This article analyses the humanitarianism and securitisation nexus in effect to migration controls in Italy and Hungary. Noteworthy for our purposes is how the humanitarian discourse is undervalued as the EU border states emphasise either full securitisation or else securitisation as a condition for humanitarianism when it comes to border management and refugee protection measures. Our goal is to trace, on the one hand, how politicians conceptualise humanitarianism for the self and for the extension of the self; and, on the other, how they subscribe to humanitarianism for the other as long as the other follows what the self demands. Reflecting on the institutional and discursive nexus of humanitarianism and securitization in effect to migration controls, we trace political narratives of Europeanisation geared to affect the public. We refer to how securitisation challenges humanitarianism while undervaluing human rights for the other and foregrounding human rights for the self.
2014 “Initiatives of EU Member States in Managing Mixed Flows in the Mediterranean and the EU Distribution of Competences.” In The Common European Asylum System and Human Rights: Enhancing Protection in Times of Emergencies, eds. Claudio Matera and Amanda Taylor. The Hague: Centre for the Law of EU External Relations, CLEER Working Papers 2014/7.
Balzacq, T.
2005 “The Three Faces of Securitization: Political Agency, Audience and Context.” European Journal of International Relations 11(2): 171–201.
Barnett, Michael
2013 “Humanitarian Governance.” Annual Review of Political Science 161: 79–98.
Baudet, T.
(2015) A határok jelentősége, Budapest: Századvég.
Biondi, Paolo
2012 “The Externalization of the EU’s Southern Border in Light of the EU/Libya Framework Agreement: A Lawful Alternative or a Neo-Refoulement Strategy?” Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law 6(1): 144–207.
Brown, Jamie and Dadu, Saagarika
2018 “Migrant rights in an age of international insecurity: Exploring the narratives of protection and security in European migration and refugee law” [Discussion or working paper] Available online at: [URL]
Casas-Cortes, Maribel, Sebastian Cobarrubias, Nicholas De Genova, Glenda Garelli, Giorgio Grappi, Charles Heller, Sabine Hess, et al.
2015 “New Keywords: Migration and Borders.” Cultural Studies 29(1): 55–87.
Chamber of Deputies and Senate of the Republic
2013Indagine Conoscitiva Sulle Nuove Politiche Europee in Materia Di Immigrazione. Rome: Chamber of Deputies and Senate of the Republic.
Cuttitta, Paolo
2014 “From the Cap Anamur to Mare Nostrum: Humaniarianism and Migration Controls at the EU’s Maritime Borders.” In The Common European Asylum System and Human Rights: Enhancing Protection in Times of Emergencies, eds. by Claudio Matera and Amanda Taylor. The Hague: Centre for the Law of EU External Relations, 21–37. CLEER Working Papers 2014/7.
Cuttitta, Paolo
2018 “Repoliticization Through Search and Rescue? Humanitarian NGOs and Migration Management in the Central Mediterranean.” Geopolitics 23(3): 632–60.
European Parliamentary Research Service
2018Hotspots at EU External Borders: State of Play. European Parliament.
Frelick, Bill, Ian M. Kysel, and Jennifer Podkul
2016 “The Impact of Externalization of Migration Controls on the Rights of Asylum Seekers and Other Migrants.” Journal on Migration and Human Security 4(4): 190–220.
Guild, Elspeth and Didier Bigo
eds.2005Controlling Frontiers: Free Movement Into and Within Europe. London: Routledge.
Hansen, L.
2006Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War, Abingdon: Routledge.
Kallius, Annastiina, Monterescu Daniel, and Rajaram Prem Kumar
2016 “Immobilizing mobility: Border ethnography, illiberal democracy and the politics of the “refugee crisis” in Hungary.” American Ethnologist 43(1): 1548–1425.
Korkut, Umut and Eslen-Ziya, Hande
2017Politics and Gender Identity in Turkey: Centralised Islam for Socio-Economic Control, London: Routledge.
Korkut, Umut, Mahendran, Kesi, Bucken-Knapp, Gregg and Cox, Robert Henry
eds.2015Discursive Governance in Politics, Policy and the Public Sphere. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Korkut, Umut and Eslen-Ziya, Hande
2018Politics and Gender Identity in Turkey. Centralised Islam for Socio-Economic Control. London and New York: Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Politics.
Krzyżanowski, Michal
2019 “Brexit and the imaginary ‘crisis’: A discourse-conceptual analysis of European news media.” Critical Discourse Studies 16(4): 465–490.
Krzyżanowski, Michal
2016 “Recontextualisation of neoliberalism and the increasingly conceptual nature of discourse: Challenges for critical discourse studies.” Discourse & Society 27(3): 3028–321.
