Naslov
Securitization of the migration from the Middle East – Case of Croatia

Autori
Zgurić, Borna

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, pp prezentacija, znanstveni

Skup
Diversity of Human Rights: Human Rights and Security

Mjesto i datum
Dubrovnik, Hrvatska, 05.09.2016. - 09.09.2016

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Nije recenziran

Ključne riječi
Securitization ; migration ; Middle East ; Croatia

Sažetak
After the terrorist attacks on Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005 the issue of migration in EU countries got securitized. Migration became, in the words of the Copenhagen school of security studies, a non-traditional security issue. After the beginning of the Arab Spring, which kick-started major migration flows on the Mediterranean and put extreme pressure on European borders, the securitization of the migration issue kicked up a notch. As Seeberg explains, the migration issue became the central foreign policy and security issue of the EU. However, Croatian policy makers did not find this issue relevant. Even when Croatia joined the EU on July the 1st 2013, it did not share the same concerns as other European nations. The issue was not even politicized, or in other words it was absent from public discourse. This was unusual due to the fact that the coalition government at that time had in their election platform, “Plan 21”, stipulated that Croatia’s foreign policy, due to security issues that originated in the Middle East, would focus more on the Mediterranean countries of the Middle East. This would also mean some sort of alignment or, more precisely, “download” of the policy guidelines stipulated by the European Neighborhood Policy of the EU. However, Croatia, or rather its political elites, completely ignored the new security issues that originated in its broader Mediterranean neighborhood. Alas, the change in foreign and security thinking only came with the election of the new conservative president Kolinda Grabar Kitarović in 2014. In the summer of the following year two major events politicized the migration issue. The first was the execution of the Croatian worker in Egypt by the Islamic State. The second was the large number of migrants from the Middle East that came to Croatia’s borders. At first, still during the SDP-led by centre-left government, the issue was merely politicized – it was largely discussed in the public sphere. However, after the new parliamentary elections and the change of government, the issue of the migration from the Middle East was securitized – the migration became a security issue. Extreme measures were being proposed, like changing the Law on defense, which would give the military the option of assisting police in border control. After the attacks on Paris and Brussels the language of securitization was completely accepted in the Croatia’s public sphere. The aim of this paper, and presentation, is to show how the issue of migration “traveled the path” from a desecuritized to a politicized and, finally, securitized issue.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Politologija

POVEZANOST RADA