The Securitization Of Migration

This book examines the process integrating international migration into security frameworks that emphasize policing and defence in Canada and France. It also describes how the concepts of power underlying security frameworks affect the treatment of migrants and immigrants. This book is one of the first to systematically and comparatively examine the role of political agents, media agents, and contextual factors in the process of securitizing migration.

Since 9/11 Western states have sought to integrate 'securitisation' measures within migration regimes as asylum seekers and other migrant categories come to be seen as agents of social instability or as potential terrorists. Treating migration as a security threat has therefore increased insecurity amongst migrant and ethnic minority populations.

Humanised accounts of restrictions on mobility are rarely the focus of debates on irregular migration. Very little is heard from refugees themselves about why they migrate, their experiences whilst entering the EU or how they navigate reception conditions upon arrival, particularly from a gendered perspective. The Securitization of Migration and Refugee Women fills this gap and explores the journey made by refugee women who have travelled from Somalia to the EU to seek asylum. This book reveals the humanised impact of the securitization of migration, the dominant policy response to irregular migration pursued by governments across the Globe. The Southern EU Member State of Malta finds itself on the frontline of policing and securing Europe’s southern external borders against transnational migrants and preventing migrants’ on-migration to other Member States within the EU. The securitization of migration has been responsible for restricting access to asylum, diluting rights and entitlements to refugee protection, and punishing those who arrive in the EU without valid passports –a visibly racialised and gendered population. The stories of the refugee women interviewed for this research detail the ways in which refugee protection is being eroded, selectively applied and in some cases specifically designed to exclude. In contrast to the majority of migration literature, which has largely focused on the male experience, this book focuses on the experiences of refugee women and aims to contribute to the volume of work dedicated to analysing borders from the perspective of those who cross them. This research strengthens existing criminological literature and has the potential to offer insights to policy makers around the world. It will be of interest to academics and students interested in International Crime and Justice, Securitisation, Refugee Law and Border Control, as well as the general reader.

Immigrants and minorities in Europe and America have responded in diverse ways to security legislation introduced since 9/11 that targets them, labeling them as threats. This book identifies how different groups have responded and explains why, synthesizing findings in the fields of securitization, migrant integration, and migrant mobilization.

This open access book offers an innovative account of how relief organizations’ visual depiction of Syrian displacement contributes to reproduce and reinforce a securitized account of refugees. Through visual analysis, the book demonstrates how the securitization process takes place in three different ways. First of all, even if marginally, it occurs through the reproduction of mainstream media and political accounts that have depicted refugees in terms of threats. Secondly, and more consistently, through a representation of Syrian displaced people that, despite the undeniable innovative aesthetic patterns focusing on dignity and empowerment, continue to reinforce a visual narrative around refugees in terms of victimhood and passivity. The reproduction of a securitized account takes also place through the dialectic between what is made visible in the pictures and what is not. At the same time the book identifies visual glimmers and minor displacements in the humanitarian discourse that have the potentiality to produce alternative discourses on refugees and displacement beyond the mainstream securitized ones. By showing how relief organizations’ visual representation contributes to the securitization of the refugee issue, this book provides a great resource to students and academics in migration, visuality, humanitarianism and securitization, as well as social scientists and policy-makers.

This open access book investigates the complexity and the modalities of securitization of migration and border control at the EU level. It discusses and compares how different EU institutions and agencies have been deploying different logics of security, e.g. humanitarianism or management of risk, while framing increased migratory flows and so called migration crisis as a security problem. The book argues that the (re)development of EU migration and border control policies in response to increased migratory flows of 2015 have revealed an increasingly tangled nature of securitization of migration in the EU. This is reflected in the intertwining of security logics where migrants and human mobility tend to be securitized through different, sometimes multiple, interpretative lenses at different stages of policy framing. From a theoretical point of view, the book develops a fresh analytical perspective that further contributes to burgeoning discussion on securitization theory. By bridging the literature on policy framing and securitization it makes a significant contribution to the debates on both securitization and migration. As such this book is of great interest to students, academics, policy makers and all those working in the fields of EU politics, migration, security, and international relations.

Since 9/11 Western states have sought to integrate 'securitisation' measures within migration regimes as asylum seekers and other migrant categories come to be seen as agents of social instability or as potential terrorists. Treating migration as a security threat has therefore increased insecurity amongst migrant and ethnic minority populations.

This book analyses the extent and the modalities of the securitization of asylum-seekers and refugees in the EU. It argues that the development of the EU asylum policy, far from 'securitizing' asylum-seekers and refugees, has led to the strengthening and codification of several rights for these two categories of persons. However, the securitization of terrorism and the links that have been constructed between asylum, irregular migration and terrorism in the wake of the various terrorist attacks that have taken place in Europe in the last few years have had a significant impact on the ability of asylum-seekers to gain access to asylum systems in the EU. From a theoretical point of view, the book develops an original analytical framework that draws upon and further develops security studies – more precisely securitization theory – by connecting it to the literature on policy venues and venue-shopping. It therefore makes a significant contribution to the debates on both securitization and migration. Empirically examining the entire development of the EU’s policy towards asylum-seekers and refugees, from its origins in 1993, this book will be of great interest to students of European and EU politics, refugees, migration, security, terrorism and counter-terrorism, security studies and International Relations.