Linking climate-induced migration and security within the EU: insights from the securitization debate

Abstract

The debate on climate-induced migration is often considered a way to promote environmental actions, new forms of governance inspired by solidarity and a transformation of security practices. Its securitization, however, remains a problematic development because it occurs within the framework of the securitization of migration. To explore the implications of securitizing climate-induced migration within the EU, this article engages with two theoretical approaches to securitization. It discusses the relationship between the Copenhagen and Paris Schools. The former focuses on speech acts that declare an issue a threat and transform the way of dealing with it; the latter outlines how mundane practices based on surveillance and policing contribute to creating a sense of insecurity and unease. While environmentally and climate-induced migration is mainly securitized through speech acts, the securitization of migration in general seems to follow the more subtle process described by the Paris School. This combination outlines the difficulties of introducing new forms of governance and transforming existing security practices.

Keywords:

• securitization
• climate change
• migration
• Paris School
• insecuritization

The growing interest in the security dimensions of climate change has brought into the security debate the issue of climate-induced migration, with alarming predictions of millions of people displaced and forced to move as sea level rises, droughts become more persistent and extreme weather events more frequent (Christian Aid 2007; Foresight 2011; WBGU 2007; Stern 2006). These predictions are not new. They have been around since the 1980s, when global environmental problems emerged and an evocative term like ‘environmental refugees’ was first used, but the growing consensus on climate change and mounting concerns for migration have resulted in renewed momentum.

Within the EU, the debate is mounting. In 2008, migration was mentioned in the paper on ‘Climate Change and International Security’ by the High Representative and the Commission. Research has been funded to identify areas at risk and provide scenarios on environmentally induced migration (EACH-FOR 2009). The Commission has announced a Communication on climate change and migration (Geddes and Somerville 2012, 1016) and initiated targeted consultations. The Parliament (2011) has issued a study on climate refugees, which followed the 2009 Resolution ‘Environmentally induced migration and displacement: a 21st-century challenge’.

The debate on climate-induced migration has been considered a way to promote environmental actions and new forms of governance of migration inspired by solidarity and human security (Geddes and Somerville 2012). The development of such forms of governance would be quite relevant, given the role of the EU in both migration and environmental policy and its emphasis on non-traditional instruments to ensure security. At the same time, critics have warned about the problems associated with framing climate-induced migration, and migration more generally, as security issues (Huysmans 2006; Hartmann 2010).

Within security studies, there is a long-running debate about the opportunity of linking environmental problems with security. As early as 1990, Deudney (1990) reviewing the debate on environmental security warned about security bringing about a confrontational attitude that hinders cooperation. However, the problems of staging an issue in the language of security were fully fleshed out by the work of the Copenhagen School and the theory of securitization (Buzan, Wæver, and De Wilde 1998; Waever 1995). For the Copenhagen School, security is not a value or a condition but a specific form of social practice. Securitization theory, which understands security as a speech act, focuses on the social process that stages an issue as a security issue and, by doing so, transforms the way of dealing with it. The School identifies a specific logic of security, which is activated whenever something is made to appear as a self-evident security issue, independently from the context and the intentions of the speakers. This logic is characterized by an authoritarian approach, which brings about exceptional measures and moves an issue outside democratic debate. As a result, more security is not always an improvement (Waever 1995, 56). Critics pointed out that exceptional measures are not so evident or frequent (Oels 2012). Others have suggested that securitization is not necessarily negative (Floyd 2011; Roe 2012). And some have argued that the practices and logics associated with security can be questioned and transformed by dealing with issues like climate change, which call for different measures, like precautionary approaches (Trombetta 2008). The possibility of transformation is even more evident in the literature inspired by Foucault, which suggests that considerations about what counts as security and the way to ensure it cannot be separated from the specific conceptualization of a problem (Dillon and Lobo-Guerrero 2008), thus opening up to a multiplicity of security discourses and practices. Does this mean that the securitization of climate-induced migration is not as problematic as some commentators suggest?

It is argued that security logics and practices can indeed be challenged and transformed by dealing with non-traditional issues like climate change or migration.¹ At the same time, empirical analyses have to consider the persistence of specific security logics and practices and the assumptions behind them. In the case of climate-induced migration, it will be shown that appeals to security are likely to reinforce the notion of ‘fortress Europe’ and a negative conceptualization of migration, even if the measures implemented to ensure security are changing.

To illustrate this point and to explore the implications of securitizing climate-induced migration, the article makes three claims. First, when analyzing climate-induced migration, it is necessary to consider two processes of securitization: the securitization of environmentally induced migration and the securitization of migration in general. Both have different characteristics and dynamics and tend to be analyzed independently in literature. And yet, they influence each other. Considering them in tandem allows us to identify an often overlooked problem in the securitization of climate-induced migration: Even if some of the appeals to consider environmental migration as a security issue call for environmental measures and solidarity, these measures have to be implemented in a context in which migration is considered a security issue and governed accordingly.

