Discrepancies in European Union policies towards illegal immigration
The securitisation of the visa-overstayer and the irregular migrant Frida Hansen
Autumn 2020
Uppsala University Department of Government Supervisor: Johanna Pettersson
Word count: 13925 Number of pages: 40
Abstract
Visa-liberalisation agreements are commonly used as an incentive by the EU to encourage cooperation within the realm of border and migration management with its neighbouring countries. The ultimate aim of these agreements is to reduce irregular migration to Schengen territory, something that has been perceived as an increasingly urgent issue for European policy makers in the wake of the 2015 ‘migration crisis’. However, the use of visa liberalisation agreements in such a fashion appears contradictory considering that most irregular migrants in the EU most likely are visa-overstayers. This essay takes off in this apparent puzzle and argues that securitisation theory might help us better understand this discrepancy. While the construction of the migrant as a security threat in Europe has been thoroughly examined, differences in securitisation between groups of irregular migrants are often left out of the discussion or only implicitly mentioned. By examining the discourse and practices of a central EU agency in regard to border and migration management, FRONTEX, this thesis shows that visa-overstayers are routinely left out of the securitised discussion on irregular migration, thus rendering EU policies asymmetrically occupied with irregular migration by means of ‘illegal entry’.
However, the thesis also uncovers a more complex set of ideas that show that although visa-overstayers are not conceptualised as threats to security in discourse on par with other categories of irregular migrants, visa-goers and other travellers are, too, increasingly subjected a rationale of surveillance and risk.
1 INTRODUCTION 4
1.1 Aim & research question 5
1.2 Disposition 6
2 IRREGULAR MIGRATION IN THE EU AND THE
EUROPEAN VISA REGIME 7
2.1 Irregular migrants in the EU 7
2.2 Visa liberalisation agreements in context 8
3 PREVIOUS RESEARCH 12
3.1 Securitisation of migration 12
3.2 Externalisation of European borders 16
3.3 Hypothesis 17
4 METHODOLOGY & RESEARCH DESIGN 19
4.1 Theoretical framework: an alternative approach to securitisation 19
4.2 FRONTEX: A most-likely case of securitisation 20
4.3 FRONTEX’s ‘Risk Analysis’ reports 21
4.4 Methodological considerations 22
4.1.1 Analysing securitisation discourse 22
4.1.2 Analysing securitisation practices 24
5 ANALYSIS 27
5.1 The first part: The content analysis 28
5.2 The second part: The interpretive discourse analysis 29 5.3 The third part: Analysing FRONTEX’s securitisation practices 33
5.4 Discussion 36
6 CONCLUSION 37
7 Bibliography 38
1. INTRODUCTION
The borders of Europe have not always looked the same nor have they had the same meanings.
Historically, the borders of Europe were defined by cultural standards and later, following the second World War, by the geopolitics of the Cold War.1 As migrants and asylum seekers have been increasingly perceived as threats to the welfare state and social cohesion, the borders of Europe have come to be conceptualised as the protection against unruly transnational migration to the continent.2 The ‘Europeanisation’ of borders that took off with the introduction of the Schengen area further conditioned the freedom of internal movement with the increased protection of the external borders from threats, such as ‘illegal migration’3 and transnational crime.4
In the last decade, migration has become one of the most contested issues in European politics – to state that the issue of (im)migration and asylum is highly politicised and securitised in almost all of the European Union (EU) member states is as redundant as it is accurate.
Following the ‘migration crisis’ of 2015 in particular, when Europe saw an unprecedented amount of people seeking refuge at its shores and physical borders, the pressure on the EU to restrict access to Schengen territory grew drastically.5 In the wake of the crisis there has been significant efforts made to keep migrants and refugees at an arm’s length from European borders, in effect limiting EU obligations in accordance with international law.
Researchers have convincingly shown that the physical border practices of “Fortress Europe”
has grown increasingly more repressive and the ability for migrants’ to access asylum has reduced considerably in the past years. Interestingly however, the European Commission (EC) itself recognises that visa over-stayers probably constitute the majority of ‘illegal immigrants’
in the Schengen area but there has been few significant efforts made to restrict visa-access to European territory. 6 On the contrary, visa liberalisation agreements have long been used by the European Union to incentivise cooperation on border controls between neighbouring countries and the EU aimed at reducing the ability for people to reach Europe across land- or
1 Delanty, G. ’Borders in a Changing Europe: Dynamics of Openness and Closure’, Comparative European Politics 2-3(4), 2006, pp. 183–
202.
2 Delanty, 2006, p. 190
3 ’Illegal migration’ is in itself a critisised concept.
See for instance: Squire, V. The Exclusionary Politics of Asylum. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
4 Huysmans, J. The politics of insecurity: fear, migration and asylum in the EU. London: Routledge, 2006.
5 Throughout the text, EU and Schengen will be used more or less interchangably given that Schengen legislation since 2006 have been part of the EU aquis.
6 European Commission Website, Irregular migration and return policy, 2020
sea borders. In effect, this acts as a way of ‘externalising’7 the border controls to third countries, away from European territory. In the context of a Europe growing increasingly hostile to migrants, in particular those considered to be on European territory ‘illegally’, how can EU policy makers’ use of practices that might generate more irregular migrants on Schengen territory, undertaken as part of a strategy aimed at reducing them, be understood?
1.1. Aim & research question
The aim of this thesis is to examine EU’s policy of using visa-liberalisation as a means for externalisation of borders and immigration control and the study presents securitisation theory as a possible explanation to this apparent puzzle. The research question can be formulated as follows:
Why is visa liberalisation and facilitation used as a mean for externalisation when visa- overstaying is a common way for irregular migrants to reach the Schengen territory?
To answer this question, this thesis takes an interpretive approach and examines how the construction of migrants as threats to security might affect the policies that are deployed in relation to them. While the securitisation of migrants and asylum seekers in the context of the EU has been thoroughly examined, the different securitisation of different groups of migrants is often left out of the discussion or only implicitly mentioned. This thesis uses the securitisation framework in order to conduct a comparative analysis of the securitisation of different groups of migrants and presents the hypothesis that irregular migrants by means of visa overstaying has largely and routinely been left out of the securitised discussion on migration. It furthermore theorises that this is a core constitutive factor in the creation of differentiated polices in relation to these different kinds of irregular migration and, thus, in relation to different groups of migrants. By examining the representation and construction of different groups of migrants as threats to security by a central European agency in the realm of border and migration management, FRONTEX, the thesis aims to contribute to the broader discussion regarding power in discourse and its effect on our conception of mobility and migration, as well as the subsequent policies deployed in relation to it.
