The European Union and the securitization of migration

This article deals with the question of how migration has developed into a security issue in western Europe and how the European integration process i s implicated in it. Since the 1980s, the political construction of migratio n increasingly referred to the destabilizing effects of migration on domest ic integration and to the dangers for public order it implied. The spillove r of the internal market into a European internal security question mirrors these domestic developments at the European level. The Third Pillar on Jus tice and Home Affairs, the Schengen Agreements, and the Dublin Convention m ost visibly indicate that the European integration process is implicated in the development of a restrictive migration policy and the social construct ion of migration into a security question. However, the political process o f connecting migration to criminal and terrorist abuses of the internal mar ket does not take place in isolation. It is related to a wider politicizati on in which immigrants and asylum-seekers are portrayed as a challenge to t he protection of national identity and welfare provisions. Moreover, suppor ting the political construction of migration as a security issue impinges o n and is embedded in the politics of belonging in western Europe. It is an integral part of the wider technocratic and political process in which prof essional agencies - such as the police and customs - and political agents - such as social movements and political parties - debate and decide the cri teria for legitimate membership of west European societies.