VOLPE Diana

Units

REPI Recherche et Études en Politique Internationale

REPI is a research unit, mainly dedicated to research and studies in international politics at the Université libre de Bruxelles. It is linked to the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences. REPI fosters fundamental research in the field of international relations and aims at providing a high quality framework for the research in this field (PhD dissertations, publications, conferences...). Depending on available resources, members of REPI can also provide specific expertise for national and international institutions. Furthermore, the research centre encourages the dissemination of knowledge in international relations to a larger audience and represents a convenient space for discussing the teaching of international relations within the university. REPI also organises seminars and summer schools for professionals and young scholars.

Its scientific activities focus on two major areas of international politics: the study of security issues and international public policy (environment, health, international economics, development, etc.). These activities are rooted in several research traditions and schools of thought: foreign policy analysis, political sociology of international affairs, critical approaches to security, international political economy, etc., with the aim of better understanding power issues in international relations at different levels. The research agenda also includes the study of the European Union's external action and the main international institutions.

Director : Christian Olsson

Projetcs

The Italy-Albania Deal: pioneering a new phase of border externalisation

In November 2023, Italy and Albania signed an agreement allowing Italy to transfer asylum seekers to Albania, to process their claims under accelerated procedures in ad-hoc built reception centres (“offshore processing”). To this day, despite political will, policy debate, and several attempts, no EU country has ‘successfully’ replicated Australia’s offshore processing model of sending asylum seekers to Nauru and Papua New Guinea, where they faced documented human rights violations. This has not prevented the Italy-Albania offshoring deal to be presented as an innovative measure and a silver bullet, to be possibly replicated by other EU states or even as an EU-wide approach to asylum and migration. The Italy-Albania deal can be considered a test case for EU member states seeking to externalise migration control further through bilateral partnerships.