7 Externalisation = (here) the practice of removing border practices away from the territory to which the border adheres to
1.2 Disposition of the study
The thesis is divided into four sections. In the first section, the reader will be presented with the concept of the ‘irregular migrant’ and the state of irregular migration in Schengen, as well as an overview of the institutional framework in regard to the European visa-regime. In the second part, previous research on securitisation of migration and externalisation of borders in the context of the EU will be presented. This will be followed by a presentation of the theoretical underpinnings of securitisation theory and the central hypothesis of the study. In the third section, the case study of the FRONTEX agency will be introduced, along with the methodical considerations of the analysis. Finally, a three-fold analysis will be carried out, followed by a discussion on how the case of FRONTEX can help us understand the apparent paradox in EU policies towards irregular migration.
2. IRREGULAR MIGRATION IN THE EU AND THE EUROPEAN VISA REGIME
The aim of this section is to provide an introduction to the research on the state of irregular migration in Europe and to give an overview of the practices of visa-liberalisation of the EU.
This serves as important contextual background to the subsequent analysis of the level of securitisation of different groups of irregular migrants in the EU.
2.1 Irregular migrants in the EU
According to the official EU definition, an irregular migrant in the context of Schengen is “a third-country national present on the territory of a Schengen State who does not fulfil, or no longer fulfils, the conditions of entry as set out in […] the Schengen Borders Code or other conditions for entry, stay or residence in that EU Member State.”8 Thus, an irregular migrant might have entered the Schengen illegally, have entered legally and then over-stayed their condition of entry, or they might have become irregular migrants after the rejection of a claim to asylum. Someone who enters Schengen territory and claims refuge in terms of asylum does not, however, constitute an irregular migrant, regardless of the way that he or she entered the territory. Thus, migrants by means of Irregular Border Crossings (IBC’s) are not necessarily irregular migrants if they claim protection under international law.
There is no conclusive evidence of the number of irregular migrants that reside on Schengen territory - as to the nature of their situation, many irregular migrants are never detected nor registered. There is, however, strong indications that most people that reside illegally on EU territory first arrived by means of visa. The European commission itself concludes that most illegal immigrants are probably visa-overstayers,9 and a study conducted at the Migratory Observatory at the University of Oxford found that the same were true for illegal residents in the United Kingdom.10 In the United States (US), visa over-staying is monitored much more closely than in the case of the EU. This is probably due to the fact that in the US, overall, the politicisation of the issue visa-overstayers is much more widespread than in case of Schengen.
Their Department of Homeland Security estimated that 1,04% of the people that had visited
8 European Commission Website, Definition of irregular migrant
9 European Commission Website, Irregular migration and return policy
10 The Migratory Observatory at the University of Oxford, Irregular Migration in the UK: Definitions, Pathways and Scale.
2011.
the US in 2018 had overstayed their entry and were still remaining in the country.11 It is not far-off to imagine that the case of US should be comparable to the situation in Schengen. In fact, the lack of comprehensive, EU wide reports on visa overstaying and the ability to move freely between Schengen states might put the over-stayers in Schengen at an even higher overstay rate than that in the US. Using the estimated percentage of overstayers in the US on the EU as an example, that would mean that by means of short-term visas in 201812 alone, 149 000 additional irregular migrants overstayed. In comparison, the detected irregular border crossings in 2018 was around 190 000, including asylum seekers.13
The lack of exact data on irregular migrants by means of visa-overstaying in Europe does not, however, create an obstacle for this thesis. Firstly, the central hypothesis of the thesis is not dependent on whether most irregular migrants arrive in Schengen by means of visa-overstaying or not – what is significant is that visa liberalisation or facilitation represent a risk of more overstayers. Furthermore, the lack of exact data produces an additional argument in favour of the central hypothesis. If visa-overstayers would have been considered to be a great threat to security, they would probably already be monitored to a higher extent. Thus, the lack of comprehensive reports on visa-overstayers can indeed be used as an initial argument for the validity of the hypothesis at hand.
2.2 Visa-liberalisation agreements in context
The visa regime is often seen as one of the most important policy tools in regard to the management of borders, since it enables control in advance of the persons that request access to a territory. Visa restriction policies are a filtering and a screening process, aiming at deterring or restricting access to Schengen territory for potential irregular migrants, terrorists or criminals beforehand – i.e. the ones that pose a risk to the security of the territory at hand.14 The visa regime itself is thus a securitizing tool, since “the fact that a person needs a visa to enter the EU means that he or she is regarded as a potential threat to the Union”.15
11 U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Fiscal Year 2018 Entry/Exit Overstay Report, 2019.
12 Only including short-term visas issued at consulates, not at the borders.
13FRONTEX, 2019. FRONTEX Risk Analysis for 2019 Warsaw: FRONTEX, 2019. p. 9
14 Czaika, M. and Trauner, F. ‘EU Visa Policy’, from: The Routledge Handbook of Justice and Home Affairs Research, Routledge, 2017, p.110.
15 Balzacq, 2008, p. 90
The common EU visa-policy regard the issuance of short-term for third-country nationals while the issuance of long-term visas is a subject of national legislation, but a long-term stay visa gives de facto access to the entire Schengen Area.16 The requirements for short term visas to access the Schengen Area are strikingly asymmetrically distributed globally (see Figure 2.1).
For instance, no citizens of any countries on the African continent have visa free access to the Schengen Area and the same goes for the citizens of most Asian countries, with the exception of Israel, United Arab Emirates, Georgia, Japan and Malaysia.17 The harmonisation of EU visa policy restricted access to the European continent for some citizens in the ‘Global South’
countries that had previously had individual ties to European countries based on their colonial history. The geographically asymmetrical development of the European visa regime mirrors the global, long term trend where the ability for citizens of OECD-countries travel easily has been extended, whereas citizens of non-OECD countries have not had the same expansion of privileges.18
Figure 2.1. Visa-free access for short term stay in the Schengen Area in green,19
If the visa regime is a securitising tool, then the lifting of visa restrictions (i.e. visa liberalisation or facilitation) can be imagined as a de-securitisation tool. In other words, by removing the obstacles that a visa requirement constitutes, the subjects are no longer continuously created as possible threats to security by means of this particular process. Thus, the inequality of access to visa regimes acts as to exuberate the differences in securitisation of migrants from the
‘Global North’ and the ‘Global South’.