Second, to analyze the characteristics of these two processes and their implications, it is useful to introduce two approaches to securitization. The first is the original provided by the Copenhagen School. The other is the sociological approach developed by the Paris School, also known as in-securitization (Bigo 2002). While the former focuses on the effects of alarming claims and authoritative speech acts, which transform the way of dealing with an issue, the latter analyzes the mundane process that by governing an issue in a specific way – involving for instance police and surveillance – reinforces the image that it is a threat. To some extent, they can be seen as complementary: security is not only about exceptional measures but also about the perpetration of practices – enacted for instance by police – that makes security measures operable and normal. The two schools, however, have different understandings of the political process. And – more relevant for this analysis – they capture different ways in which issues are subtracted from open democratic debates. While the Copenhagen School outlines how appeals to security can bring about exceptional measures, governing by decrees rather than by democratic procedures, the Paris School shows how issues are transformed into security issues outside the political debate, and security practices are implemented without a clear formulation of the threat. Both can provide relevant insights on the implications of staging climate-induced migration as a security issue.

Third, the human security paradigm is often considered a way to escape the confrontational, problematic logic of national security through a focus on human needs. It will be shown that human security discourses hide different problems, not only because they tend to disempower people involved but also because human security is turning into a strategy to govern at distance keeping people in places (Duffield and Evans 2012).

The article starts with an overview of the main arguments against linking climate-induced migration and security. It then explores how these arguments can be framed within the debate on securitization theory. To do so, it compares and contrasts the original formulation of the Copenhagen School (Section 2) with the reformulation provided by the Paris School (Section 3). The two perspectives on securitization will be used to analyze two processes of securitization that are relevant for climate-induced migration. As already mentioned, the first is the securitization of environmentally induced migration; the second is the securitization of migration. While environmentally induced migration tends to be securitized by authoritative speech acts as suggested by the Copenhagen School, the securitization of migration in general is better described by a process of in-securitization in which mundane practices based on surveillance, monitoring and policing contribute to creating a sense of insecurity and unease, as suggested by the Paris School.

Drawing on the insights provided by the two perspectives on securitization, the final part analyzes the implications of this combination of securitizing processes for both the governance of climate-induced migration and the transformation of security logics and practices.

1. A troubling self-evident link?

Arguments against linking environmentally induced migration and security can be distinguished into two broad categories: the first targets the extent and characteristics of the phenomenon; the second questions the opportunity of staging environmentally induced migration as a security issue, either as national or as human security.

Since the 1980s, alarming claims of millions of people displaced by environmental change have prompted more careful investigations, suggesting that predictions of massive population movements pushing at the gates of the developed world – as suggested, for instance, by Myers (1997) or popularized by Kaplan (1994) in his gloomy description of a ‘coming anarchy’ – were overestimations.

A first critique targets the extent of the phenomenon and the accuracy of the data. Jakobeit and Methmann (2012) have shown that estimates of several hundred millions of refugees are speculative and exaggerated. They compared several reports published in recent years and showed how they disagree on numbers. This echoes Black’s (2001) critique, which showed that quantifications are often achieved by simply extrapolating demographic data and taking them out of context. As Black suggested, numerical conclusions are reached by implying that adverse climatic conditions will automatically lead the population to leave.

This treatment of the data suggests that in a large part of the literature, the link between environmental stress and migration is considered as a given, a common wisdom: facing environmental degradation populations will move. In turn, the possibility of massive migration is automatically considered a security issue because it will create instability and conflict without problematizing the assumptions behind those supposedly self-evident statements or questioning whose security is at risk (Trombetta 2012). Alarming representations of millions of refugees hide neo-Malthusian narratives, environmental determinism and a questionable representation of people in the global south. These narratives suggest that people in the South are not able to preserve their environment or adapt to changes. Once the environment is degraded, they will move to another place and continue the process (Hartmann 2010). This reinforces the idea that migration should be avoided and sustainable development promoted to keep people in their original locations. Rather than victims, migrants are seen as perpetrators.

Paradoxically, empirical data showing little evidence of those movements are insufficient to challenge alarming predictions, not only for the difficulties in agreeing on numbers but also because, especially in the case of climate change, the threat is a potential, future one (Baldwin 2012, 2013). The implications of this are evident even in the work of scholars who are careful to avoid any deterministic linkage such as Gemenne (2011). In his analysis, he points out that dramatic climatic change, like those associated with an increase of temperature above 4°C, can indeed dramatically alter existing patterns of migration.

The second aspect considered by critics is the complexity of the phenomenon. Empirical analyses have shown that the decision to migrate is a complex phenomenon involving economic and cultural aspects; it is difficult to identify a specifically environmental component. Moreover, it has been shown that environmental degradation can hinder the possibility of migration since affected people may lack the resources to move. Another aspect that emerged from empirical research is that movements of populations are not long distance, from the South to the North. Most of the movements occur within states and often involve migration from rural areas to megacities that, in several cases, are located in vulnerable, low-elevation costal zones. Ironically, people are not escaping from the dangers of climate change but likely moving toward them (Geddes and Somerville 2012, 1016; UK Foresight 2011).

