"Crisification" as (Migration) Governance: Insights from the EU External Border

This paper will uncover how ‘crisification’ has permeated the EU migration and external borders acquis (and led to its securitisation) becoming a system of governance in its own right. Drawing on the EU-Turkey Statement and the reaction to the 2021 Belarus ‘crisis’ as illustrations, my main contention is that the presentation of migration and asylum events as ‘crises’ has been utilised in the EU not only to justify measures and practices outside the bounds of ‘normal’ politics but that it has also targeted and fundamentally transformed the law as well, leading to the re-configuration of the EU legal order in this field. The paper will demonstrate how invocations of ‘crisis’ enable the normalisation of legal and policy developments at odds with basic principles and international standards. Two complementary phenomena demonstrate the impact of ‘crisification’ on the borders/migration law system: The ‘softification’ of existing hard law obligations, on the one hand, which translates into the lowering (or negation) of the individual's legal safeguards, and the progressive hardening – or ‘lawification’ – of means and practices previously considered unacceptable, on the other hand.