Seeking Asylum in Times of Crisis: Reception, Confinement, and Detention at Europe’s Southern Border Giuseppe Campesi* ABSTRACT This article analyses from a socio-legal point of view how the European Union Agenda on Migration is reshaping the Common European Asylum System by focusing on the impact it has had on the reform of the Italian reception system. After a preliminary examination of the European Union standards on reception, this article focuses on the European Union Agenda on Migration and shows that its main aim is to stimulate frontline Member States to reform their border control and reception practices by strengthening powers for the surveillance and detention of asylum-seekers. It then explores the Italian case, analysing how the hotspot approach has been implemented in practice and the influence it is having in pushing the Italian reception system from a policy model driven – albeit with a certain degree of ambiguity – by humanitarian con- cerns, to a model where security and border control priorities prevail. Finally, it con- cludes by describing some of the main features of the social sorting apparatus which was created by the European Union Agenda on Migration for discriminating between asylum-seekers in clear need of protection who can be relocated to other Member States, and others who should be trapped in the reception systems of frontline Member States. KEYWORDS : refugee crisis, hotspot approach, EU Agenda on Migration, asylum detention, border control 1. INTRODUCTION Many commentators have questioned the nature of the crisis that Europe faced in the second half of 2015, 1 wondering whether it should not be considered a crisis of the European Union (EU) migration policies rather than a refugee crisis per se. Geopolitical instability has certainly fuelled the current humanitarian emergency, but the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) has not been up to the challenge, * Giuseppe Campesi, Senior Lecturer and Aggregate Professor (tenured) in Law and Society, Department of Political Sciences, Aldo Moro, University of Bari, Corso Italia 23, 70123 Bari (Italy). Email: giuseppe.campesi@uniba.it 1 New Kekywords Collective, Europe/Crisis: New Keywords of “the Crisis” in and of “Europe”, Zone Books, Near Future Online, 2016, available at: http://nearfuturesonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/New- Keywords-Collective_11-1.pdf (last visited 24 Nov. 2017); P. Pallister-Wilkins, “Interrogating the Mediterranean ‘Migration Crisis’”, Mediterranean Politics, 21(2), 2016, 1–5. V C Author(s) [2018]. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com  44 Refugee Survey Quarterly, 2018, 37, 44–70 doi: 10.1093/rsq/hdx016 Article Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/rsq/article-abstract/37/1/44/4782499 by guest on 27 February 2018