16 Czaika and Trauner. 2017, p.110.
17 Map acquired from European Commission Website, Visa Policy.
18 Czaika and Trauner. 2017, p.111
19 European Commission Website, Visa Policy.
The European visa regime and its implementation has often been examined in relation to the international protection mandate.20 The consensus is that the visa policies limit the ability for refugees to seek asylum, since ‘protection from persecution’ is not a valid reason for attaining a visa.21 The filtering process of the visa regime thus exists not only to filter out possible criminals and terrorists, but also those who might seek asylum when reaching European territory. The use of visas for this precise purpose becomes even more evident when examining additional regulations of Member States in regard to specific third countries. In addition to the general common visa policies, member states have the ability to implement requests for Airport Transit Visas (ATV) from nationals of specific third countries. As of now, more than half of the Schengen countries have implemented such a request for Syrian nationals, many whom, because of the ongoing situation in the country, have valid claims to protection under international law.22
European externalisation of border controls happens partially within the framework for the Global Approach to Migration and Mobility (GAMM) which explicitly states that policies regarding migration and mobility should have, then, a “global approach”. GAMM is a corner stone in the EU’s policies towards migration, aimed at, among other things, “preventing and combatting irregular migration”.23 The objectives of the GAMM are pursued using a variety of instruments, for instance by means of legal instruments such as visa facilitation and readmission agreements.24 The cooperation with the closest neighbouring countries occurs within the framework of so-called Mobility Partnerships (MP). Within the realm of these partnerships, visa liberalisation or facilitation agreements are used both as an incentive for cooperation on readmission agreements as well as for policy developments within the realm of home- and justice affairs, such as the implementation of bio-metric passports, frameworks for asylum policies, civil liberties or in relation to organised crime.25 There is a tension between the EU’s stated goal to promote democratic, well-functioning governance and human rights within these partnerships, and the promotion of issues that are considered of importance to EU
20 Czaika and Trauner. 2017, pp.110-3
21 There is, however, a debate concerning so called ’humanitarian visas’. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has determined that those policies are the subject of member states national legislation. Czaika and Trauner. 2017, p.112
22 European Commission, List of third countries whose nationals are required an ATV, 2020.
23 European Commission, Irregular migration and return policy.
24 Readmission = a bureucratic term that refers to the process of removing or incentivising the move of an indivudual without legal status in the country in question from a territory, often in cooperation with the individual’s country of origin or a transit country. Is a critisised concept as the connotations of the word readmission ignore the cohersive ways in which readmissions are often exceuted.
25 Czaika and Trauner. 2017, p.113
security.26 Often, these goals have been contradictory and the literature shows that the security- related issues have often prevailed.27 Furthermore, some of the requirements relating to non- discrimination and human rights set by the EU could, for the cynic, be seen as creating a minimum perquisite for designating the country in question as ‘safe’, thus making readmissions of persons, including third-country nationals, legally possible. The visa facilitation- readmission nexus is well established within the framework for the MP, in part because the readmission agreements are the most important tool of the EU in ‘curbing’ irregular migration since it facilitates the deportation of people that reside illegally on its territory.28 Often, the readmission agreements concern not only citizens of the country in question, but also third country nationals that had passed through its territory on the way to Europe. The ‘failed’ visa liberalisation agreements with both Morocco and Tunisia failed in part because of this demand by the EU, deemed ‘unfair’ by the countries respective policy makers.29
26 Delcour, L. ’The EU’s visa liberalisation policy’ in The Routledge Handbook of the Politics of Migration in Europe. Ed. Weinar, A et. al.
London: Routledge. 2018, pp.411-2
27 Delcour, 2018, p. 413
28 Czaika and Trauner. 2017, pp.113
29 Abderrahim, Tasnim. A tale of two agreements: EU Migration Cooperation with Morocco and Tunisia, 2019, pp. 16-22
3. PREVIOUS RESEARCH
In this section, the theoretical assumptions of securitisation theory will be introduced followed by a presentation of the concepts of securitisation of migration and externalisation of borders as to provide an introduction to the academic debate that this study engages with. The discussions has a particular focus on the European context, but both securitisation of migration and the externalisation of borders are by no means limited to the European continent.30 After the literature review, the central hypothesis of the study will be presented together with a discussion regarding its contribution to migration studies.
3.1 Securitisation of migration
An often-cited definition of securitisation comes from Buzan et. al (1998) who defined securitisation as “the move that takes politics beyond the established rules of the game and frames the issue either as a special kind of politics or as above politics”31. In other words, securitization was conceptualised as an act that aimed to add an element of exceptionalism to a particular issue, working in theory “as a more extreme form of politicisation”32 where the underpinning logic is that of an existential threat.33 In the Copenhagen School of securitization, to which Buzan et. al adhere to, the process of securitization is imagined as a speech act. When an actor presents an issue as a security threat “it is the utterance itself that is the act. By saying the words, something is done”.34
Recently, securitisation theory has moved past the ‘speech act’, conceptualising security and insecurity as not only created by discursive elements but also by practices. At large, this development has had the effect of including distinctive (discursive and non-discursive) patterns of behaviour, as well as the power-relations between actors into the analysis of securitisation.
In this more ‘practice-based’ approach, security is not only performed with discursively, but also by routine activities and specific ways of behaving – typically by bureaucrats or security professionals - within a particular field.35 Thus, the focus of the analysis is often shifted to the
30 See for instance, Frelick, B., Kysel, I and Podkul, J. The impact of externalization of Migration Controls on the Rights of Asylum Seekers and Other Migrants, Journal on Migration and Human Security, 4(4), 2016, pp. 190-220.
31 Buzan, B., Wæver, O., and de Wilde, J., eds. Security: a new framework for analysis. Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Rienner, 1998. P.
23
32 Buzan. Et. al, 1998, p. 23. By some theorists, however, this is rather conceptualised as a ‘depoliticization’, than an extreme of politicization, since the issue is taken “outside the realm of politics”
33 Buzan. Et. al, 1998, p. 21.
34 Ibid. p. 26.
35 Bigo, 2002.
use or deployment of other instruments or tools, such as the use of law36, technology37 or the production of specific knowledge38, in the securitisation process.
