Asyulum and Immigration in an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice : EU policy and the logic of securitization

Abstract: The aim of this essayis to show how the issues of asylum and immigration have been formulated as security issues in EU policy by applying a discursive approach to policy analysis and securitization, analyzing selected policy texts produced by the European Commission and the Council for Justice and Home Affairs from 1999 to 2006. The positioning of these issues in the policy domain of 'Freedom, Security and Justice' has facilitated a linkage between these issues and issues like terrorism and organised crime and has enabled a formulation of asylum and immigration according to a logic of securitization. The analysis of policy texts aims at investigating how linkages between issues are represented, how these linkages shape issues, and how the policy, in formulating threats and responses, also represent the EU in very specific ways. Policy from this perspective is not the rational answer to an unambigous reality but rather, highly implicated in its production. An important part of this analysis is drawing out the implications of the policy, in terms of further policy development, as well as how the policy implicates particular ways of dealing with those represented as for instance 'illegal immigrants' or 'illegitimate asylum seekers'.