The paper retells the ongoing Hungarian anti-migration campaign as a case of securitization. It departs from the observation that the current Hungarian discourse on migration bears some striking resemblance to Western European discursive structures of the 1990s and early 2000s, yet, despite the liberal borrowing of tried and tested frames, the securitization campaign is unique due the conditions underlying its inception and its evolution. Its uniqueness also leads to a set of puzzles for securitization theory: the campaign remains extremely effective without the presence of a subject of security, emergency measures introduced do not require acceptance from an audience, and the current politics of xenophobia bear more resemblance to normal politics than a realm of state emergency.
In order to make sense of these empirical puzzles, the paper relies on a refined version of securitization theory—one popularized by Thierry Balzacq—that moves beyond the narrow speech act focus of the Copenhagen School, and expands it to include practices and processes of securitization. Securitization seen as a pragmatic act then invites three assumptions: effective securitization is audience-centered; it is context-dependent; and it is power-laden. Through its case study, the paper draws theoretical attention to the role non-traditional desecuritization actors can play, and to the role of non-policies as securitization tools, i.e. the elite’s deliberate neglect of an issue for the purposes of securitization. To account for the normalization of security within this context, the paper expands on Balzacq’s work by relying on Murray Edelman’s concept of political spectacle, whereby elites use constructed crisis situations to reinforce or reshape the identity of their audience through a Schmittian division between a threatened Us, and a threatening Other. Seen through this analytical lens, the securitization acts of the Hungarian government vis-à-vis migration fit the definition of melodrama, wherein a moral panic is constructed around refugees and is promoted through the media that only the heroic protagonist (the state) can resolve. Once interpreted through this very specific, yet highly flexible practice of threat construction, the government’s policies on migration immediately recall previous instances of melodramatic spectacles that were used to mobilize Hungarians around contentious policies by reinforcing their national identity as a band of rebels under attack from various, often very mundane menaces, ranging from banks and multinationals to utility costs. As televised melodrama, a heavily securitized interpretation of the migration crisis can thus become normal for a society at large.