Migration is likely the issue in relation to which securitisation theory has been applied most frequently and in Europe in particular the construction of migration and asylum seekers as a threat to security has been thoroughly examined.39 Scholars of securitisation of migration have long been influenced by the ‘practice-based’ approach to securitisation, moving past the focus on the speech act in favour of also encompassing the processes of securitisation induced by, for instance, security professionals inhabiting various fields of security. Bigo (2002) conceptualised securitisation as emerging “from the correlation between some successful acts of political leaders, the mobilization they create for and against some groups, and the specific field of security professionals […] [as well as] a range of administrative practices such as population profiling, risk assessment […] and what may be termed a specific habitus of the
“security professional” with its ethos of secrecy and concern for the management of fear and unease.”40 In this line of thought, the securitisation process is, however, still perceived as a strategic effort on the part of politicians – by creating a security-problem, and then managing it, the politician legitimises his or hers own authority as a guardian of the state and the ‘body polity’, i.e. the collective that it designates.41 The control of the border, and of the migrants trying to ‘penetrate’ it, becomes, then, a powerful testament of protection on the part of the authority.42
Other scholars have focused on the role of different policy instruments and the actions and internal dynamics of agencies and institutions within the European cooperation. Balzacq (2008) imagined European internal and external information exchange systems, such as the Visa Information System (VIS), as securitizing tools, that is, “substitutes for the discursive logic of securitisation”43, where the tool or instrument itself is implicit in the securitisation process.
Additionally, the role of different European and international agencies, like the European
36 Basaran, T. Security, Law and Borders: At the Limits of Liberties, London: Routledge, 2010.
37 Balzacq, 2008, p. 75–100.
38 See for instance: Andrijasevic and Walters. The International Organisation for Migration and the International Government of Borders.
Society and Space.
39 Balzacq 2015 p. 508
40 Bigo, D. ‘Security and Immigration: Toward a Critique of the Governmentality of Unease’, Alternatives, 27, 2002, p. 65-6. Original emphasis.
41 Bigo, 2002. p.67; 69
42 Ibid, p. 69
43 Balzacq, T. ‘The Policy Tools of Securitization: Information Exchange, EU Foreign and Interior Policies’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 46(1), 2008, p. 78
Border and Coast Guard Agency (FRONTEX)44 and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM)45, in the process of securitisation of asylum seekers and migrants in Europe and beyond has been subject to academic attention. The global dimension of these securitisation processes, theorised as the emergence of a transnational migration management field46 or a “new global regime of mobility control”47, furthermore affects the processes of securitisation in Europe. The international field occupied with migration and mobility is comprised of an increasingly complex fora of actors and instruments, including humanitarian actors (like the UNHCR), international regimes (such as the Visa regime), multi- and bilateral cooperation, human rights organisations and private companies, as well as the likes of the EU and its member states.48
The creation of the Schengen agreement in 198549 and the subsequent implementation of the Schengen area is also considered implicit in the securitisation of the migrant and asylum seeker - the freedom of internal movement for the citizens of the EU member states was conditioned with the protection from external threats.The role of this Europeanisation in the securitisation of the migrant as a threat to security is multifaceted. In the still early years of the Schengen Agreement, Huysman (2000) identified that the process of European integration, i.e. the Europeanisation, was implicit in the securitisation of the migrant along several dimensions.50 For instance, the spill-over from the internal market into a security cooperation had placed the migrant in an institutional framework alongside other security concerns like terrorism and transnational criminal activity, and thus in effect criminalised the migrant and the asylum- seeker.51 The already pre-existing notion of the migrant as a cultural threat had also been amplified by the cultural dimensions of the external border controls in that they criminalise those migrants perceived to be culturally different since they routinely are subject to more restrictive border policies.52 Additionally, the discourse of the European integration had routinely excluded third-country nationals in favour of the citizens of the member states in access to jobs and welfare benefits, taking part in the construction of the migrant as a
44 Léonard, S. EU border security and migration into the European Union: FRONTEX and securitisation through practices, European Security, 19(2), 2010, pp. 231-254.
45 Andrijasevic and Walters, The International Organisation for Migration and the International Government of Borders. 2010.
46 Geiger, M. and Pécoud, A. Introduction. In Geiger, M. and Pécoud, A. ed, The Politics of International Migration Management. London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. pp. 1-20
47 Andrijasevic and Walters, 2010.
48 Geiger and Pécoud, 2010. pp. 1-20
49 Followed by the Schengen Convention in 1990
50 Huysmans, J. ‘The European Union and the Securitization of Migration’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 38(5), 2000, pp. 751–77.
51 Huysmans, 2000. p. 756-7
52 Ibid, p. 762-3
competitor in the access to welfare benefits.53 In effect, then, the creation of the internal market had been implicit in the construction of the migrant both as a threat to internal security, a cultural threat and as a socio-political threat. Other scholars have shown that securitising discourses have routinely been used by both policy makers, media and activists critical to the perceived ill-treatment of migrants alike.54
Adhering to the theorists discussed above, it could be concluded that the way we speak about different phenomenon and the terms we employ to describe the world around us matter. Many concepts, like migrant, are “contested concepts and they are used to mobilize political responses, not to describe facts”55. The term immigrant or migrant has, furthermore, a plurality of connotations and encompasses a wide variety of persons, which makes it a great subject for securitisation. The migrant, remaining undefined, is regarded through a variety of different lenses, and could thus be perceived as a threat to social cohesion, feminist ideology, to the economic situation of citizens, to public health or to internal security, all at the same time. The word migrant, or immigrant, is a canvas onto which a multitude of insecurities can be projected, and one that is ‘transferable’ and rendered ‘understandable’ between all European member states.56
In both legal, policy and daily discourse, the word migrant is understood as being separated from – but it is often mixed up with – definitions like ‘refugee’ or ‘asylum-seeker’, the two latter supposedly designating people being actively forced to cross state borders by immediate fears of their lives.57 This distinction leaves scarce space for the migrant outside of the
‘illegality’ spectrum. From this distinction alone the migrant, in juxtaposition to the asylum- seeker, is being constructed as someone that is not forced, but chooses of his or her own free will, to move – so called voluntary migration.58 In the context of increasing resistance to immigration in Europe, this ‘voluntary migration’ is often perceived as illegitimate. In reality however, the distinction between these different ‘categories’ of migrants serves for poor understanding of the wide array of reasons and contextual circumstances that motivate people to move. Furthermore, even though there is a difference in connotation of illegality between
53 Ibid, p.769
54 Ceyhan, A. and Tsoukala, A. ‘The Securitization of Migration in Western Societies: Ambivalent Discourses and Policies’, Alternatives, 27(1), 2002, p. 24
55 Bigo, 2002, p. 71
56 Bigo, 2002, p. 70-1
57 Or, in the words of the Geneva convention (1951) have a ”well founded fear of persecution”
58 Usually this is seen as being driven by economic incentives.
Squire, V. and Scheel, S. Forced migrants as ’Illegal’ Migrants in The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, ed.
