if they
are neither from nor have ties to that country.
In
practice, this means deportations without a solid legal basis to a regime
classified as authoritarian by Freedom House.
Here,
“cooperation” is just a word to mask the abandonment of the law. We no longer
judge, we transfer. We no longer protect, we expel.
Outsourcing
justice means abandoning our humanity. It means treating prison sentences as a
cost rather than a political act.
Above
all, it means renouncing the democratic promise of fair, public, and controlled
justice. When the state punishes from a distance, it abdicates its
responsibility. And citizens become a line item in the budget.
War:
proxy conflicts, outsourced violence
• With the blessing of the United States, on
the night of March 25-26, 2015, Saudi Arabia launched Operation Decisive Storm
in Yemen, with the support of a Sunni Arab coalition, in what was already
shaping up to be a proxy war. Behind the scenes, Mohamed Ben Zayed, humiliated
by Iran's confiscation of three islands, reportedly declared: “We will confront
the Iranians in Yemen,” thus delivering
an entire country to the logic of a regional confrontation disguised as
stabilization.
• In Ukraine, European states and the United
States are supplying weapons without
taking responsibility for post-conflict management.
• In the Sahel, French forces are
withdrawing, leaving the field open to private militias or Wagner.
• In Syria, gray areas of control are
multiplying, with no clear mandate.
Who
is responsible for the crimes? Who is watching? Who decides? No one.
What
this delegation is doing to our societies
•
Democratic fatigue: decisions are taken without public debate.
•
Fragmentation: insecurity, polarization, radicalization.
•
Loss of meaning: what is the point of democracy if it no longer protects us?
Democracies
on subcontract: the end of a model?
We
thought we had contained the crisis. In reality, we have exported it.
We
have built a policy of avoidance: short-term, technocratic, depoliticized. A
model where problems are transferred far away, where silence is bought, where
agreements are signed with authoritarian regimes to “manage” what we no longer
want to see: migration, wars, prisons, lives.
Behind
every agreement, every deportation, every outsourced base, there is a
renunciation:
•
Renunciation of our democratic principles.
•
Renunciation of transparency and debate.
• Renouncing
the universal values we claim to embody.
But
this cynicism comes at a price. A colossal price, which the peoples themselves
are paying, and will continue to pay.
Billions
of euros are being spent on outsourcing crisis management, while in our cities,
our countryside, and our neighbourhoods, public services are falling apart,
precariousness is on the rise, and inequalities are exploding.
Politicians
have their eyes only fixed on the next election. Even the opposition now seems
trapped in a logic of political marketing, cut off from the real concerns of
citizens. Visions for society seem to be a distant memory.
Democracy
is becoming an empty shell, a slogan without substance.
What
we have outsourced is not just crisis management.
It
is political responsibility itself.
So
let's ask the real questions:
Are
we at a turning point in our history?
Have
we given up on governing so that we no longer have to choose?
And
what remains of a democracy when it refuses to face up to what it produces?
Any
crisis we refuse to face here, that we transfer, make invisible, or outsource,
always comes back. But this time, not as a fact to be managed, but as a wounded
memory, turned against us, against our principles, against our society itself.
