The recognition of the root causes of irregular migration started right at the Valletta meeting and signified a process of social learning for the EU partners. In rhetorical action, social learning differs from the conventional cognitive approach of learning that aims to fill a knowledge vacuum. Social learning is a process of gaining transformative knowledge through which the learning agent reconstructs and redefines concepts and approaches (see, Nedergaard, 2005; Klindt, 2011). The persuasiveness of African rhetoric increased the shared understanding of addressing the root causes of irregular migration to the extent that the EU actors initiated a self-reflection process, including situating themselves as part of the root causes. In this regard, policy learning led to a policy change.
Identifying the impact of rhetoric on the target audiences, be they elites or the general public, requires examining opinions, attitudes and behavior before and after rhetoric reaches them.
One way of understanding the effects of rhetoric is by analyzing the sensitivity of cultural and political contexts that compels the rhetors to drive audiences towards certain understandings of rhetorical dimensions (Miskimmon et al., 2014:9ff). Another dimension is understanding how audiences consume political information and attribute credibility to rhetoric. This is achieved by examining the nature of discussions within the target audience’s political and non-political spaces, such as legislative spaces and media (see Lees-Marshment, 2009: Chapter 2). Once these processes have been taken into account, the researcher can identify the diffusion of rhetoric and the end impact.
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Based on the Valletta Summit and the period after, I argue that the European partners were not merely passive recipients of neocolonial rhetoric. They soberly understood the critical message and internalized it. The internalization of neocolonial rhetoric took place in both political spaces such as political debates/forums within Europe and non-political (legislative) spaces such as the EU parliament. Other spaces of re-affirming the migration policy shift included the EU-Africa summits in the following years. These venues were some of the spaces where the EU actors expressed new engagement norms with African partners. Learning (i.e., resulted from rhetorical entrapment) was also evidenced in contemporary debates on the EU foreign actions in irregular migration control.
The issues, referred to by African partners as neo-colonialism, were later decently articulated in the EU parliament. The EU leadership spearheaded rhetoric of addressing the root causes of African irregular migration while highlighting the existing inadequacies within the international system that produced Africa's marginalization, forcing people to migrate irregularly. The mentioning of the root causes of irregular migration in the EU parliament was a genuine expression by the EU actors of re-constructed values and norms of engagement within the EU-Africa mobility framework. The learning process was partly catalyzed by increased securitization of irregular migrants, where irregular migration was labeled as an invasion or African exodus. Besides, the 2015 migration crisis increased the EU’s attention to rhetoric by African partners expressing the classical questions about the EU-Africa relations' impartiality and the root causes of African irregular migration. The rhetoric of root causes got adequate attention in the European political spaces. However, Italy took the colonial rhetoric outside of the EU parliament in a radical approach. It accused the EU actors at large and some member states of being the root cause of African irregular migration through proliferating colonialism.
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Political actors have varying abilities to construct rhetoric, sometimes even those that can work against them. Moreover, political actors have many identities and can apply them based on the context (Miskimmon et al., 2014:5). In the European political spaces, Salvini (the Italian prime minister) and Luigi De Maio (the deputy prime minister) condemned France and other former colonizers for maintaining colonialism – which they termed the root cause of African irregular migration. I thus argue that unlike in the seemingly orderly rhetoric in the EU parliament, Italy's fierce colonial rhetoric was instrumental. As mentioned elsewhere, Italy had already agreed to compensate Libya for colonial injustices. Matteo Salvini aimed to promote Italy’s identity as a moral actor for agreeing to compensate Libya for colonial injustices. They aimed to demonstrate what other EU members needed to do. Italy colonized only one African country - Libya. Already having established an agreement to compensate for colonial injustice, no European country could have accused Italy of being part of the root causes of African migration, which Italy condemned. Interestingly, France had colonized most of the countries in west and central Africa that were major home countries of African irregular migrants.
The construction of a high-power rhetoric by Italy originated from two sources. First, Italy was the EU’s migration gate. According to the Dublin system, irregular migrants were to be returned to the country of entrance for asylum processing, where many ended up being returned to Italy. Italy’s political leadership saw the African rhetoric of managing the root causes of irregular migration as a sustainable way of getting rid of the migration pressure. The failure of the Dublin System led to other EU member states refuse to share the refugee burden leaving Italy overburdened with irregular migrants. Secondly, the European migration crisis created a favorable domestic and international political environment for quick policy learning. Italy was strategic to use political debates to articulate the colonial rhetoric. In other words, the political contestation about the refugee crisis made the colonial rhetoric more pronounced and influential to the target audience.
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Italy’s rhetoric that the EU member states were part of the root cause of African irregular migration through neo-colonialism had such a powerful effect that France considered the rhetoric inappropriate and summoned the Italian ambassador in France. While in Burkina Faso, the French President, Emanuel Macron, reassured that the French mission in Africa was not to propagate colonialism or neo-colonialism. But, when anti-French colonial and neo-colonialism rhetoric intensified in Francophone countries, France threatened to withdraw its military from the peacekeeping mission in West Africa.