Fiddian-Qasmiyeh et.al.(2014) Oxford University Press, 2018.
the two concepts stemming from conventions of international law, the asylum seeker has too routinely been criminalised and connotated with both illegality and illegitimacy.59
3.2 Externalisation of European borders
The visa-liberalisation agreements with European neighbour countries have become an important tool in the European externalisation of borders, which refers to the practices of the EU that de facto de-territorialise60 (and re-territorialise61) its external borders with the purpose of ‘controlling’ or ‘managing’ migration away from its shores.62 In effect, it is a process of exercising border control away from the actual European territorial or maritime borders, mainly in cooperation with third countries. The externalisation of migration control occurs through a multitude of different practices at both the national and supra-state level, such as the ‘diffusion’
of European border practise through “EU-isation” of international organisations and within the transnational field of professionals63 or through bilateral and multilateral agreements with third countries.64 The international visa regime could also be imagined as an externalisation tool, since the de facto sites of border controls then become the sites of visa issuance rather than the territorial border sites on the borders of Europe. Since the 2015 ‘migration crisis’, the EU has further accelerated its engagement with neighbouring countries within the realm of border control and migration as to limit the ability of migrants to reach Schengen territory.
The consequences of the European externalisation processes have been critically examined by many. Scholars and human rights activists alike have deemed the externalisation practices of the EU and its member states both harmful to migrants as well as counterproductive in relation to its established goals.65 While the number of migrants arriving at European shores have decreased since the implementation of the increased cooperation with countries such as Turkey, Morocco and Libya,66 the routes for migrants that aim for Europe have become increasingly perilous.67 The detention centres in Libya, indirectly funded with European investment, and
59 Squire. and Scheel, 2014.
60 De-territorialisation = separating social, cultural of political practices (here border practices) from a location or territory
61 Re-territorialisation = follows the process of (relative) de-territorialisation and creates new social formations and practices in its wake, with design resulting from the new power structures
62 Andersson, R. ’Europe's failed ‘fight’ against irregular migration: ethnographic notes on a counterproductive industry’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 42(7), 2016, p. 1056
63 Fine, S. ’Liaisons, labelling and laws: International Organization for Migration bordercratic interventions in Turkey’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2017.
64 Laube, L. ‘The relational dimension of externalizing border control: selective visa policies in migration and border diplomacy’, Comparative Migration Studies, 29(7), 2019.
65 See for instance: Andersson, 2016, pp. 1055-1075
66 FRONTEX, 2020. FRONTEX Risk Analysis for 2020, Warsaw: FRONTEX. p.6-8
67 Human Rights Watch, World Report 2020. European Union: Migration and Asylum. 2020.
the controversial designation of Turkey as a ‘safe country’ for asylum is only a small part of the actual scope of the externalisation practices that reach, in many cases, far beyond the immediate European neighbourhood. These practises are often motivated using a language with humanitarian rationale, even if the outcomes of the externalisation processes produce a more insecure environment for the migrants.
Anderson (2016) describes a cycle of reducing legal pathways to Europe that together with policing and hard-line border control that is mutually reinforcing.68 The “illegality industry”69, i.e. the industry of border policing and technologies, produces circumstances that contribute to a more perilous situation for the migrant. Anderson argues that this increased risk creates a spectacle that reinforces the emergency frame and fuels the discourse of exceptionalism regarding migration over land- and sea borders – thus, calling anew for the increased need of security measures at the border.70 The ‘migration crisis’ of 2015 could be considered such a spectacle, producing images of over-crowded boats on the Mediterranean and desperate migrants trying to force fences in Eastern Europe. The externalisation of European borders and the securitisation of migration and the migrant are, thus, mutually constitutive. The externalisation of border control is motivated by an underlying security rationale, externalisation in turn produces a more dangerous situation for the migrant, a new crisis and spectacle unfolds, followed by further securitisation of the borderland and the migrants themselves.
3.3 Hypothesis
As we have seen above, the externalisation of migration is a strategy on the part of the European Union with the ultimate aim to lessen the number of irregular migrants that reaches its territory.
It pursues this strategy, furthermore, despite persistent evidence of its harmful effects and critique of its extrajudicial practices. In light of this, the use of visa liberalisation agreements as an externalisation tool appears contradictory given that most irregular migrants probably reach Schengen territory with a visa in hand – or were exempt from the visa process altogether.
This raises the question which is the focus of the study: how can we understand the use of
68 Andersson, R. ’Europe's failed ‘fight’ against irregular migration: ethnographic notes on a counterproductive industry’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 42(7), 2016, pp. 1055-1075.
69 Anderson, 2016, p. 105
70 Anderson, 2016, p. 1060-4
practices that might generate more irregular migrants on Schengen territory, as part of a strategy aimed at reducing them?
To answer this question, the thesis uses the framework of securitisation as a tool for analysis, with the underlying assumption that our understanding of a particular phenomenon, and the possible threat that it poses, affects the nature of the polices that are deployed in relation to it.
