https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5201-061X
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ABSTRACT
In May 2015, the EU decided to launch a common military response against immigrant traffickers and smugglers known as the European Union Naval Force Mediterranean (EUNAVFOR MED)—and Operation SOPHIA. Its aim was to dispose of smugglers' vessels and other smuggling assets while still in Libyan territorial waters. Although this specific aim had never materialized, leading to the operation's termination in March 2020, the original decision had led to a securitisation process in the Mediterranean in the form of an increasing deployment of militarized bordering practices and techniques under the umbrella of Operation EUVAVFOR MED. The present paper presents a normative analysis of EUNAVFOR MED through the prism of Floyd's Just Securitisation Theory (JST). It focuses on the just initiation of securitisation, which is the first element of JST and a parallel to JWT's ius ad bellum that contains five conditions: Just Reason for Securitisation; Morally Justifiable Referent Objects; Right Intention; Macro Proportionality, and Reasonable Chances of Success. The paper concludes these conditions were not all met in all three phases of EUVAVFORMED and highlights the complexity of normatively assessing the securitisation of migrants' smugglers in the context of this European maritime military operation.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 There is a legal difference between smuggling and trafficking. Smuggling of migrants “shall mean the procurement, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit, of the illegal entry of a person into a State Party of which the person is not a national or a permanent resident” (United Nations, Citation2000a). Trafficking in persons “shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation … ” (United Nations, Citation2000b).
2 Note that in response to criticism, EUNAVFOR MED revised its definition of its goal which now says its goal is to: “systematically identify, capture and destroy vessels used by smugglers” with “disposing of” and rendering boats “inoperable” (Castro de Citation2015, Cîrlig Citation2015).
3 The category of “irregular immigration” is a compound of various types of immigrants, legally speaking. In 2015, over 80% of the migrants who crossed the Mediterranean to reach Europe came from the world’s top 10 refugee-producing countries, including Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Iraq. Not all the asylum seekers eventually qualify for refugee status due to various reasons. Some will be granted other forms of humanitarian protection but others will be returned to their countries of origin or to a third safe country. In any case, as indicated by Miltner (Citation2015, p. 213), the sought-after asylum protection afforded to refugees only materialises long after an immigrant reaches Europe. In this paper, we have used the general terms “irregular migration” and “undocumented immigrants”. This is especially because for the purpose of the above analysis (which assesses the legitimacy, in light of JST, to use force against vessels used to transfer undocumented immigrants to Europe) the above differentiations are less relevant.
4 The immediate reason that the operation discontinued was the Italian government’s unwillingness to serve as the only place of disembarkation for migrants rescued at sea.
5 To be more specific “Securitisation” is defined in Floyd’s framework as the process in which an issue is moved from normal politics into the realm of security politics. This process tends to involve a securitising move (an existential threat articulation) and security that is justified by the securitising actor with reference to the declared threat. Securitising actors are those who utter a speech act and either act on it or are powerful enough to instruct others to act on it (Floyd, Citation2019a, p. 53). A “securitising move” implies a warning and/or a promise of protection (Floyd, Citation2019a, p. 54). “The audience” refers either to the agents at the source of the threat or to the referent object in need of protection (p. 54). Yet, JST does not specify a criterion requiring audience acceptance of the threat narrative and/or security measures for the justice of securitisation since it does not capture how securitisation actually plays out. Moreover, the main purpose of JST is to reduce the number of securitisation manoeuvres taking place (Floyd, Citation2019a, p. 58).
6 Just War Theory has two central criteria: the ius ad bellum criterion for the just initiation of war and the ius in bello criterion for the just conduct of war. Each of these criteria specifies several conditions that should be fulfilled for the use of force to be considered just. The ius in bello criterion includes “just cause”, “right authority”, “right intention”, “last resort” and “reasonable chance of success”. The ius in bello criterion includes “discrimination” and “proportionality” (for elaboration see Floyd, Citation2019a, p. 68).
7 It is important to note that not all of JWT is relevant to Floyd’s just securitisation theory. Last resort and legitimate authority are not part of Floyd’s analytical framework for several reasons, which we cannot go into here due to limited scope. See elaboration in Floyd (Citation2019a, p. 123,142–146).
8 According to Floyds’ (Citation2019a, p. 77) view, only lethal threats are considered existential and can justify securitisation. She also divides threats into threats intended by an agent, threats caused by an agent, and agent-lacking threats.
9 A thorough critical debate appears in Floyd (Citation2022).
10 We share Baele and Sterck’s (Citation2015, p. 1124) perception on this.
11 Whilst Search and Rescue was not part of the EUNAVFOR MED mandate, the Operation was also expected to carry out life-saving operations. Thus, EUNAVFOR MED was named after SOPHIA, a child migrant rescued at sea.
12 According to UNSC Resolution 2240, “Member States can also inspect flagged vessels on the high seas off the coast of Libya as long as they have reasonable grounds to believe the vessels have been, are being, or imminently will be used by organized criminal enterprises for migrant smuggling or human trafficking from Libya with the consent of the flag State” (United Nations Security Council, Citation2015).
13 This relates to the political dispute between member states, particularly Italy, over disembarkation points and the relocation of migrants rescued during the operation (Kritzman Citation2020).
15 Our observation is based on a corpora of 135 texts dating from May 2015 to May 2016. These include central but varied statements and articulations by leading European decision makers in different formats and formal EU documents. We wished the corpus to present an equally diverse range of rationalisations regarding the third phase of EUNAVFOR MED.
17 Having said that, future research should continue this line of thinking and, in view of the European discourse and practice that treat Europe as a referent object of securitisation, examine whether the smugglers are “a real” threat to the EU.
18 For our assessment, we identified what we considered the characteristic words and terms of each “narrative” and then quantified and compared how often they appeared. For example, we found that the “protect migrants” narrative was characterised by words and terms such as “save”, “protect migrants/people”, “rescue”, “(human) lives”, “dangerous (journeys)”, “misery”, “tragedy/ies”, “(people) dying/died”, desperate (people)', “security (of migrants)”, “risk”, “vulnerable (people)”, “squeezing (hundreds)”. The “protecting Europe from migrants” narrative was identified by words and terms such as “control (migration)”, “illegal (migration)”, “irregular (migration)”, “security of (external) borders”, “management (of migration)”, “proliferation”, “protect borders/Europe/citizens”, “stem (migration)”, “discourage (migration)”, “containing”, “flows”, “challenges posed by migration”, “migratory pressures”, “pirates”, “terror/terrorism/terrorist”. We are fully aware that the composition of this narrative dictionary cannot be wholly accurate. However, we do believe that it is solid enough to help us to evaluate the relative weight of each narrative of the discourse that justifies and constitutes EUNAVFOR MED and finally to assess its “right intention”.
19 We have decided to limit our discursive corpus to direct quotes and articulations by European decision makers in order to avoid repetition.
20 This finding is backed by Cusumano (Citation2019, p. 13). According to his study, EUNAVFOR’s communication focused heavily on humanitarian tasks, especially in 2015. He also shows that discursive emphasis on border control increased in 2016 and 2017 due to the new tasks assigned to Operation SOPHIA. Over the period examined, however, words from the humanitarian category were iterated almost as frequently (48%) as those associated with the security tasks (52%).
21 See a similar critical logic by Haynes (Citation2004, p. 230), Garelli and Tazzioli (Citation2018b), Moreno-Lax (Citation2018) and Cusumano (Citation2019).