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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Polit. Sci.
Sec. Peace and Democracy
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpos.2024.1460531
This article is part of the Research Topic The securitization of ‘everything’. Towards a new meta-security era of counter-desecuritization attempts? View all articles

Variations in the Intensity of the Securitization Narratives at the EU Level. Securitizing the European Refugee Crisis

Provisionally accepted
Dionysios Stivas Dionysios Stivas *
  • Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This paper examines the narratives of the European Council, European Commission, and European Parliament regarding the European refugee crisis. Although the relevant scholarly research suggests that the EU Institutions held different perspectives about the refugee crisis, this paper argues that there was no such a clash of perspectives. This paper builds on the Copenhagen School's securitization framework as complemented with subsequent methodological tools to support the author's arguments. The findings suggest that despite the similarity in the views held by the main EU Institutions considering the refugees' influx, there was a variation in the intensity of their securitizing narratives. Theoretically, this study develops an understanding of the importance of the securitization narratives' intensity. Methodologically, this study introduces the Securitization Narratives Continuum, a research tool that facilitates the assessment of securitization. Empirically, this is the first study to interview and take into account the opinions of the securitizing actors.

    Keywords: securitization, Refugee crisis, Migration, European Union, narratives

    Received: 06 Jul 2024; Accepted: 24 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Stivas. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Dionysios Stivas, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China

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