Building on the framework outlined in the previous parts of this sections, this study presents the hypothesis that irregular migrants by means of visa-overstaying are not conceptualised as threats to the same extent as irregular migrants arriving across land or sea borders. In other words, the visa overstayer have not been subject to the same securitisation discourses, tools or instruments. The hypothesis is formulated as follows:
H: Visa-overstayers have been securitized to a lesser degree than migrants arriving irregularly in Europe across land- or sea borders
Although the securitisation of irregular migrants and asylum seekers has been thoroughly examined, the difference in securitisation of different groups of migrants is often left out of the discussion or only implicitly mentioned. In part, this is because of the general bias within securitisation theory that makes it asymmetrically focused on the securitised objects and the actors or tools implicit in it, rather than the non-securitised ones. This thesis contributes to the discussion on differentiated securitisation of migrant groups by examining the case of one of the most central European agencies in regard to borders and migration, FRONTEX, and the concept of ‘Integrated Border Management’. As will be shown, the discourses, tools and instruments of the EU in regard to irregular migration have been asymmetrically occupied with irregular migrants and asylum seekers arriving across the maritime and land borders. Shedding light on this discrepancy, this thesis also hopes to contribute to a wider discussion on privileges of mobility and migration.
4. METHODOLOGY & RESEARCH DESIGN
In this section, the methodological considerations and the research design of the analysis will be presented. Firstly, the thesis’ use of the theoretical framework of securitisation theory will be discussed in greater detail. After that, the case of FRONTEX, here considered a ‘most-likely case’, will be introduced followed by the presentation of the material. The section will be concluded with a presentation of the methodological considerations of different parts of the analysis.
4.1 Theoretical framework: an alternative approach to securitisation
In applying the securitisation-framework to the case of the European Union, the traditional strategies as formulated by the Copenhagen School serves poorly as a pathway for analysis.
Indeed, the multi-level sui generis system of the European union makes for a confusing case in identifying the (single) securitising actor and the (single) enabling audience. The European Parliament, the European commission, the European council, the lobbyists in Brussels, the governmental representatives of the Member States, the bureaucrats within the many EU institutions or the European media could all be identified as actors playing a part in the securitisation of a particular phenomenon. Additionally, identifying the role of the audience in this process proves even more challenging – the audience could be conceptualised as the national legislative bodies, the executive or judicial powers in the supra-state structure or perhaps the citizens of the member states of the European Union, or maybe all of these at the same time. An all-encompassing analysis of this sort is impossible within the scope of this study and this approach does, furthermore, not include non-discursive strategies of securitisation in the analysis.
Considering this, this study takes an alternative approach when analysing securitisation in the EU. Discursive securitising moves are understood as expressions of securitisation, that might be the result of an actor’s independent move to securitise – but does not have to be. The aim of this thesis is not to track a specific ‘move’ of securitisation, but rather to evaluate the different levels of securitisation of categories of ‘illegal/irregular migrants’ in EU discourse, using an analysis of both securitising discourse as well as securitising practices. Securitisation is, then, not conceptualised as a binary issue, where securitisation either ‘has happened’ or ‘has not happened’, but as a gradual process where an issue can be ‘less’ or ‘more’ securitised. The specific actors studied does not necessarily have to be the ‘authors’ of securitisation themselves
– they can be a part of a larger process, resulting from both practices and discursive elements.
By deploying a discourse of securitisation, the actors are both expressing securitisation as well as taking an active part in the construction of it themselves.
4.2 FRONTEX: A most-likely case of securitisation
Since the process of securitisation in the context of the EU includes a multiplicity of actors, deciding the analytical focus of this analysis was quite a challenging one. The choice of analysing FRONTEX, one of the most central agents in EU’s “fight on irregular migration”, is because it can be considered a most likely case of securitisation of visa overstayers. The agency’s prevalent role in the securitisation of migration and asylum in Europe has already been established and its founding and henceforth expansion was developed using a logic of security and protection from threats – it is a uniformed corps mandated with the guarding and protection of the integrity of European Union territoriality. 71 Furthermore, one of the agency’s main tasks is to analyse the ‘risks’ in relation to migration and mobility and it has thus the mandate to seriously influence the policies, discourses and operative direction of the EU.
As the EU agency responsible for promoting, coordinating and developing European border management,72 the scope of the FRONTEX mandate is not limited to the physical guarding of borders. One of its most important tasks is to “monitor migratory flows and carry out risk analysis as regards to all aspects of integrated border management”73 and to “carry out vulnerability assessments”74 of this integrated border management. Its mandate thus includes monitoring the situation of irregular migration to and in the Schengen area and the assessments and analyses are then meant to guide the EU’s priorities regarding migration and border management in the year(s) to come. Furthermore, the European commission explicitly connects the issue of visa-overstaying to that of external border management. The commission recognises that “most irregular migrants originally entered the EU legally on short term visas […] [and] the EU has therefore developed an integrated border management strategy which aims to maintain high levels of security”75, of which FRONTEX is in charge.
71 See for instance: Léonard, S. EU border security and migration into the European Union: FRONTEX and securitisation through practices, European Security, 19(2), 2010, pp. 231-254.
72 FRONTEX, About FRONTEX: Origins and Task.
73 (EU) 2019/1896. Section 2, article 10, paragraph 1.a
74 EU) 2019/1896. Section 2, article 10, paragraph 1.c.
75 European Commission, Irregular migration and return policy, 2020.
The rapid expansion of the agency’s mandate and budget in the past few years makes it, furthermore, particularly interesting in relation to the process of securitising of migration and its role in shaping EU policy in the post-‘migration crisis’ period. Within the scope of this expansion, the agency saw a transformation of its role as not merely an agency aimed at increased cooperation between member states in the realm of border control, but a common European coast and border guard in its own right. Its funding increased rapidly and the FRONTEX budget rose from around 6 million euro in 2005 to over 333 million in 2019.76
Given FRONTEX’s role as a crucial actor in the ‘guarding’ of European borders, the security rationale on which it is built, its role in the securitisation of migration and the migrants overall and the expanded mandate of the agency in the past few years, it can be used as a most likely case of securitisation. If a discourse of securitisation of visa-overstayers does not occur in the context of FRONTEX, it is likely that it is even less securitised in others. The ‘risk analysing’
that FRONTEX is mandated with presents an ample opportunity for the organisation to present the priorities of the agency. Additionally, adhering to ‘illegality industry’-logics of securitisation, the agency would be the one that would likely “benefit” from the construction of additional threats in the realm of ‘border management’ of, for example, the visa-overstayer.
4.3 FRONTEX’s ‘Risk Analysis’ Reports
The focus of this analysis will be on official reports and briefs produced by FRONTEX, in particular the annual ‘Risk Analysis’ reports, of which I will analyse five (5) (see Material, p.