While these arguments have shown that environmentally displaced populations are unlikely to represent threats to international security, migration can still hinder the security of the population involved and that of the receiving communities in the South. In this respect, framing migration as a human security issue seems a more appropriate approach. Human security focuses on the security and vulnerability of people. As the 1994 UNDP report that popularized the concept explains, human security ‘means, first safety from such chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression. And second, it means protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily life – whether in homes, jobs or in communities’ (UNDP 1994, 23). The definition is made more precise and concrete by referring to seven components: economic security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal security, community security and political security. The emphasis is on the ‘all-encompassing’ character of the concept. Climate change as well as migration can threaten the human security of migrants as well as that of receiving communities.

While empirical research has challenged the unproblematic association of environmental degradation with migration and security, a second set of arguments questions the opportunity of considering environmentally induced migration as a security issue. Security is an evocative concept with an incredible capability of mobilizing actions and resources. Its evocative power, however, is related to a specific political tradition and the practices associated with it.

Many warnings that environmental degradation can determine massive flows of refugees were made with the intent of promoting action to protect the environment. If developed societies do not deal with the problem of environmental degradation, they will soon have to deal with that of massive immigration; this was the warning posed by Myers back in the 1980s (1986). Morrissey has shown that many of the proponents of the environmental degradation–migration–security nexus were environmentalists, and waves of concern for migration overlapped with various waves of environmentalism (2012). In the 1970s, Brown was one of the first to warn about migration induced by environmental degradation in the context of the first wave of environmentalism. Similarly, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the interest in environmental refugees followed the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the report by Myers and Kent (1995), which is a milestone of the maximalist position,² was commissioned by the Climate Institute to raise the profile of environmental issues (Morrissey 2012, 42). More recently, growing concern for climate change and security has brought the issue of environmental migration back into the agenda. Attempts to warn about migration were supposed to achieve two things. First, they were showing that the consequences of environmental degradation were not only felt by distant people in distant places, but also by people in developed countries, as through migration environmental degradation was likely to impact on western societies as well. Second, they emphasized the vulnerability narrative in order to generate a humanitarian imperative (Morrissey 2012, 41).

At the same time, however, these attempts fuelled the growing resistance to immigration in western societies. The underlying assumption is that migration is a threat to the security of receiving societies. This perspective is largely suggested by the logic of national security, which focuses on the security of the state and its citizens, sees states as containers of population and adopts a zero sum approach to security in which one’s security is someone else’s insecurity. It promotes an antagonistic approach, which is detrimental to cooperation. Security is associated with threat-defense logic and transforms migrants from vulnerable victims to a threat to be counteracted by any means, including military ones. To understand these arguments and their deep implications, it is necessary to turn to the theory of securitization.

2. Securitization: the Copenhagen School

The theory of securitization provides several elements to assess the implications of considering environmentally induced migration as a security issue. The theory, originally formulated by Weaver and the Copenhagen School, suggests that there are no objective threats waiting to be discovered and counteracted and that various problems can be transformed into a security issue if a political community agrees on that (Waever 1995; Buzan, Wæver, and De Wilde 1998). It ‘provides the by far most elaborate – and prominent – understanding of how threats/threat discourses are produced in world politics’ (Stritzel 2011, 2492). Through a successful speech act, an issue can be transformed into a security issue: by saying security something is done, that is the way of dealing with the problem is changed. This is quite relevant for the discussion on environmental migration because it shifts the focus from the truth of a statement to the truth effects of it. The point, in this perspective, is not to discuss whether environmental migration is a security issue but what the implications are of considering it as such. Securitization does not deny the ‘reality’ of threats but emphasizes that to have access to it, we interpret (and label) what is perceived or claimed to be true. For the Copenhagen School, labeling a problem as a security issue has substantial cognitive and social effects. Alarming, authoritative reports forecasting millions of environmental refugees can make environmental migration appear as a security issue and thus change the way environmental degradation and environmental refugees are dealt with. Security is not just a value or a condition but a specific form of social practice, a specific way of dealing with an issue.

Securitization, according to the Copenhagen School, brings with it a set of unavoidable, problematic practices. These practices are associated with a specific political tradition that conceives security as a zero sum game and calls for exceptional, emergency measures. These measures can take different forms, including military actions, legitimized by the appeal to survival. Ideally, securitization acts as a limit, echoing the soverign power that decides in the case of exception (see Williams 2003), however, more immediate consequences involve: first, the inscription of enemies in a context – a process that makes collaborative or more creative solutions to address the problem more difficult, if not impossible; second, the de-politicization of an issue, by means of quick decisions outside democratic procedures and political debates, governing by decrees rather than by democratic procedures.

