Migration

This chapter explores the EU reaction to migratory ‘crises’, particularly the inflow of persons as a trigger for EU governance and collective securitization. This approach to migratory governance charts the processes leading to the collective framing of this policy domain and provides greater nuance to the rigid divide between which actor, the EU or the member states, has greater prerogatives or agenda-setting powers. Also, the approach is promising in two other respects. First, this framework allows us to appreciate the variation of EU reactions and a wider perspective of what constitutes ‘progress’ or ‘regress’ in EU reactions to migration crises. Second, and perhaps counterintuitively, collective securitization does not stop at considering the shifting of national authority to the EU or that of the EU back to member states but problematizes the iteration of their relations, questioning, for example, the truism that more integration is always preferable to less integration.