Refugees, Security and the European Union

Sarah Léonard, Christian Kaunert

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429649455
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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.

1 A new securitization framework

The aim of this chapter is to develop the original theoretical framework that will guide the subsequent empirical analysis. The starting point of this theoretical enquiry is the securitization framework developed by the Copenhagen School. There are several reasons for this choice. First of all, a framework centred on security is arguably the most appropriate since the research project aims to investigate the extent and the modalities of the social construction of asylum-seekers and refugees as security issues, i.e. the ‘security-ness’ of asylum-seekers and refugees in the EU. Furthermore, the work of the Copenhagen School appears to open very promising avenues for research on the linkages between refugees and security and the ways in which those are established. It is centred on the concept of ‘securitization’, which aims to understand the processes by which security threats are socially constructed. The Copenhagen School has also coined another concept particularly relevant to the question examined in the book: the concept of ‘societal security’. This seeks to encapsulate how a society can feel threatened in its identity by various issues, in particular migration flows. The idea that the Copenhagen School’s writings provide an interesting theoretical springboard into the topic of the book is validated by the prominent place that they have acquired in the field of security studies in general (Watson, 2012: 279–280; Floyd, 2016: 677) and with regard to the question of the migration-security nexus in particular. As far as the former is concerned, Smith (2005: 37) has described the work of the Copenhagen School as ‘one of the most interesting developments in the contemporary study of security’, whilst Williams (2003: 1) has presented it as ‘one of the most innovative [and] productive avenues of research in contemporary security studies’. This positive opinion is also shared by other scholars, such as McDonald (2008: 563–564), who has highlighted the ‘important and innovative contribution [made by the Copenhagen School] to our understanding of security and its construction’. As for Huysmans (1998: 480), he has praised the Copenhagen School for conducting ‘possibly the most thorough and continuous exploration of the significance and the implications of a widening security agenda for security studies’.

Even more important for this specific research project, the work of the Copenhagen School has arguably become a reference point for analysing the linkages between migration flows and security in different regions of the world, including in Europe, as will be shown later. It has been applied or referred to so widely that it has become difficult to find an academic piece on this subject which would not at least mention once the idea of ‘the securitization of migration’. Consequently, the choice of this theoretical framework enables the book to build upon and engage more closely with a substantial part of the literature on this subject. This increases the significance of the findings of the book, as they contribute to the literature on securitization, which has acquired an important place in security studies, as well as the literature on the relation between migration and security.

However, this book does not apply the securitization framework in its original version (i.e. the Copenhagen School’s version). This chapter develops a new securitization framework, which not only synthesises the various criticisms that have been levelled at the framework in the securitization literature, but also puts forward new ideas to develop some under-specified aspects of the framework. For this purpose, it is organised into two sections. The first section examines the analytical framework developed by the Copenhagen School. It considers in particular the two inter-related concepts of ‘securitization’ (given its central place in the Copenhagen School’s thinking) and ‘societal security’ (because of its crucial role for conceptualising migration as a security issue in the Copenhagen School’s writings).¹ The second part of this chapter examines the question of the adequacy of the Copenhagen School’s framework for empirical case studies. On the basis of a close reading of the Copenhagen School’s securitization framework and of the various works that have criticised the original version of the securitization framework, this chapter discusses four specific aspects of the framework that, it is argued, should be refined or further developed in order to increase the analytic purchase of the framework. In so doing, the chapter develops a new securitization framework, which can be applied to other security issues.

The Copenhagen School’s securitization framework

The ‘securitization framework’ for which the Copenhagen School has come to be renowned has been gradually developed through a series of books and articles since the 1990s. The aim of its main authors, Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver,² was to make a major contribution to the so-called ‘widening-deepening’ debate in security studies, which began in the 1980s and intensified with the end of the Cold War. The ‘widening’ dimension was defined as the extension of security to issues or sectors other than the military, whereas the ‘deepening’ dimension addressed the question of whether entities other than the state (e.g. society, individual human beings) should be able to claim security threats (Krause and Williams, 1996: 230). Specifically, the Copenhagen School has developed an original theoretical framework centred on the idea of ‘securitization’ and incorporating the concept of ‘security sectors’ previously developed by Buzan (1991). In their view, this framework has made it possible to both widen and deepen the concept of security, without rendering it too broad or meaningless.³

The concept of ‘securitization’

At the heart of the analytical framework created by the Copenhagen School lies the concept of ‘securitization’, which was originally developed by Wæver (1995). In line with the linguistic turn in International Relations theory, the main idea behind the concept of ‘securitization’ is that security is a ‘speech act’. In other words, according to the Copenhagen School, there are no security issues in themselves, but only issues that are constructed as such by certain actors – called ‘securitizing actors’ – through speech acts. As Wæver puts it,

In this usage, security is not of interest as a sign that refers to something more real; the utterance itself is the act. By saying it, something is done (as in betting, giving a promise, naming a ship).

