| Abstract [eng] |
Changes of European Immigration securitization between years 2015 and 2022 With the sharp rise in the number of illegal migrants in Europe in 2015 and the onset of the so-called “European migrant crisis”, there has been a renewed focus on issues related to migration and other related phenomena. This can be seen in the Eurobarometer data of autumn 2015, in which Europeans themselves indicated that the two main problems that are visible are immigration and terrorism, which were indicated to be the main ones by 58 and 25 percent of respondents, respectively. The results are reminiscent of another tendency: the issue of migration in Europe is seen through the lens of security, and immigration itself is a security issue. Slightly different trends due to the importance of surveys and research on immigration and terrorism can be seen in the results of the 2020 surveys, where the relevance of these issues is significantly lower than in the 2015 results. The stabilization of the migrant crisis and the natural cyclicality of the issues have led to immigration and terrorisim ranking 3rd and 8th in the most important issues scoreboard, respectively. Such trends are quite natural from the perspective that immigration rates in Europe have fallen over the last few years. Less public interest in the issue and lower migration flows could be a great way to address the long-standing migration policy issues. Nevertheless, the debate on immigration, political decisions and research on the subject are stifled and do not receive much attention. Taking the situation into account, this paper aims to analyze the migration security discourse of one main institutions of the European Union – the European Commission, the European Council and the European Parliament in 2015-2022, by applying the theoretical approach of securitisation, and to answer the question – whether and how is migration securitisation changing in institutional discourse. The study assumes that institutions tend to compete with each other for influence, making reaching a co-decision difficult. During the study, similar security dynamics could be observed in the discourse of all three institutions. The first two to three years of the study show a greater relevance of the problem and a more intensive securitisation. In the period ahead, there is a gradual decline in the interest in migration, which is also leading to a decline in the urgency of decision-making, as well as the practically disappearing need for additional emergency measures to address migration in the long run. Also, the work revealed that institutions, even by having different thinking and priorities, are capable of finding common solutions which refuted the assumption made at the beginning of the work that the institutions are programmed to disagree and revealed that a sufficiently specific and relatively effective agreement is possible at least under the conditions of a crisis. At the same time, in the work, using the tools of the desecuritisation process analysis, assumptions were made about the possible future desecuritisation in regards to the immigration issue, if similar migration trends are maintained and significant shocks are avoided. |
