Securitisation at the Mediterranean Frontier through search and rescue at Sea
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2019-08-11
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en
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The gravity of the Mediterranean migration crisis increased the urgency for an immediate call to action because of the many lives lost at sea. Search and Rescue operations were deployed by the European Union to prevent more migrant deaths. However, the operational conduct of the Search and Rescue operations revealed the security mandates with border control objectives and military anti-smuggler assets. This thesis examines how securitisation has affected the European Union’s Search and Rescue activities during the Mediterranean migration crisis. It focusses on the Italian Navy Operation Mare Nostrum, Frontex Joint Operation Triton, and EUNAVFOR Med Operation Sophia. Through discourse analysis and process-tracing, it investigates the development of the European Union’s Search and Rescue operations and the narratives used to legitimise the securitisation of these operations. The Paris School of Securitisation helps to explain the dynamic interplay between the agents, the acts and the context at hand. The analysis finds multiple securitisation chains active during the crisis period 2014-2019 as well as three significant narratives aiding the legitimisation of the European Union’s securitising moves; restructuring the external borders, creating a threat in numbers, and fighting the smuggler networks. The mismatch between the outward communication and the mandates and assets of the Search and Rescue operations presents itself as a decoupling of talk and action, under which the humanitarian concerns are used as a disguise for the enhancement of border management and migration containment through anti-smugglers instruments.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen