{"id":9218,"date":"2024-01-24T09:00:02","date_gmt":"2024-01-24T08:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/?p=9218"},"modified":"2024-01-23T19:21:27","modified_gmt":"2024-01-23T18:21:27","slug":"frontexs-normalization-of-crisis-at-the-eu-borders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/frontexs-normalization-of-crisis-at-the-eu-borders\/","title":{"rendered":"Frontex\u2019s Normalization of Crisis at the EU Borders"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2015, more than a million refugees and migrants came to Europe during the so-called \u2018migration crisis.\u2019 This prompted a host of security-oriented responses to protect the EU\u2019s external borders, spearheaded by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex). While the number of irregular border crossings has decreased substantially since, Frontex continues to portray an image of crisis at the borders, which serves to \u201cnormalize\u201d crisis and justify increased border controls in its response.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cEurope\u00a0will be\u00a0forged\u00a0in\u00a0crisis, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those\u00a0crises.\u201d (Jean Monnet)<\/p>\n

Critical border and migration scholars have pointed out that rather than being apolitical and objective, crises are produced by the surrounding political environment (Jeandesboz & Pallister-Wilkins, 2014, 2016). This makes crises partly constructed, and they are often used by political actors to call for an immediate response to tackle an issue that is perceived to be a crisis \u2013 such as irregularized migration.<\/p>\n

For instance, Malta instrumentalized the 2015 \u201cmigration crisis\u201d to receive concessions from the EU due to its gatekeeping role at the frontiers of Europe, despite seeing relatively few arrivals (Mainwaring 2019). The EU\u2019s ability to thrive in crisis is a common refrain in EU studies, which has witnessed a \u201ccrisisification\u201d across all policy fields in the last decade, where traditional democratic decision-making procedures have yielded to quicker, risk-focused processes that are driven by the perceived need to respond to the latest crisis (Rhinard 2019). The problem is that the EU\u2019s \u201csearch for crises\u201d includes ones that it has constructed itself through a pre-emptive security focus and self-imposed logic of urgency (ibid.) \u2013 a tendency that Beck (1992) warned of in modern \u201crisk societies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frontex is no exception to this trend, and actually has an incentive to exaggerate crises to expand its own budget and powers (Campesi 2022). In fact, Frontex\u2019s mandate was strengthened after the 2015 “migration crisis” due to the legitimizing effects of its technical expertise (Fj\u00f8rtoft 2022), with Perkowski et al. (2023) demonstrating how Frontex has \u201cevolved through crisis\u201d by invoking it as an \u201cever-present possibility and perpetual threat to Europe.\u201d Frontex has contributed to \u201cnormalizing\u201d crises at the EU external borders through its constant invocations of crisis in its risk analysis reports, despite declining arrivals of refugees and migrants the last few years.<\/p>\n

Normalizing Crises<\/strong><\/h5>\n

While 2015 saw a record number of 1,822,177 irregular border crossings to the EU, 2016 saw a 72% decline, to 511,146 (Frontex 2019). Nevertheless, the preface by the Executive Director asserts that the \u201cEU experienced another year of intense migratory pressure at its external borders\u201d and that \u201cthe overall situation at Europe\u2019s external borders remained challenging\u201d (Frontex 2017). Thus, despite irregular border crossings falling by more than a third, Frontex portrays a picture of the crisis as not being over yet. This continues in the 2018 report, which notes a 60% decrease in irregular border crossings in 2017 compared to 2016, totaling 204,719. Nevertheless, the report remarks that this \u201cshould not distract from the fact that the aggregate exceeds any total reported\u2026 before\u2026 2014, an indicator that the migratory pressure on the EU\u2019s external borders remained very high\u201d (Frontex 2018).<\/p>\n

Similarly, the 2019 report shows that irregular border crossings went down 27% from 2017 to 2018, to 150,144. Notwithstanding the declining number of crossings for the third consecutive year after the 2015 \u201cmigration crisis,\u201d the report emphasizes that \u201csecondary movements continued on a large scale during 2018\u201d and describes the increase in detections of clandestine entry as \u201ctestimony to a persistency in migratory pressure\u201d (Frontex 2019). The 2020 report notes a further 5% decline in irregular border crossings in 2019, totaling 141,846. Despite this being the lowest level since 2013 with a 92% decrease compared to the numbers in 2015, the report suggests that:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is instructive to go back further in the data collection\u2026 [T]he number of detections in 2019 is roughly comparable to the figure for 2011, when strong migratory pressure was exerted on the EU\u2019s south-eastern land borders and also in the Central Mediterranean.\u201d (Frontex 2020)<\/p>\n

This illustrates Frontex\u2019s normalization of crisis, where situations of non-crisis and crisis become blurred, with crisis becoming constant rather than exceptional. 2020 saw a further 12% decline compared to the previous year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, totaling 125,226 border crossings. Regardless, the report underlines that \u201cdetections of illegal border-crossing decreased by a much smaller fraction\u201d than regular crossings, \u201creiterating the necessity to remain vigilant\u201d (Frontex 2021). This demonstrates that despite the decrease in irregular border crossings for the fifth year in a row following the 2015 “migration crisis,” Frontex\u2019s risk analysis reports continue to invoke crisis, painting a picture of the EU external borders as in a state of perpetual crisis. Frontex\u2019s crisis discourse is hence at odds with its own statistics, which is compounded by the fact that Frontex counts the number of border crossings rather than people attempting to cross the border, which leads to double counting if the same person attempts to cross the border multiple times (Sigona 2015). Frontex therefore contributes to normalizing crises and justifying increased border controls in response to suffering and deaths at the EU\u2019s common borders.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Figure 1: Frontex\u2019s overview of irregular border crossings, 2015-18 (Frontex 2019).<\/p>\n

Crisis Normalization and the Securitization of Migration<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Frontex\u2019s risk analyses inform strategic and operational decisions at the EU level as well as funding allocations to member states, which makes them an important knowledge producer in EU border control (Horii 2016; Paul 2018). Frontex’s portrayal of the situation at the EU’s external borders thus impacts responses to irregularized migration, including the normalization of crisis that contributes to normalizing securitized responses, perceived as necessary in response to constant crises. It is therefore important to problematize Frontex\u2019s crisis normalization since it has very real consequences for refugees and migrants, who find themselves trying to cross increasingly inaccessible borders.<\/p>\n

Eline Waerp<\/em><\/a> is a Ph.D. student in International Migration and Ethnic Relations (IMER) at Malm\u00f6 University. She is a former NCCR visiting fellow with the project <\/em>\u201c<\/em>Evolving Regimes of (Im)Mobility in Times of Crisis.<\/em>\u201d<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

References:<\/p>\n

-Beck, U.(1992). Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity<\/em>. London: Sage Publications.
\n-Campesi, G. (2022). Policing Mobility Regimes: Frontex and the Production of the European Borderscape<\/em>. London: Routledge.
\n-Fj\u00f8rtoft, T. N. (2022). More Power, More Control: The Legitimizing Role of Expertise in Frontex after the Refugee Crisis. Regulation & Governance, 16<\/em>, 557-571.
\n-Frontex (2016). Risk Analysis for 2016<\/em> (Ref. no. 2499 \/2016). Warsaw, Risk Analysis Unit.
\n-Frontex (2017). Risk Analysis for 2017<\/em> (Ref. no. 2133\/ 2017). Warsaw, Risk Analysis Unit.
\n-Frontex (2018). Risk Analysis for 2018<\/em> (Ref. no. 2671 \/ 2018). Warsaw, Risk Analysis Unit.
\n-Frontex (2019). Risk Analysis for 2019<\/em> (Ref. no. 1218\/2019). Warsaw, Risk Analysis Unit.
\n-Frontex (2020). Risk Analysis for 2020<\/em> (Ref. no. 1218\/2020). Warsaw, Risk Analysis Unit.
\n-Horii, S. (2016). The Effect of Frontex’s Risk Analysis on the European Border Controls. European Politics and Society, 17<\/em>(2), 242-258.
\n-Jeandesboz, J., & Pallister-Wilkins, P. (2014). Crisis, Enforcement and Control at the EU Borders. In A. Lindley, (ed.), Crisis and Migration: Critical Perspectives<\/em> (pp. 127-147). London: Routledge.
\n-Jeandesboz, J., & Pallister-Wilkins, P. (2016). Crisis, Routine, Consolidation: The Politics of the Mediterranean Migration Crisis. Mediterranean Politics, 21<\/em>(2), 316-320.
\n-Mainwaring, C. (2019). At Europe’s Edge: Migration and Crisis in the Mediterranean<\/em>. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
\n-Paul, R. (2018). Risk Analysis as a Governance Tool in European Border Control. In A. Weinar, S. Bonjour, & L. Zhyznomirska (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Politics of Migration in Europe<\/em> (pp. 227-238). London: Routledge.
\n-Perkowski, N., Stierl, M., & Burridge, A. (2023). The Evolution of EUropean Border Governance through Crisis: Frontex and the Interplay of Protracted and Acute Crisis Narratives. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 0<\/em>(0).
\n-Rhinard, M. (2019). The Crisisification of Policy\u2010Making in the European Union. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 57<\/em>(3), 616-633.
\n-Sigona, N. (2015). S<\/a>eeing Double? How the EU Miscounts Migrants Arriving at its Borders<\/a><\/em>. The Conversation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2015, more than a million refugees and migrants came to Europe during the so-called \u2018migration crisis.\u2019 This prompted a host of security-oriented responses to protect the EU\u2019s external borders, spearheaded by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex). While the number of irregular border crossings has decreased substantially<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":312,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[956],"tags":[737,209,219,225,227],"coauthors":[1189],"class_list":["post-9218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gestion-migratoire","tag-border-policies","tag-borders","tag-european-union","tag-human-rights","tag-irregular-migration"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/312"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9218"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9229,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9218\/revisions\/9229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9218"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}