Securitized Migration discourse: The Migration-Terrorism Nexus

After the 1990s, the relationship between migration and security gained a new dimension. While irregular migration is perceived as an asymmetric threat by the states on the migration-security axis, immigration has generally started to be considered more as a national security threat in the context of border security, economic security, ethnic identity and growing racism. In addition, the insecurity and threat perception that existed before 9/11 in the international community towards immigrants and migration has become even more after 9/11. Migration was perceived as an existential threat that required absolute priority and it was declared as supra-political, and extraordinary measures regarding migration and immigrants began to be implemented. Extraordinary measures implemented by legal institutions and restrictions on immigrants have also led to the institutionalization of the link between migration and terrorism, and media news has led to a widespread view that there is a direct relationship between terrorism and migration in the social structure. Since the 2000s, there has been an increase in the tendency to securitizing migration with the discourse of “terrorism”, which was previously securitizing in the context of economy, culture, illegal activities, and similar concepts. Nearly ten years after the 9/11 attacks, with the Arab Spring that started in 2010, the waves of forced migration from the conflict region to neighbouring countries and European countries, and the ISIS terrorist organization and its actions that emerged in the conflict region, brought the possibility of chaos to the agenda in the countries receiving immigration and were greeted with uneasiness by the states. And the tendency to consider migration in the context of security has increased again. In addition to this, it is seen that migration, immigrants and refugees/ asylum seekers are expressed as factors that cause an increase in terrorism in the society in some public opinion surveys. From a methodological perspective, this study presents an explanatory case study that tries to explore how the terrorist tendencies have changed in European countries receiving heavy migration from conflict areas. It also aims to examine whether there has been an increase in terrorist attacks, and whether there has been an increase in terrorist attacks in which the perpetrators are refugees or asylum seekers. The study examines the examples of Turkey, Germany and France, which hosted the highest number of refugees/asylum seekers after the Arab Spring. In the study, the terrorist trends that took place in these countries between 2000 and 2020 were examined, and an answer was sought to the question of how terrorist trends in these countries changed and to what extent they were associated with migration issues.