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This article provides a re-conceptualization of human security by exploring humanitarian discourse in the EU periphery. It analyzes human security at the Mediterranean borders by focusing on humanitarian, migrant-centered discourse concerned with defending the world’s most vulnerable populations (Barnett in Annual Review of Political Science 16(1): 379-398, 2013). Empirical research has detected humanitarian discourse defending migrants’ rights, based on claims for the right to be free from inhuman treatment (Aradau in Millennium: Journal of International Studies 33(2): 251–77, 2004), as a counter-argument to the defense and closure of the borders. A humanitarian discourse focused on the alleviation of migrants’ physical and mental suffering erupted at the EU periphery when the Italian government denied a port of safety to the SeaWatch3 vessel in January 2019. This case study provides an example of center-periphery conflictual dynamics. The Italian government, defending the EU/Italian borders by closing the Italian ports, was challenged by actors mobilizing pressure, shaming the state into compliance and requesting pro-migrant legislation.