As a result, securitization is problematic because it takes issues out of the political debate while imposing an antagonistic approach. This account of securitization appears rather essentialist, crystallizing a specific logic and practices of security and suggesting rather problematic mechanisms of automatic reaction in social contexts. Security, in much of the original writing of the Copenhagen School, is considered a self-referential practice; by using the word security something is done independently from the context or the intentions of the speaker. The focus on the ‘securityness of security’ (Waever 1995) – or the characteristic that makes an issue a security issue – combined with a performative understanding of language that is based on the possibility of iterating a speech act and achieving the same affect in different contexts suggests that the logic and grammar of security are rather fixed and brought about every time security is successfully evoked, independently from the context and the intentions of the speakers. So, there is no difference between securitizing migration to promote environmental actions or increasing military expenses to patrol borders. The result will always be the imposition of a confrontational, threat-defense approach, even if the specific measures vary.

The original formulation of securitization theory has been criticized on several fronts. Critics have been quick to point out that there are no such automatic mechanisms, magically transforming an issue into a security issue (Balzacq 2010, 3; Bigo 2002), and if one examines exceptional measures many securitizing moves have failed (Oels 2012; Buzan and Wæver 2009) even if they have produced relevant effects and made people consider an issue as a self-evident security issue. Two main critiques have been moved to deal with the fixed and automatic nature of appeals to security. First, the Copenhagen School, drawing on speech act theory, considers securitization as an illocutory act, which focuses on formal aspects, iterability and automatic consequences (like betting or promising). According to Balzacq (2010), securitization is better described as a perlocution since it focuses on persuasion and reactions in the audience. This opens up the space for motivations and strategies by securitizing actors, turning securitization into an argumentative process (see Williams 2003), in which the practices that are legitimized are also debated. Second, it has been suggested that while security has a political tradition that cannot be escaped and, to some extent, the logic and practices associated with it are resilient, by securitizing non-traditional issues, such as the environment, other practices are brought into the context and other logics of security emerge like those associated with risk or precautionary approaches (Trombetta 2008, 2010; Corry 2012). This process can determine a progressive erosion of the political modality and logic of security depicted by the Copenhagen School (Hansen 2011, 362; Waever 2011, 474). This has paved the way for the success of Foucaldian inspired approaches that suggest that there is no such a thing as security in general but only multiple practices that embody different conceptualizations of security (Dillon and Lobo-Guerrero 2008; Oels 2012). Are these developments making the link between migration and security less problematic? In the next section, it will be shown that while a more contextualized approach has questioned the fixity of the logic of security, it has also outlined more subtle and resilient implications of securitization.

3. In-securitization: the Paris School

The so-called sociological approach (Balzacq 2010) has progressively built up a critique of securitization aimed at contextualizing the process that transforms an issue into a threat and the practices associated with it. It challenged the sort of automatic reaction associated with speaking the word security, which considers securitization as a sort of ‘social magic’ (Bourdieu 1991; Balzacq 2010, 3). This approach criticizes the narrow focus on speech acts and emphasizes the relevance of other media and practices in the process of securitization. It sees securitization as a multilayered process and outlines how it occurs over time and is context specific.

By moving away from the exceptional, breaking-point of the speech act, these scholars focus on how the everyday practices of actors involved in implementing policies contribute to a less spectacular but quite effective process of constructing a problem as a security issue by embedding it into specific domains of security. This is done by collecting information, categorizing people, associating them with more or less dangerous categories and evoking expert knowledge to do so. The process goes on until a threat appears as self-evident and unproblematic, thus hiding its social construction, and the assumptions behind it. This position characterizes the so-called Paris School.³ These scholars investigate how the practices of various agencies and security professionals, who are empowered with privileged information, claim to authoritatively identify threats, exaggerating or provoking existing fears to promote their own institutional interest (Bigo 2002, 64).

Three aspects are relevant for analyzing when securitization occurs and the implications of framing an issue as a security issue. First, in this perspective, a proof of securitization is not provided by the presence of exceptional measures but by the association of the governance of migration with policing and surveillance, which are associated with the traditional security field and security experts. In turn, this association reinforces the representation of migrants as a potential threat to be kept in check rather than, for instance, a resource for the labor market. This suggests an implicit, negative connotation of securitization as politics of unease (Bigo 2002; Roe 2012).

Second, it suggests that the process of securitization depends on technical and professional expertise. This contributes to a technocratic rendition of an issue in a domain of insecurity. Experts identify specific practices and instruments that are used to govern an issue and in turn the process reinforces a specific representation and interpretation of an issue as a security issue. So, for instance, the emphasis on the need to identify immigrants reinforces the idea that they have to be monitored, that they are different from EU citizens, and thus a threat. This has two implications. First, the ‘politics of unease can create contexts for securitization within which there is no clear discursive framing of threats’ (Roe 2012, 252), thus making the process less evident and less open to negotiation and contestation. Second, this perspective suggests that the process of securitization results from the repetitive and diffuse use of different techniques and skills that constitute and define objects as security issues rather than from the implementation of specific strategies to deal with security issues. It is not the decision that something is a security issue that determines the strategy and the instruments to govern it; it is the process of governing by police, border guards and so on that contributes to making it a self-evident security issue. This has implications for understanding the problematic character of securitization, why ‘securitization is bad for democracy’ (Aradau 2004, 392) and the difficulties in de-securitizing issues. While for the Copenhagen School, securitization determines a process of depoliticization by which issues are taken away from the political debate allowing for emergency, exceptional decisions that somehow suspend the liberal order and democratic procedures, the Paris School outlines a different process of depoliticization because the transformation of an issue into a security issue is often hidden and based on the competition between different agencies or security professionals that characterize the hidden, unaccountable face of power.

