Securitizing migration in times of crisis: private actors and the provision of (in)security

Abstract

This article studies the securitization of migration in times of crisis: the ‘crisification of migration’. In the past couple of decades, there have been three-time frames within the European Union in which insecurity has spread across the population due to a series of events such as terrorist threats, incoming massive refugee flows, or the spread of viruses threatening our health. These events have been marked by feelings of insecurity, reinforced by political and media discourses signaling a particular group of individuals as being the source of these threats to social and national security: migrants. The paper studies this process of ‘crisification’ of migration during the War on Terror, the refugee crisis, and the Coronavirus pandemic. It also studies the role of private actors in framing migration as a security threat and designing policies promoting instability, which later on justify the application of more restrictive measures and higher security controls. One of the most important consequences of these practices is the deterioration of the rights of migrants.