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ABSTRACT
As a direct response to the migrations of 2015, seven Schengen member states re-introduced border controls at their national borders, with five of them extending these controls continuously since then. Citing the impact of migration movements, they invoked the clauses of the Schengen Borders Code (SBC) temporarily allowing for such measures in order to counter exceptional threats. Based on a qualitative analysis of the notifications of the member states in question to the European Commission and its response, we examine how migration and migratory movements have been framed as a security issue in order to legitimise the extension of border controls. Drawing on critical security theory and the different conceptualisations of threat-based and risk-based security, we show that despite the frequent invocation of a frame of threat – as mandated by the SBC –, the underlying rationales for upholding border controls are progressively constructed along a frame of risk. This is consistent with a prevalence of risk-based conceptions of security at the level of the European Union. We conclude that the shift from threat-based rationales to risk-based conceptualisations of security undermine the spirit of the Schengen area as an area of free circulation since they tend to normalize the hitherto exceptional measure of internal border controls.
Acknowledgements
This journal article is part of a project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement N°770564. The authors would like to thank Mine Eder, Isabell Schierenbeck, Andrea Spehar, Gregg Bucken-Knapp and the participants of The Framing of The “Migration Crisis” Cross-Nationally: From Problem Definition to Institutionalization (Or Not)’ workshop, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul October 4–5, 2018 for their insightful comments on earlier versions of the article.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The exception was Belgium, which introduced temporary border controls because of movements allegedly triggered by the destruction of the Calais camp in France (Cerulus Citation2016).
2 Scholars such as Aradau, Lobo-Guerrero, and Van Munster (Citation2008) and Scott (Citation2011) differentiate between securitization and risk-based approaches to security, seeing them as distinct theoretical perspectives, with the latter deriving from Beck’s risk theory and risk analysis while the former from the social constructivist accounts of security associated with the Copenhagen School (Corry Citation2012).
3 Norway participates in Schengen arrangements even though it is not a member of the European Union.