Analysing Diagnosis and Evaluation of the “Migration Crisis” at the EU Level

Abstract

The chapter discusses how human security has structured the discourse on the “migration crisis”, becoming the most prominent logic in the diagnosis and evaluation of the crisis. Here, the European Parliament played the role of the key promotor of human security logic, framing migrants as human referent objects, seeking refuge from structural violence, war and terror. Further, the chapter discusses the prominence of risk logic, which was deployed, predominantly by the European Commission, in reference to movements within the EU and on its borders. Here, migratory flows on the borders are evaluated as carriers of uncertainty and risk connected to unidentifiable and unknown masses of people crossing to the EU. The chapter focuses on the symbolic role of the EU border, discussing how the framing and the type of security logic changes depending on the situation of migrants vis-à-vis the border. Finally, the chapter investigates how both logics, human security and risk, have been intertwining with the narratives of “exceptionality” and definitions of existential threats to migrants as well the Schengen area.