37). The choice of these reports for the analysis depend to a large degree on their functions as the ‘knowledge production’ by FRONTEX and as the basis of the operational development of the agency. Essentially, the very publication of the risk analyses serves as a securitising element in itself – by identifying the ‘risks’ that exists in relation to migration and border management, the report is indeed identifying threats to the management of migration and border, or to other subsequent objects. In this way, it informs the policy makers and the public alike using a language of knowledge and professionalism. The wide scope of the ‘Risk Reports’ also serves as to facilitate the comparative aspect of the thesis, since it is meant to report on risks and developments related to the entirety of the ‘Integrated Border Management’, that is, all types of irregular migration.
76 FRONTEX, Decision of the management board on the budget of the agency for 2005, Warsaw, 2005 & FRONTEX, Budget 2019, Warsaw, 2009.
The Risk Analyses are all from the post-2015 period, since this year was a critical point for EU migration and border policy. The heightened sense of crisis related to migration and the territorial borders in particular throughout this year had an enormous impact on policy makers and EU bureaucrats and was the main reason for the rapid expansion of the FRONTEX mandate. The use of this ‘critical shift’ in a comparative analysis would be interesting but would, in this instance, take the analysis in a different direction than the intended. The use of multiple reports is intended to make use of a larger body of text from which better conclusions can be made. The reports have been analysed separately, but the possible differences in representation of the different groups between years is of minor importance. The main aim is to identify longer-term tendencies of the agency, not the differences between the reports between the years.
4.4 Methodological considerations
The analysis at hand will be divided into three parts, and the methodological considerations of these parts will be presented in the subsequent sections. The first two parts are discourse analyses. The first one of these is a ‘frequency’-analysis of mentions of visa-overstaying and the irregular border crossing’s (IBC) in FRONTEX reports. The second discourse analysis takes a more interpretive approach and the analysis is instead structured based on a semi- structured set of questions. In the third part, focus will instead be on the practices and tools of FRONTEX, rather than the discursive elements. In that respect, the scope of the analysis also explores the relationship between securitisation practices and securitisation discourse.
4.4.1 Analysing securitisation discourse
Discourse analysis is used as an analytical tool for studying discourse(s) understood as
“practices that systematically form the object of which we speak”.77 The underlying assumption is then that the discursive construction and understanding of a particular political or social issue affects the policy that will be deployed in relation to it. For instance, the understanding of migration as a threat to security, albeit economic, social or physical, will prompt the use of specific mechanisms and tools in dealing with the issue at hand. Thus, when studying policies, or policy proposals, the problem representation highly influences their outcome and this relationship is a fundamental constituent of the following analysis. 78
77 Foucault cited in Bergström, G. & Ekström, L. Tre diskursanalytiska inriktningar, Red. Boréus & Bergström, 2019, p. 253
78 Ibid. p. 271-5
The analysis of securitisation in discourse within the scope of this thesis is two-fold. Firstly, the relative frequency of mentions of these different groups of migrants in the material will be examined. This content analysis, which can be understood as a mix between a quantative and a qualitative approach, is meant to provide an initial understanding of what group(s) and means of migration are considered the most important threats. 79 While the content in this instance solely refers to explicit mentions, an interpretive onset is still needed to make sense of what
‘being mentioned’ in this specific context represents. Since the reports that are being analysed are meant to identify the ‘risks’ in relation to migration and border control, a high number of mentions are understood as a sign that there is significant attention being put on this particular group of migrants.
While a content analysis is appropriate for an initial overview of the material, it has limitations in terms of its flexibility and, in this case, a restricted scope of analysis as well. The amount of mentions in the risk reports cannot be said to be ample evidence that there is differentiated securitisation within the FRONTEX agency. Thus, the second part is a discourse analysis that takes a more interpretive approach. Using a semi-structured set of questions, the aim is to dig deeper into the material and the explicit and non-explicit discursive representations of these two types of migrants. By looking at what kinds of meanings are attached to the lack of management of these different types of migration, the referent objects80 to the ‘threats’ that they pose, the nature of the solutions to these problems and the visual representation in the reports, the analysis aims to deconstruct the material as to identify the level of securitisation.
The questions are formulated as follows:
• How are the threats from these types of irregular migration constructed by the reports?
o Are the threats perceived as direct or indirect?
o What meanings are attached to the lack of ‘management’ of this type of irregular migration? What threat does it represent? (Traditional internal security, humanitarian, economic, health etc…)
• How is the referent object threatened by the lack of control of these different means of migration?
79 Boréus, K. & Kohl, S. Innehållsanalys in Boréus & Bergström, 2019, p. 51.
80 The referent object = the object which is threatened by the securitised object
o What is the referent object(s)? (The EU, the free movement in Schengen, the migrants, the ‘vulnerable migrants’)
o What meanings are attached to the referent object? How is it presented?
• What is the solution to these threats being presented as? (surveillance, more legal pathways to Europe, technology, etc)
• How are migrants visually represented in the report?
o What pictures are used in the report? What situations do they portray? What are their underlying rationales?
o What visual representation of data is used? What designs are used to portray different situations?
Using discourse analysis as to unravel underlying assumptions about problems is by no means unproblematic. For one, the analysis is inherently prone to subjectivity – since the aim is to dig into the non-explicit meanings, there will have to be an interpretive element that is strongly dependent on the researcher’s ability to properly analyse the material at hand. There is, furthermore, a vagueness to terms like ‘security’ or ‘humanitarian’. However, the usage of open questions as those formulated above are preferable when a strict categorisation might instead serve to skew the analysis – since the securitisation of visa overstayers have been scarcely examined, using only the strict words and discursive forms that are associated with securitisation of migrants overall, will perhaps risk missing important securitising elements that might be specific to the category of visa overstayers.
4.4.2 Analysing securitisation practices
In addition to examining the roles of the discursive elements used by FRONTEX in the securitisation of different types of migrants, this thesis also attempts to analyse the agency’s securitising practices. Securitising practices, or tools of securitisation, is here defined as “an identifiable social and technical “dispositif” or device embodying a specific threat image through which public action is configured in order to address a security issue”.81 In other words, a securitising instrument is configured in such a way that the observer of the practice in question understand that the subject of this instrument or practice, directly or indirectly,
81 Balzacq, 2008, p.79
constitutes a security threat. The ‘securitising practices’ are thus practices that construct a subject as threat by deploying a specific rationale in relation to it. The whole development of FRONTEX as an agency, with an increasing mandate, money and power could, in itself, be seen as a securitising practice – its development constructs its subject(s) (migrants) as threatening towards the referent object (the security of the member states of the EU and Schengen area, its borders or the internal free movement).
