From the Polish-Belarus border crisis to the reception of Ukrainian refugees: migration as a political tool in the EU’s CFSP?

Recent literature on refugee protection burden-sharing in the EU has shown how Member States’ rationale behind the (un)provision of refugee protection is moved by cost-benefits calculus dynamics (Betts 2009, 2011; Thielemann and Amstrong 2013; Thielemann 2018). According to this game theoretical framework, Member States’ different perceptions of costs (i.e. security threats) or benefits (i.e. international prestige) on providing assistance to refugees may provoke collective action failure situations in EU migration policy management. By drawing on the case of Poland-EU management on border control policy in the 1) Polish-Belarus border crisis and 2) the reception of Ukrainian refugees, this paper investigates whether migration is treated as a political tool at the EU’s CFSP (Common Foreign and Security Policy).. The EU migration policy externalization process is reflected on some recent EU legal measures such as the 2021 New Pact on Migration. Both the terms ‘solidarity’ and ‘external dimension’ used in the Pact may be perceived as Brussels aiming to overcome collective action problems and to strengthen border control management and externalize migration policies. By conducting a qualitative analysis of EU policy documents and official speeches, this research main attempt is to understand how the EU constructs terms of “solidarity” and “burden-sharing” in the migration external dimension for overcoming the lack of collective consensus among Member States.