Securitisation of Migration at the EU level after Paris’ Attacks: The Response of the European Public

Abstract

By applying the Copenhagen School’s securitisation theory, this paper assesses the extent to which immigration has been securitised at the EU level after the 2015 Paris attacks. It is doing so by not only examining the presence of the securitisation actors and the security speech acts, as is commonly done in the current securitisation literature, but also by analysing from a legal point of view, two emergency measures implemented by the EU to deal with the migration crisis. Most importantly, this paper investigates the response of the European public to the securitisation moves and highlights that this aspect of the Copenhagen School’s analytical framework has been not only undertheorised but also understudied.