Third, it suggests that different contexts, with different degrees of institutionalization. are likely to be characterized by different combinations of speech acts and securitization through practices.⁴ Spectacular speech acts, calling for new or more extensive forms of governance are likely to occur when institutions are limited, as in the case of environmental migration. When institutional arrangements are already in place, as in the case of migration in Europe, the process is more hidden and tends to perpetuate existing institutional arrangements. Speech acts have to challenge the authoritative position of security experts and bureaucracies.⁵

Using the conceptual tools provided by the brief overview of securitization and in-securitization, it is now possible to analyze two processes of securitization that are relevant for understanding the implications of linking climate-induced migration and security: that of environmentally induced migration and that of migration in general.

4. The securitization of environmentally induced migration in Europe

A link between environmental degradation, massive migration flows and security has been drawn since the 1970s but the issue gained prominence in the 1980s when global environmental problems emerged. Migration was one of the problems mentioned in the emerging environmental security discourse (Myers 1986; Mathews 1989) and Myers (1993) provided a dramatic account of the link between environmental change, migration and security by forecasting millions of environmental refugees. In that context, the term refugees fully embodied humanitarian concerns, since the term was used to identify a relatively limited number of political refugees whose acceptance was not a major concern in Western countries. The security implications of environmentally induced migration were evoked to promote environmental actions.

The aspirations for a common approach to environmental problems that accompanied the end of the Cold War and paved the way for the UN Conference in Rio in 1992 were short lived. In the post-Cold War environment, environmental degradation – and the associated migration – turned into a threat to global order (Trombetta 2012, 154). They were supposed to contribute to the chaos in the peripheries (Kaplan 1994), where conflict can arise when, for instance, displaced people and different ethnic groups are forced together in conditions of deprivation (Homer-Dixon 1994) and the flow of refugees from a ‘southern barbaric other’ (Barnett 2001, 67) was considered a threat to Western societies.

After 9/11, the terrorist threat reinforced the threat posed by migration but shifted attention away from environmental issues and their security implications. As concerns for climate change gained momentum, climate-induced migration re-emerged and it was discussed again by various European think tanks (Christian Aid 2007; Foresight 2011; WBGU (Germany Advisory Council on Global Change) 2007). This resonates with the alarming message put forward in the United States by the Pentagon-sponsored report on abrupt climate change, which portrayed poor, starving populations fleeing towards US and EU borders (Schwartz and Randall 2003) or by the report ‘National Security and the Threat of Climate Change’ produced by the defense think tank CNA, which forecasted wide political instability in the developing world and large refugee movements (CNA 2007).

The securitizing move is evident. The German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) identifies what it labels ‘conflict constellations’ related to environmental migration and suggests that they have the potential of ‘jeopardizing national and international security to a new degree’ (2007, 1). The WBGU acknowledges that environmental migration tends to occur within countries or to neighbor states in the South; however, it warns Europe and North America against increasing ‘migratory pressure from regions most at risk from climate change’ (2007, 3). In a similar way, the joint report by the High Representative and the EU Commission ‘Climate Change and International Security’ (2008) considers climate change as a ‘threat multiplier’ and warns that there will be ‘millions of environmental refugees’ by 2020. The report acknowledged the humanitarian dimension but emphasized that ‘the risks are not just of humanitarian nature; they also include political and security risks that directly affect European interests’.

This tension is evident even in the report prepared in 2008 by Tina Acketoft for the EU Parliament. While the emphasis is on human security, the protection of human rights and the development of new legal and institutional instruments of protection, the report evokes the image of millions of refugees, suggesting that they already exceed the number of those displaced by war and quoting the gloomy predictions of millions of refugees suggested by Stern (2006). In this way, the report mobilizes the threat defense logic and contributes to constituting the problem and locating it in a specific context.⁶

In 2010, the EU Commission declared the intention of exploring the policy implications of the increasingly debated relationship between climate change and migration (Geddes and Somerville 2012, 115) as part of the ‘action plan on implementation of the Stockholm Programme,’ producing a Communication on the effects of climate change on international migration. However, since the Stockholm Programme is the five-year plan for internal security policy covering the period 2010–14, security concerns, expertise and practices are likely to inform this analysis.

The transformation of environmentally induced migration into a security issue has been supported by two kinds of securitizing moves. While the first one – bringing together environmentalists, think tanks and politicians concerned with development and migration – sought to create awareness and mobilize action, the second sought to legitimize new interventions and forms of surveillance. It was promoted not only by the security sector but also by transit countries, especially in North Africa, keen to acquire funds to contribute to stopping increasing flows of immigrants (see White 2011). They have been characterized by speech acts supported by reports produced by think tanks and echoed by the media and by politicians. At the same time, a more subtle process of competing for competencies and subsuming the issue to security experts has started.