(Wæver, 1995: 55)

Moreover, Buzan and Wæver remain close to a traditional understanding of security by arguing that security is about survival. It follows from that definition of security that an attempt to securitize an issue is to present it as posing an existential threat to what the Copenhagen School calls a ‘referent object’ for security. For example, an attempt to securitize state B in state A would be to present state B as posing a security threat to the very survival of state A.

Furthermore, the Copenhagen School argues that, by ‘uttering security’, the securitizing actor ‘moves a particular development into a specific area, and thereby claims a special right to use whatever means are necessary to block it’ (Wæver, 1995: 55). Thus, ‘securitization’ is defined as

the staging of existential issues in politics to lift them above politics. In security discourse, an issue is dramatized and presented as an issue of supreme priority; thus, by labelling it as security, an agent claims a need for and a right to treat it by extraordinary means.

(Buzan et al., 1998: 26)

This idea is further clarified by the introduction of the concept of ‘politicization’, which stands in contrast to that of securitization:

‘Security’ is 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. Securitization can thus be seen as a more extreme version of politicization. In theory, any public issue can be located on the spectrum ranging from nonpoliticized (meaning the state does not deal with it and it is not in any other way made an issue of public debate and decision) through politicized (meaning the issue is part of public policy, requiring government decision and resource allocations or, more rarely, some other form of communal governance) to securitized (meaning the issue is presented as an existential threat, requiring emergency measures and justifying actions outside the normal bounds of political procedure).

(Buzan et al., 1998: 24–25)

The remainder of this section considers the main elements of the framework in greater detail. Regarding the ‘referent objects’ for security, the Copenhagen School aims to break free from the traditional focus on the state to widen the spectrum of possibilities. It endorses the move originally made by Barry Buzan in People, States and Fear (1983, 1991) to conceptualise security in five distinct, but interrelated, sectors, namely the military, political, economic, environmental and societal sectors. In other words, it is not only the state that can be threatened, but also the economy, the environment, or society. With regard to the securitizing actors, the Copenhagen School considers that there are no finite criteria regarding who can (or cannot) speak security. No actor conclusively holds the power of securitization, nor is anyone necessarily unable to speak security. Nevertheless, some actors occupy positions of power and are more likely to be accepted voices of security. Typical examples are political leaders, bureaucracies, governments, lobbyists, and pressure groups (Buzan et al., 1998: 40). It is mainly because of the existence of such a wide range of potential securitizing actors that the Copenhagen School, in contrast to other scholars, such as Bigo (1998a, 1998b, 2000, 2001a, 2001b, 2002, 2008; Bigo and Tsoukala, 2008), for example, argues that the fixed points of analysis cannot be the securitizing actors, but must be the practice of securitization, since it is constant over time.

Another key aspect of the securitization framework is the role played by the audience. This points to the idea that securitization is inter-subjective and socially constructed. A discourse presenting something as a vital threat to a referent object is not sufficient to create securitization, but is merely a ‘securitizing move’. An issue is only securitized when the audience accepts it as such (Buzan et al., 1998: 25). This is more likely if the speech act fulfils internal and external conditions. The internal conditions are linguistic-grammatical: the speech act must follow the grammar of security, i.e. it must contain a plot with an existential threat, a point of no return, etc. The external conditions are contextual and social. First, the securitizing actor must be in a position of authority, i.e. possess social capital in a ‘Bourdieusian’ sense. Second, and this is only a facilitating condition, the persuasive power of the enunciator increases if (s)he can refer to certain ‘objects’ generally considered threatening, such as tanks or polluted waters, for example. If the securitizing actor is effective in mobilising support around the security reference, then (s)he can legitimately operate in another mode that (s)he would have otherwise.

Consequently, according to Buzan and Wæver, what scholars can do when studying security is not to assess the existence of real threats, but rather to study the processes whereby an issue becomes socially constructed and recognised as a security threat. In their view,

[e]ven if one wanted to take a more objectivist approach, it is unclear how this could be done except in cases in which the threat is unambiguous and immediate. (…) It is not easy to judge the securitization of an issue against some measure of whether that issue is ‘really’ a threat; doing so would demand an objective measure of security that no security theory has yet provided.

(Buzan et al., 1998: 30)

Therefore, the securitization framework focuses on understanding which actors can speak security successfully, how they are accepted as legitimate actors in that role, and what consequences these ‘speech acts’ have.

It is also important to highlight that, from the very beginning, the Copenhagen School’s work on securitization has had an important normative dimension. It largely questions whether it is a good idea ‘to frame as many problems as possible in terms of security’ (Wæver, 1995: 63–64). Indeed, the Copenhagen School does not share the traditional perspective that considers security the opposite of insecurity and holds that ‘the more security, the better’. On the contrary, according to Wæver and Buzan, securitization may have the unfortunate effect of militarising a broad range of non-military issues, since states are privileged actors in the securitization process and tend to use military means to answer security problems. It can also tend to reinforce an exclusive ‘us-versus-them’ logic. Finally, according to the Copenhagen School, ‘securitization’ is a rather conservative and defensive concept. As security aims to protect a referent object from a threat, securitizing the state or society means to privilege the continued existence of its present form, whereas there may be cases in which the status quo should not necessarily be protected.

