Risk Politicization Strategies in EU Migration and Asylum Policies

This article addresses the growing articulation between migration and security in the European Union. Risk politicization strategies are developed as a way of questioning the consequences of framing migration as a security problem. My general research questions are: i) is migration being securitized at EU level? ii) what kind of securitization process is unfolding in the realm of EU migration policies? My purpose is to combine a sociological-institutional approach to EU migration policies with cultural symbolical theories of risk in an attempt to understand the interplay between institutional contexts and security framing in Europe. My research hypothesis is that, concerning EU migration policies, the intergovernmental nature of its policy-making process is promoting a fettered environment for policy-making, which combined with asymmetrical transactions, favours a hierarchical rationality. As a risk culture, the hierarchical rationality triggers a particular sensitivity regarding border maintenance which means that it articulates between otherness and danger.