Lamour, Cristian and Varga, Renata
2017 “The Border as a Resource in Right-Wing Populist Discourse: Victor Orbán and the Diasporas in a Multi-scalar Europe.” Journal of Borderland Studies
Little, Adrian and Nick Vaughan-Williams
2017 “Stopping Boats, Saving Lives, Securing Subjects: Humanitarian Borders in Europe and Australia.” European Journal of International Relations 23(3): 533–56.
Menjívar, Cecilia
2014 “Immigration Law Beyond Borders: Externalizing and Internalizing Border Controls in an Era of Securitization.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 101: 353–69.
Mumby, Denis K. and Robin P. Clair
1997 “Organizational Discourse” In Teun A. van Dijk ed. Discourse Studies, Volume 2: Discourse and Social Interaction, 181–205: London: Sage.
Murray, Philomena and Michael Longo
2018 “Europe’s wicked legitimacy crisis: the case of refugees”, Journal of European Integration, vol.40(4): 411–425.
Nagy, B.
2016 Year “Hungarian Asylum Law and Policy in 2015–2016: Securitization instead of Loyal Cooperation.” German Law Journal, Special Issue: Constitutional Dimensions of the Refugee Crisis. Volume(issue): 17(6): 1033–1081.
Paoletti, Emanuela
2012 “Migration Agreements between Italy and North Africa: Domestic Imperatives versus International Norms.” Available at: [URL]
Pap, Norbert and Glied, Viktor
2017 “The Hungarian Border Barrier and Islam.” Journal of Muslims in Europe 6(1): 104–131.
Sciurba, Alessandra and Filippo Furri
2018 “Human Rights Beyond Humanitarianism: The Radical Challenge to the Right to Asylum in the Mediterranean Zone.” Antipode 50(3): 763–82.
Scott, James Wesley
2018 “Border Politics in Central Europe: Hungary and the Role of National Scale and Nation-Building.” Geographia Polonica 91(1): 17–32.
Stepka, Maciej
2018 “Humanitarian Securitization of the 2015 ‘Migration Crisis’. Investigating Humanitarianism and Security in the EU Policy Frames on Operational Involvement in the Mediterranean.” In Migration Policy in Crisis, eds. by, Ibrahim Sirkeci, Emilia Lana de Freitas Castro, and Ulku Sezgi Sozen, 9–30. London: Transational Press.
Szalai, Andras
2017Securitization as Enacted Melodrama: The Political Spectacle of the Hungarian Anti-Immigration Campaign, ECPR Conference 2017, Available Online [URL]
Szalai, Andras and Gabriela Gőbl
2015Securitizing Migration in Contemporary Hungary, CEU Center for EU Enlargement Studies Working paper. November 2015, Available Online [URL]
Szalai, Mate, Csornai, Zsuzsanna. and Garai, Nikolett
2017V4 Migration Policy: Conflicting Narratives and Interpretative Frameworks, Barcelona Center for Foreign Affairs. Available Online [URL]
van Dijk, Teun A.
2008Discourse and Context: A Sociocognitive Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
van Rythoven, E.
2015 “Learning to feel, learning to fear? Emotions, imaginaries, and limits in the politics of securitization.” Security Dialogue 46(5): 458–475.
Watson, Scott
2011 “The ‘human’ as Referent Object? Humanitarianism as Securitization.” Security Dialogue 42(1): 3–20.
Weldes, Jutta
1996 “Constructing National Interests.” European Journal of International Relations 2(3): 275–318.
Wodak, Ruth
2009The Discourse of Politics in Action: Politics as Usual. London: Palgrave.
Wodak, Ruth
2008Introduction: Discourse Studies – Important Concepts and Terms, In Qualitative Discourse Analysis in the Social Sciences, ed. by Ruth Wodak and Michal Krzyżanowski pp. 1–29. Houndmills: Palgrave.
Cited by (6)
Cited by 6 other publications
Abisso, Martina, Andrea Terlizzi & Eugenio Cusumano
2024. Who is to blame? Stories of European Union migration governance in Italian, Maltese, and Spanish newspapers. European Policy Analysis
Calarco, Roberto
2024. Mainstream Humanitarian Organizations Depoliticizing the Border Management System. In Political-Humanitarian Borderwork on the Southern European Border [Mobility & Politics, ], ► pp. 143 ff.
Calarco, Roberto
2024. Humanitarianism, (De)politicization and Migration Control. In Political-Humanitarian Borderwork on the Southern European Border [Mobility & Politics, ], ► pp. 45 ff.
Stivas, Dionysios
2023. The art of securitising. Orbán’s handling of the European refugee crisis. Journal of Contemporary European Studies 31:1 ► pp. 184 ff.
2021. Narratives in power and policy design: the case of border management and external migration controls in Italy. Policy Sciences 54:4 ► pp. 749 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.