RETHINKING THE TWIN MIGRATION AND REFUGEE CRISES IN EUROPE THROUGH THE LENS OF SAFETY AND SECURITY
RETHINKING THE TWIN MIGRATION AND REFUGEE CRISES IN EUROPE THROUGH THE LENS OF SAFETY AND SECURITY

Summary/Abstract: This paper queries the EU’s response to the 2015-2016 waves of large-scale migration through the lens of safety and security. By applying this conceptual framework, it is argued that the concepts of safety and security in the EU-level discourse on migration have been largely conflated, thus fuelling a biased debate on migration in which the latter was treated as synonymous with terrorism and,overall, as a threat to security. It is also argued that across the EU the debate on migration has largely ignored the distinction between primary and secondary implications of migration. As a result, an overall confusion as to what the ramifications of migration really are prevails across the EU. This translated into ad hoc and frequently inadequate responses to migration that individual EU Member States garnered in initial stages of the migration and refugee crises. The European Agenda on Security and the EU Global Strategy highlighted the intrinsic correlation that exists between domestic and external sources of threat the European Agenda on Migration reiterated this point. This very welcome tone and focus of discussion notwithstanding, the concept of safety is absent from the debate, thus implying that the nuanced differences between safety and security have not been factored in the discussion. This hassome very serious implications for the set of tools that can be used to address the plethora of migration-inflicted concerns, risks, and challenges, including the possibility of drawing from diverse policy domains and policy fields in which the EU Member States collaborate.

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