For all these reasons, the Copenhagen School argues that, instead of trying to extend the scope of security, it might actually be better to ‘desecuritize’ issues, i.e. to bring securitized issues back into the realm of ‘normal politics’. In the conclusion to Security: A New Framework for Analysis, they emphasise that ‘[a]voiding excessive and irrational securitization is thus a legitimate social, political, and economic objective of considerable importance’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 208). Nevertheless, one wonders how it would ever be possible to judge the excessive or irrational character of the securitization of any issue given the above-mentioned difficulty, in Buzan and Wæver’s own words, of objectively assessing the seriousness of any threat.

To conclude this section, the Copenhagen School’s analytical framework is centred on the concept of securitization, which refers to the social construction of an issue as an existential threat. It is the very concept that, at least in their own view, allows the Copenhagen School to widen and deepen the concept of security without losing its specific meaning. Indeed, whatever the ‘referent object’, securing it against ‘existential threats’ is the unifying core of security and therefore of security studies.

The concept of ‘societal security’

The narrowing of the concept of security outlined above somewhat paradoxically enables the Copenhagen School to expand its application to areas beyond the purview of traditional security studies.

In People, States and Fear, Buzan questioned two elements of traditional security studies. First, he argued against the exclusive focus of strategic studies on military issues. Second, he criticised another key element of traditional security thinking, namely the monopoly of the state as a ‘referent object’ of security. In contrast, he claimed that ‘[t]he security of human collectivities is affected by factors in five major sectors: military, political, economic, societal and environmental’ (Buzan, 1991: 19–20). Buzan defined societal security as ‘[t]he sustainability, within acceptable conditions for evolution, of traditional patterns of language, culture and religious and national identity and custom’ (Buzan, 1991: 19–20). However, although Buzan put forward the sectoral analysis of security, military security was still privileged and the state was still considered the primary referent object of security, as indicated by the adoption of a rather traditional definition of security as being about survival.

The concept of societal security emerged with greater clarity through its pivotal role in a book later published by Buzan, Wæver, Kelstrup and Lemaitre, Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe (1993). In this book, ‘societal security’ came to be defined as

the ability of a society to persist in its essential character under changing conditions and possible or actual threats. More specifically, it is about the sustainability, within acceptable conditions for evolution, of traditional patterns of language, culture, association, and religious and national identity and custom.

(Wæver et al., 1993: 23)

In this volume, the status of ‘societal security’ changed, as it became an object of security in its own right, distinct from the state. For the Copenhagen School, there was therefore ‘a duality of state security and societal security, the former having sovereignty as its ultimate criterion, and the latter being held together by concerns about identity’ (Wæver et al., 1993: 25). ‘Society’ similarly was defined as ‘being about identity, about the self conception of communities and of individuals identifying themselves as members of a community’ (Wæver et al., 1993: 24). It was also described as a large-scale social unit, which differs from other social groups, mainly because of its high degree of social inertia, its continuity across generations, and its grounding in structures, institutions, practices, norms and values (Wæver et al., 1993: 21). Although the Copenhagen School acknowledged that societies are not all identical in terms of the range and intensity of interactions perceived to be threatening, it claimed to be able to identify the main threats to societal security. In Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda, it labelled those ‘competing identities’ and ‘migration’ (Wæver et al., 1993: 43), which became ‘migration’, ‘horizontal competition’ and ‘vertical competition’ in Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Buzan et al., 1998: 121).

This concept of ‘societal security’ and its relationship to the issue of migration have given rise to heated intellectual debates. In particular, some have accused the Copenhagen School of advocating an essentially ethno-national and/or religious understanding of identity, which runs the risks of reifying both identity and society (McSweeney, 1996). Such an exclusionary conception of identity could, so the argument goes, be taken as legitimising violent actions outside governmental control. Actually, this point was already made in 1993 by Buzan and Wæver (1993: 188–189) themselves, as they acknowledged the following:

The closeness to fascist ideology is troubling: is it therefore inadvisable to raise this agenda of societal security? Isn’t there a risk that the result is to legitimise ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1 A new securitization framework
• 2 Asylum, migration and border controls in Europe: the historical context
• 3 Asylum, migration and border controls in the EU: the institutional context
• 4 The development of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS): the absence of securitization in the EU asylum policy venue
• 5 The securitization of irregular migration at the EU southern borders
• 6 Terrorism and the securitization of asylum-seekers and refugees
• Conclusion
• Interviews: identity coded
• Bibliography
• Index