FACULTY OF CULTURE AND SOCIETY | Dissertation defence
Dissertation defence – Eline Wærp
Friday 24 May, 10:15 - 13:15
Niagara, auditorium C (NI:C0E11), Nordenskiöldsgatan 1
Welcome to Eline Wærp's dissertion defence!
Eline is a doctoral student at the Department of Global Political Studies at the Faculty of Culture and Society.
Title of the dissertation
The Age of Frontex: Banal Securitization and its Normalization in EUropean External(ized) Border Control
Faculty opponent
- Associate Professor Ilse van Liempt, Utrecht University, the Netherlands
Examining committee
- Professor Bo Petersson, Malmö University
- Professor Peo Hansen, REMESO Linköping University
- Associate Professor Maja Sager, Lund University
- Honorary Associate Professor Martin Lemberg-Pedersen, University of Warwick, UK (reserve member)
- Professor Emeritus Hans-Åke Persson (reserve member)
Public defence chairperson
- Associate Professor Christina Johansson, Malmö University
Live stream
This page will be updated on the day of the defence to include a live stream video of the event.
Questions
Questions for the public defence can be emailed to Associate Professor Daniela DeBono: daniela.debono@um.edu.mt
The dissertation defence will be held in English. The defence is open to all and no registration is required. Welcome!
Abstract
The dissertation examines how migration has become securitized in what I term the field of EUropean external(ized) border control and how this securitization has become increasingly normalized. It does so by focusing on the role of the European Border and Coast Guard agency’s (Frontex) risk analysis reports in constructing migration as a security threat. Although framed as an apolitical and objective overview of the situation at the external(ized) border, I conceptualize these reports as constituting a particular form of knowledge with securitized ontological and epistemological assumptions, which preclude alternative framings of irregularized migration. By drawing on critical discourse analysis, I interrogate how this border knowledge securitizes migration in both banal and explicit ways, normalizes crises, and portrays border control as humanitarian. Interviews with civil society actors, border guards, Frontex, and European Commission officials were conducted to analyze how they resist or reproduce this securitization, which is taken as indicative of its normalization. The dissertation aims to question the taken for grantedness of treating unwanted migration as a security issue in this field, and draws attention to its harmful effects for refugees and migrants who try to cross increasingly inaccessible borders
