EU border security and migration into the European Union: FRONTEX and securitisation through practices

Abstract

This article examines the contribution of the activities of FRONTEX, the Agency in charge of managing operational cooperation at the external borders of the European Union (EU), to the securitisation of asylum and migration in the EU. It does so by applying a sociological approach to the study of securitisation processes, which, it argues, is particularly well-suited to the study of securitisation processes in the EU. Such an approach privileges the study of securitising practices over securitising ‘speech acts’ in securitisation processes. After identifying two main types of securitising practices in general, the article systematically examines the activities of FRONTEX and the extent to which they can be seen as securitising practices on the basis of these two (non-mutually exclusive) criteria. The article shows that all the main activities of FRONTEX can be considered to be securitising practices. The article therefore concludes that the activities of FRONTEX contribute to a significant extent to the ongoing securitisation of asylum and migration in the EU. It also highlights that this does not automatically make FRONTEX a significant securitising actor in its own right and that more research is needed on the relations between FRONTEX and the EU institutions, especially in the light of the current negotiations aiming to amend the founding Regulation of FRONTEX.