Despite alarming discourses, there were no exceptional measures to deal with environmentally induced migration. Multilateral cooperation and new institutional arrangements were called for, a point that is evident in the WBGU report, which calls for a ‘cross-sectorial multilateral convention aiming at the issue of environmental migrant’ (2007), or in that of Acketoft, which called for new legislative instruments. The debate contributed to promoting the acceptance of measures to govern migration, often using the language of risk and precautionary measures. However, ‘the militarized backdrop, including the border control effort, remains the actual, on-the-ground manifestation of policy advocacy’ (White 2011, 78). This suggests that securitization does not necessarily bring in antagonistic, exceptional measures, and different security practices and logics can be introduced. The result, however, depends on the context in which securitization occurs. To understand the extent of the problem in the case of climate-induced migration, it is necessary to turn to another site of securitization, namely migration.

5. The securitization of migration in Europe

Several commentators have identified signals of a securitization of migration in Europe.⁷ After World War II, in several European countries, immigration was seen as a source of cheap and flexible workforce that did not exist in the domestic market (Huysmans 2006, 65). Since the 1970s, however, changes in the labor market and attempts to protect the social and economic rights of domestic workers have increased control, and European immigration policy has been in the spirit of ‘“stemming” unwanted flows’ (Joppke 2011, 17). A political rhetoric started to link migration with the destabilization of public order (Huysmans 2006, 65) and represent immigrants as ‘skillful cheaters’. This became more evident in the mid-1980s ‘through the (con)fusion of immigration and asylum by presenting asylum as an alternative route for economic immigration in the EU’ (Huysmans 2006, 66 quoting den Boer). This has contributed to a slow process that depicted immigrants as a threat to jobs, social security and national identity. The process has been enhanced by the end of the Cold War – which opened the gates of the soviet bloc, allowing population to move – and by 9/11 and the subsequent attacks in Madrid and London – which exposed European vulnerability to terrorism. These events impacted not only on the acceptance of economic migrants but also on the perception of refugees, and it was promptly noticed that three of the London bombers were former refugees (Duffield and Evans 2012, 93).

Despite the different positions of various European countries, this has been a European level process that started with the signature of the Schengen agreement in 1985. With the opening of internal borders, the control of immigration shifted to the EU, and the Amsterdam Treaty 1997 marked the Europeanization of the immigration function. Even if, originally, immigrants were not per se a security concern, the process of Europeanization itself has been driven by a specific process of articulation of threats. At first, member states relinquished authority over immigration with the intent of maximizing security and control. However, as immigration control shifted to the EU, it became infused by the logic of free movement and circulation (Joppke 2011, 18). This, in turn, restricted states’ authority in this domain sometimes determining further securitizing moves as states were threatened to lose control even over legal labor migration from outside the EU, which, as today, remains the last bastion of state sovereignty over migration (Joppke 2011, 18).

The process has been characterized by two tendencies: a progressive professionalization of immigration control; and its entrenchment in a security discourse which allowed both its institutionalization and the development of border surveillance. As for the first, the creation of FRONTEX, the European Agency to deal with migration in 2005 is the most evident sign of the institutionalization and technocratization of migration management (Neal 2009). The approach of FRONTEX is based on the creation of a network of institutions, the collection of information and the promotion of joint operations, which often involve military and police. It creates a network of experts and security professionals (Léonard 2010). The second tendency is evident in the growing deployment of surveillance and screening measures and in the collaboration with police and military, which is the other face of the elimination of internal borders. Several initiatives undertaken over the years suggest the deployment of an increased system of control, justified by security arguments. The Spanish Integrated System for the Surveillance of the Strait is a technologically advanced system for detecting and intercepting small vessels and it is operated by the Guardia Civil. By combining radar, satellite and motion detection systems, it can identify small vessels kilometers away from the shores and estimate the number of people on board. Information about the boat, its position and route are transmitted to a central unit that coordinates interception units (Carling 2011, 37–38). It was created in 1999 and it was implemented to become a ‘fence under the water’ (White 2011, 75). A more recent example of this securitized approach is the development of EUROSUR (European border surveillance system). It was launched in 2008 and started to become operational in December 2013. It establishes information sharing and cooperation mechanisms between the authorities carrying out border surveillance activities and FRONTEX in order to improve situational awareness and reaction capabilities at the Southern and Eastern borders of the Schengen area (see Seiffarth 2011). One of its stated objectives is to increase the internal security of the European Union by preventing cross-border crime (European Commission 2008, 3–4). It requires member states to establish one national coordination center and proper surveillance infrastructures at national level, relying on the risk assessment provided by FRONTEX. This is part of the integrated border control, which merges the physical control of borders with the collection of information and the distribution of competencies (Gonzales Fuster and Gutwirth 2011). In this way, the border is both delocalized – by using database and electronic controls – and deepened – because controls begin before the border is even reached (Jeandesboz 2011). The system of visas, for instance, involves travel agencies and air companies that are required to comply or face sanctions. At the same time measures such as the collection of biometric data and fingerprints are only justified (or tolerated) by the security imperative.

