The Securitization of Asylum an Analysis of the Impact of the 2015-2016 Refugee Asylum Policies in Germany
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GLOBAL MIGRATION RESEARCH PAPER N°22│2019 The securitization of Asylum An analysis of the impact of the 2015-2016 refugee asylum policies in Germany Juan-Pablo Cadena Gómez Juan-Pablo Cadena Gómez The securitization of asylum. An analysis of the impact of the 2015-2016 refugee crisis in asylum policies in Germany ISBN 978-2-8399-2900-4 The Global Migration Research Paper Series – N° 22, 2019 The Global Migration Research Paper Series (ISSN 2296-9810) is published by the Global Migration Centre (GMC). Located in Geneva, the world capital of migration, the GMC offers a unique interface between academia and the international community. The GMC conducts advanced research, policy-relevant expertise and training on the multifaceted causes, patterns and consequences of global migration. Email: [email protected] Website: http://graduateinstitute.ch/gmc The views expressed in the Global Migration Research Paper Series are those of the author and do not represent the views of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. © Global Migration Centre Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies ii Global Migration Research Paper – 2019 N° 22 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Juan Pablo Cadena Gómez (Quito, Ecuador, 1981) is a political analyst and former diplomat with a B.A. in International Business and Trade from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, an M.A. in International Negotiations and Conflict Management from the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar - UASB- (2008), and an M.A. in International Relations/Political Science from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies of Geneva (2019). He worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Ecuador between 2009 and 2018, where he was appointed Head of the Department of Political Analysis (2012-2013), First Secretary at the Permanent Mission of Ecuador to the United Nations Office in Geneva (2013- 2017), and Chief of Staff to the Minister of Foreign Affairs (2017-2018). Between 2008 and 2013 he was a visiting lecturer at Universidad de las Americas (UDLA), in Quito. He has written several articles on multilateralism, geopolitics, foreign policy and international security for the foreign policy magazines Comentario Internacional, edited by the UASB, and Línea Sur, edited by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador. He currently resides in Germany. (Contact: [email protected]). iii Global Migration Research Paper – 2019 N° 22 ABSTRACT This publication has won the Global Migration Award which is delivered every year by the Global Migration Centre for the best master thesis of the Graduate Institute in the field of migration. This master's dissertation was written by Juan Pablo Cadena Gómez under the supervision of Prof. Keith Krause. This study is the first to analyze the discourses and practices of securitization and desecuritization around the issue of migration that have conflated in the German political arena during the 2015-2016 so called “refugee crisis”. The study untangles the role that security played in the discursive construction of the crisis in Germany and how it affected the legal and policy frameworks governing refugee flows. Departing from a post-structuralist reading of securitization theory as a political process in which different discourses struggle for becoming the hegemonic regime of truth, the study examines which actors initiated securitizing and desecuritizing moves against refugees, where these moves found resistance, and the result that this dynamic had in the governance of the movement of forced migrants into Germany. The study goes beyond the linguistic construction of the refugee crisis by including in the analysis the socio-historical context in which the political debate on the institution of asylum in Germany was framed, in order to understand the impact of internal and external factors on the political and security outcomes. In this fashion, the study shows that Germany, despite having adopted an open-border refugee policy in 2015, did not desecuritize its asylum policies; on the contrary, it instantiated a new securitization process which resulted in increasing security practices governing the asylum process, making the access to international protection more restrictive than before the crisis, and reducing the rights for asylum seekers and recognized refugees. In this sense, Germany followed the more general securitizing trend observed in the European Union after 2015 of representing the refugee crisis as a security issue rather than a humanitarian crisis. Key Words: Securitization; Desecuritization; Refugees; Asylum Policy; Immigration Policy; Germany; AfD; Angela Merkel; European Union. iv Global Migration Research Paper – 2019 N° 22 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my appreciation to Professor Keith Krause for his valuable guidance and constructive suggestions during the planning, research and writing of this work. I would also like to offer special thanks to Professors Ravinder Bhavnani, Melanie Kolbe, Anne Leander and Elisabeth Prügl, whose seminars at the Graduate Institute were of great help and inspiration for this study. Last but not least, I would like to thank my loving spouse, Anne, and my wonderful children, Maja Isabel and Oskar Felipe, for all their love, sacrifice and emotional support, without which I could not have accomplished this work. v Global Migration Research Paper – 2019 N° 22 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................... 1 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ................................................................................................... 6 2.1. Literature review .................................................................................................................................. 6 2.1.1. Migration studies ........................................................................................................................... 6 2.1.2. Securitization Theory ................................................................................................................... 9 2.1.3. Limitations of the literature ........................................................................................................ 16 2.1.4. Improvements in Securitization Theory ................................................................................... 18 2.2. Methodology ....................................................................................................................................... 37 2.2.1. Theory .......................................................................................................................................... 37 2.2.2. Research Design ........................................................................................................................ 44 2.2.3. Method ......................................................................................................................................... 48 3. THE DISCOURSE AND POLICIES OF THE FEDERAL CHANCELLOR ................................... 52 3.1. General patterns of the discourse construction ............................................................................ 53 3.1.1. Inconsistency in the discourse .................................................................................................. 53 3.1.2. The link between the national and the EU level ..................................................................... 55 3.2. The construction of Germany’s collective identity ........................................................................ 57 3.3. The use of security frames to construct the refugee crisis .......................................................... 59 3.3.1. First moment: January-September 2015. ............................................................................... 63 3.3.2. Second moment: September 2015- December 2016 ........................................................... 68 3.4. The process of securitization in the Chancellor’s discourse ....................................................... 72 3.4.1. Securitizing moves in Merkel’s discourse ............................................................................... 72 3.4.2. Changes in the federal legal framework regulating asylum ................................................. 77 3.5. Conclusions ........................................................................................................................................ 97 4. THE CONSTRUCTION OF TEXT ON THE REFUGEE CRISIS BY THE AFD ........................... 99 4.1. Securitization frames ....................................................................................................................... 100 4.1.1. Ontological security frames ..................................................................................................... 102 4.1.2. Physical security frames .......................................................................................................... 107 4.2. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 112 5. THE ROLE OF THE GERMAN MEDIA IN THE (DE)SECURITIZATION OF THE REFUGEE CRISIS ........................................................................................................................................ 116 5.1. The text construction in Der Taggespiegel. ................................................................................