The securitising activities of FRONTEX in relation to migrants and for the comparative analysis at hand have already been established by scholars, for instance Sarah Léonard in her article on FRONTEX’s securitising activities (2010).82 However, no particular focus has been put on the activities and tools in relation to different groups of migrants. This thesis will build on the framework established by Léonard but use it as to identify the differentiated securitisation activities of the agency. As to not reinvent the wheel, there will be a greater focus on the activities that subject irregular migrants by means of visa-overstaying than those that subject irregular migrants by means of irregular border crossings, since many of those are already well-known.
There are two main types of securitising practices defined by Sarah Léonard in her article on FRONTEX’s securitising activities. The first one is “practices that are usually deployed to tackle issues that are widely considered to be security threats, such as foreign armed attack or terrorism”.83 This can be use of military materiel, surveillance technologies or other types of practices usually only deployed in relation to an established, traditional security threat. The other types of securitising practices are ’extraordinary’ practises, that by “[t]heir ‘exceptional’
character suggests that the problem they are tackling is also exceptional and cannot be dealt with by ‘normal’ or ‘ordinary’ measures.”84 The ‘exceptional’ here does not merely include measures that involve emergency, but more broadly practices that are ‘out of the ordinary’ in the specific context they are deployed in. The benefit of this broader definition of securitisation, where all securitised issues have to have an underlying rationale of ‘existential threat’, is that more practices are conceptualised as being complicit in the construction of threats to security and that the process of securitisation occurs by the cumulation of many such practices.
82 Léonard, 2010, pp. 231-254.
83 Léonard, 2010, p. 237
84 Ibid.
The operationalisation of the securitisation practices of different groups of irregular migrants will be carried out using a two-step analysis answering to the questions below.
(1) Is this a securitising practice, instrument or tool?
In identifying the securitising practices of FRONTEX, the definitions provided by Léonard will be used. Thus, a securitising practice, instrument or tool is either (1) a practice or instrument that is usually deployed in relation to a traditional security threat or (2) a practice or instrument that is ‘exceptional’ in that it has not previously not been used within the realm of migration or border control in the EU.
(2) Which group(s) of migrants are the (primary) subject of this securitising practice, instrument or tool?
The primary subject(s) of a practice are those that are most directly affected by them, or the ones that are understood as the reason for its implementation – for instance, the primary subject of the visa-regime, are those that are in need of a visa to travel to a particular country. Similarly, the primary subject(s) of a surveillance system that have been installed in a school can be understood to either be the teachers or the students, or thieves that are not affiliated with the school at all, depending perhaps on the placing of the cameras. The securitising practice or tool sends a message about the nature of the problem and thus also the nature of the threatening subject(s) that it subjects.
5. ANALYSIS
The analysis of the securitisation of irregular migrants in the case of FRONTEX will be divided into the three parts, for which the methodological considerations has already been introduced above. Firstly, the result from the ‘frequency analysis’ of FRONTEX’s reports will be presented as to provide an introduction to the more interpretive part of the discourse analysis.
The second part will then provide an interpretive analysis of the discursive elements that are prevalent in the construction of these different groups from a securitisation perspective. In the third part, there will be a discussion on the ‘securitising practices’ of FRONTEX. The analysis will be concluded with a discussion that summarises the most important findings of the analysis and links those to the over-arching research question.
5.1. The first part: The content analysis
The ‘frequency analysis’ provided a few important insights, where some were not directly related to the result of the analysis itself, but rather emerged from the difficulties in the construction of the analysis. The groups of irregular migrants that this analysis is concerned with – the visa overstayer and the irregular migrant by means or irregular entry – are rarely referred to in this particular way. Rather, the FRONTEX reports are often concerned with
‘[detected] illegal border crossings’ or ‘[detected] illegal stay’, without further distinction.
‘Illegal border crossings’ thus includes both those individuals that are, in fact, not illegal border crossers (asylum seekers) as well as those who have no legal ground for entry into the Schengen area. Furthermore, and as will be further expanded on below, the term ‘illegal stay’ is systematically being linked to asylum seekers whose claim for protection has been rejected, rather than to visa-overstayers. Regardless of this, using a frequency analysis of the references to the different groups in the reports serves as an appropriate starting point for the analysis since it provides an overview of the main subjects identified as ‘risks’ by the FRONTEX agency.
Figure 2.1. Total mentions of ‘Overstay’ and IBC in all reports
Overall, the number of references to these different ‘means of irregular migration’ differ greatly, instantly providing an argument for our hypothesis. Throughout all five reports, the words ‘overstay’ or ‘overstayer(s)’ are mentioned only eight (8) times. Indeed, even when including the words ‘illegal stay on exit’, i.e. referring to the overstayers that are detected on exit from Schengen, the number of mentions of overstayers constitute only around a tenth of the number of mentions of ‘Illegal border crossings (IBC)’ (see figure 2.1).
Furthermore, the number of mentions of the different groups differs slightly between reports.
In particular, the year 2016 appears to have a relative high mention of both overstayers and IBCs in comparison to the subsequent years. This is, however, partially due to the mere scope of the report: it included between 5 and 20 additional pages than the reports in the following years. However, the seemingly declining number of mentions of IBCs might be due to a lessened sense of urgency in regard to irregular arrival across maritime and land borders, together with a ‘diversification’ of the ‘risks’ that the agency is concerned with as a result of its expansion.
Figure 2.1. Mentions of ‘Overstay’ and IBC per report
The number of references serve, however, as poor ground for analysis in and of itself. Rather, the reader should consider this as simply a cover from which one should not judge the book just yet. Thus, the following section will analyse the presentation and construction of these types of irregular migrants in the reports more thoroughly.
5.2. The second part: The interpretive discourse analysis
Throughout the annual reports, the ‘threats’ constituted by the ‘irregular migrants by means of irregular entry’ are prevalent and are identified as constituting the main part of ‘risks’. Indeed, the analyses describe in rigorous detail every route along which IBC’s occur, even when the