As Huysmans (2006) has pointed out, this process is a combination of appeals to various threats – including climate change – and the result of a struggle between different security experts and agencies that strive to extend their mandate and frame an issue as requiring more surveillance and policing. This contributes to making the representation of threat self-evident but more difficult to contest since it is silent and it is not built around a specific threat or referent objects but weaves together several issues as security problems.

6. The implications for dealing with environmentallyinduced migration

The previous analysis suggests that two different dynamics of securitization are going on. One concerns the securitization of climate-induced migration; it is characterized by various speech acts and reflects positions that tend to take for granted the link between degradation and migration. These securitizing moves largely failed to mobilize emergency actions but they outlined two developments. First, they contributed to questioning security practices and promoted the adoption of precautionary approaches and environmental measures. These actions, however, are largely embedded in an approach that associates developmental and environmental aid with containment (Duffield and Evans 2012), combining local actions with attempts to protect borders and limit migration. Second, they outlined the resilience of the national security discourse, the possibility of mobilizing action and introducing emergency measures even if it has been shown that the process is not as automatic as some reading of the Copenhagen School’s work seemed to suggest. The emphasis on climate change as a potential, future threat rather than an actual one contributes to mobilizing action.

The other process of securitization is the one going on within the EU, and it is transforming migration into a security issue by subjecting it to specific modalities that are associated with security such as policing and control. The characteristics of the EU and the advanced institutionalization of migration policy make the process of securitization less evident; speech acts are only part of the process, and research has shown the more complex dynamics that contribute to the development of a security field that weaves together different threats. As Elspeth Guild puts it, ‘What happens is that foreigners, described in various different ways (migrant, refugee, etc.), become caught in a continuum of insecurity. …Many insecurity discourses are promoted at any given time …[yet] the ease with which the category of the foreigner may be added to an insecurity discourse, with the effect of heightening the perceived seriousness of the threat, remains constant’ (quoted in White 2011, 65).

The coexistence of these two processes of securitization is captured by Huysmans who describes securitization (and politics) as both political spectacle and technocracy. In the spectacle, contestants evoke crises, enemies, dramatic developments. They mobilize discursive or symbolic power in the process of seeking and contesting political legitimacy (Huysmans 2006, 153). In extreme cases, a successful securitization represents the limit of this process, and an issue is moved out of the political debate and dealt with in an authoritarian way. However, in most of the cases, different political visions are asserted on the basis of evoking fears and emergencies and by presenting credible methods to deal with them (Huysmans 2006, 153). This suggests a broader understanding of securitization as the process of presenting an issue as a self-evident threat, requiring urgent measures and determining a transformation in a process of governance. At the same time, since technocratic processes heavily shape modern societies, the politics of insecurity is not limited to political spectacle and speech acts. Routines, struggles over expertise and the development of databases play a determinant role in structuring domains of insecurity. This determines a slow, often hidden process that is more difficult to challenge and contest but whose final result is the representation of an issue as a self-evident threat that needs to be contained and controlled. It is not the perception of the threat that determines the way of dealing with it but it is the very way of dealing with it that constitutes it as a threat.

The interplay of these two processes of securitization is likely to act in three different directions. First, the emphasis on the images of millions of refugees flooding Europe, even if largely rejected by empirical evidence, will reinforce a threat-defense approach. The stress on emergencies, which characterizes several representations of these migratory flows, contributes to their representation as security issues. Appeals to deal with environmentally induced migration are likely to be incorporated within existing immigration policies without substantially transforming them. The EU has slowly and incrementally developed a framework to govern migration that emphasizes the security dimension and associates it with policing and controlling, in the ‘EU’s self-declared fight against illegal immigration’ (Geddes and Somerville 2012, 1020). Environmental or climate migrants are likely to be associated with unwanted immigrants, in the same way refugees and asylum seekers have been since the end of the Cold War. Member states are concerned about asylum legislation and their aspiration is to reduce the number of asylum seekers rather than creating new categories for protection. This was evident, for instance, in the exclusion of the victims of natural disasters from the Temporary Protection Directive (European Parliament 2011, 54–55).

