Creating Security through Immigration Control: An analysis of European immigration discourse and the development towards a common EU asylum and immigration policy

Abstract:

The purpose of this report is to discuss the extent to which immigration has come to be perceived as a security threat by European Union (EU) policymakers. The manner in which immigration issues are presented by policymakers at the European level is assumed to have substantive implications for the choice of instruments in the area.

A second purpose is therefore to discuss the extent to which the development towards a common EU asylum and immigration policy can be interpreted as security policy strategy. Increased immigration during the last few decades has coincided with increasing unemployment and economic restructuring in Western Europe. The issue of immigration became increasingly sensitive in the late 1980s after the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe, when a tide of illegal immigrants was expected to inundate the West.