Instrumentalisation of fear and securitisation of “Eastern Borders Route”: the case of Poland-Belarus “border crisis”

ABSTRACT

This paper offers a case study of the dynamic of securitisation of asylum seekers and migrants in Poland since 2015. It uses a unique case of the external actor – the Belarussian government – not merely threatening to escalate the pre-existing situation but actively constructing it by creating new migration flows and forcibly pushing asylum-seekers and migrants into the EU. By reconstructing the discourse and practice of the securitising actor and the intervention of the external actor, the paper shows that the pre-existing securitisation of asylum seekers and migrants in Poland was instrumentalised by the external actor, which led to the further development and intensification of the securitising policies and practices and their justifications. The analysis contributes to our understanding of the securitisation process in the moment of the context change as triggered by an exogenous factor – an intervention by the external actor.

KEYWORDS:

• External actor
• securitisation
• migration
• Eastern Borders Route
• asylum seekers

Acknowledgemen

I would like to express my thanks to anonymous reviewers whose comments were crucial for the development of this article. I would also like to thank Dimitris Bouris, Editor of European Security, for guidance on the submission and reviewing process. Additionally, I express gratitude to Natalia Letki for her mentorship and Dawid Walentek for his support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Migrant, asylum seeker, and refugee are highly contested terms. According to the UN, a refugee is a person who has fled war, violence, conflict, or persecution and has crossed an international border to find safety in another country (UNHCR 2023). In practice, to get refugee status, the asylum seeker needs to go through the asylum process and be officially recognised as a refugee by a particular state. In the analysed case study, some of the people attempting to enter the EU are asylum seekers who are fleeing violence or persecution. Others have different reasons to leave their homeland and have no intention to apply for asylum. In this paper, I use the term “asylum seekers and migrants” to collectively describe a group of people trying to reach the EU who may vary in their legal status and intentions.

2 Pushback – denial of access to the asylum procedure and forcible return of asylum seekers and migrants to the country from which they crossed the border, where they can face danger or deportation – is a violation of the non-refoulement principle of the 1951 Geneva Convention.

3 https://isap.sejm.gov.pl/ (Journal of Laws)

4 https://orka2.sejm.gov.pl/ Minutes of the Polish parliamentary debates (Sejm)

5 https://orka.sejm.gov.pl/ Sejm prints: Chancellery of the Prime Minister of the Polish Republic (KPRM) and Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland (KPRP)

6 https://www.sejm.gov.pl/Sejm9.nsf/agent.xsp?symbol = posglos&NrKadencji = 9 Voting in Sejm (Voting Sejm)

7 https://www.cbos.pl/ Centre for Public Opinion Research (CBOS)

8 https://referendum.gov.pl/ 2023 Referendum

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Narodowe Centrum Nauki grant number 2019/33/B/HS6/00841.