Second, the emphasis on the multidimensionality of the problem and the relevance of the environmental component are increasing the acceptance of environmental and other precautionary measures. This means to implement non-traditional security instruments like development aid and proactive action. The logic of prevention seeks to influence the factors forcing or encouraging migrants to travel to the EU; it tries to address the root causes of migration through more targeted use of development assistance, trade and foreign direct investments (Boswell 2003, 624). The logic of prevention does not exclude exclusion and containment; it simply suggests different instruments to achieve them. The emphasis of promoting security through development and environmental sustainability is associated with the attempt to keep people in their places and minimize migration. As Duffield and Evan suggested: ‘containment is the un-written truth of the development security nexus’ (2012, 94). In this way, the evocation of the migratory threat, even when humanitarian concerns are taken into account, reinforces the assumption that the origins of the problem are local as are the solutions. Migration, as a failure to adapt, needs to be avoided or minimized. As this strategy is challenged by framing migration as a strategy of adaptation, two mechanisms of governance are already emerging. First, there are attempts to maintain migration within regionally defined areas. Second, as a result of the process of regulation of migration that has developed in Europe, only those migrants that possess skills and capabilities to adapt and to be admitted to Europe are selected and filtered. The first resonates with the focus on the regional dimension of migration and the importance of considering displacement within countries. As for the second, Dalby has distinguished between ‘biosphere people’, able to move across the globe and ‘ecosystem people’, those that are stuck in places, unable to move and dependent on local ecosystems (Dalby 1998, 303). Reframing migration as a strategy of adaptation, while apparently challenging that division, still operates through it, because technologies selecting those who are allowed to move and those who are not have already been implemented.

Commentators have noticed that the debate on environmentally induced migration is characterized by a divide between those considering it as a security issue and those focusing on the humanitarian aspect.⁸ The human security discourse, however, brings together these two aspects as promoting human security turns into a strategy to govern at distance a population that is not able to secure itself (Duffield and Waddell 2006). Moreover, even if human security is promoted through sustainable development and adaptation, these conditions are supposed to be achieved locally: underdevelopment, zones of conflict and chaos should be contained. Post-colonial narratives of people in the South as unable to take care of themselves and their environment (Hartmann 2010) and the imperative of keeping them at bay are still present. Development assistance aimed at promoting human security (when implemented) is accompanied by increasing surveillance at the borders.

7. Conclusions

This analysis adds two important insights to the discourse on a securitization of environmentally induced migration – one being rather theoretical and one empirical. Theoretically, this article has shown that the combination of two alternative approaches of securitization – developed by the Copenhagen School and the Paris School – helps paint a clearer and more comprehensive picture of the securitization of climate-induced migration. On the one hand, securitization, as described by the Copenhagen School, captures the impact of the maximalist claims about the link between environmental degradation and migration. It shows how speech acts contribute to making environmentally induced migration a self-evident security issue and legitimize exceptional measures, which, however, can take different forms, including new forms of governance. In short, the approach helps reveal discourses and articulations that have linked environmentally induced migration to security in Europe. The Paris School, on the other hand, outlines the process that transforms an issue into a threat by governing it in specific ways that involve police, security experts, monitoring and surveillance techniques. It is hence more relevant to understand the subtle process of a securitization of migration in Europe through technologies and practices of control in the context of a common European border and migration management.

This leads us to a second, empirical conclusion: when exploring the implications of framing environmentally induced migration as a security issue, it is necessary to consider it in the context of the institutionalized securitization of migration. Security arguments about environmental migration were often voiced by environmentalists to promote more pro-active climate policies and new legal regulations to deal with the problem of climate-induced migration. Yet, as this article has shown, these securitizing moves ultimately failed in bringing about the desired action – despite the fact that their core arguments were accepted. Instead climate-induced migration became subjected to the already existing European machinery of managing and controlling migration.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria Julia Trombetta

Maria Julia Trombetta has a PhD in International Politics from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and degrees from the University of Pavia and from Bocconi University, Milan. Before moving to the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, she was a senior research fellow at the Delft University of Technology and taught at the universities of Aberystwyth and Oxford Brookes. She spent a semester at Albany Law School as a Fulbright Scholar. Her main research interests and areas of expertise are critical approaches to security, environmental, and energy governance.

Notes

1. Considering migration as a strategy for adaptation (Warner 2011) implies rethinking the link between mobility and security, suggesting new ways of regulating circulation, questioning criteria of exclusion based on territorial borders and traditional understanding of the state as a container of population and the provider of security.

2. See the introduction of this special issue for the distinction between maximalist and minimalist position.

3. See Bigo (2002), Balzacq (2010), for one of the first overview and see Waever (2004) for the labelling.

4. See Léonard (2010) for an analysis of securitization of migration through practices.

5. As Bigo (2002, 65) has pointed out, the securitization of migration ‘emerges from the correlation between some successful speech acts of political leaders, the mobilization they create for and against some groups of people, and the specific field of security professionals’, which, as he specifies, include ‘policemen, gendarmes, intelligence services, military people, providers of technology of surveillance and risk management’.

6. This provides a relevant example of the risk of introducing a problematic, antagonistic logic when using the term security, which has been pointed out by Huysmans (1998)

7. In doing so, they mainly identify securitization with the representation of immigration as a threat and the implementation of police and surveillance measures to deal with it. This has determined an ongoing debate on whether the process can be identified as securitization (Buonfino 2004; Neal 2009), because the measures implemented are not seen as exceptional or emergency based but creeping through risk assessment and practices, determining what Bigo (2002) has defined as ‘governmentality of unease’. This reflects the critique moved to the process of securitization outlined by the Copenhagen School as being too narrowly focused on speech acts. This article considers speech acts, emergency measures and in-securitization as complementary.

8. See the article by Baldwin, Methmann and Rothe in this issue.