Migration governance in Lithuania and Poland in 2020-2023 as a chain of securitising and de-securitising pratices

The aim of the paper is to explore the phenomenon of the chain of multiple emergencies linked to migration governance in Lithuania and Poland in 2020-2023. The COVID-19 was an opportunity for the states concerned to adopt various forms of emergency governance and to test the response of societies. The paper argues that this experience allowed the governments of both countries to experiment more willingly and boldly with extraordinary management concerning migration, particualry that two extraordniary processes have comemced at the borders of both countries. In spring 2020 a humanitarian crisis at the border of both countries with Belarus has erupted, while in Febary 2022 Russia conducted a full-scale military aggression agaist Ukriane wchich resulted in massive refugee movement. To fully understand how the chain of emergencies proceeded, the paper draws on studies on emergencies (Adey, Anderson and Graham 2015; Adey 2016), (de)securitisation (Hansen 2012) with the aim to analyse how the those emergencies were both subsequently and simultaneously securitised and desecuritised by the Polish and Lithuanian governments. The emiricial analysis is based on the analysis of social practices. The study distinguishes the following practices: discourse, legislation, and law enforcement. The sources used for analysis are legal acts, strategic documents, media coverage on official bodies' statements and acts, and public statistics. The results expose that COVID-19 pandemic mobility restrictions routinised emergency governance as a form of democratic state action in Poland and Lithuania. It facilitated application of emergency governance to dealing with the instrumentalisation of migration by Belarusian regime in 2021 (which forced migrants to enter the EU irregularly). However, in the case of the mass influx of Ukrainians fleeing Russian aggression in 2022, the pandemic was quickly desecuritised through replacing the threat posed by the virus with the threats stemming from the Russian aggression. This allowed for the adoption of the fully welcoming policy towards forced migrants from Ukraine as COVID-19 restrictions did not hinder border crossings and subsequent migratory procedures and reception of the beneficiaries of temporary protection. The findings suggest that democratic governments tend to routinize emergency governance to expand their control practices what is especially visible in the migratory context.