Migration-security relationship in the formation of security policies of the European Union: Case of Syrian refugee crisis

With the end of the Cold War era, the classical sense of security has been criticized for being insufficient to analyze the changes in the international system. In this context, new theories have emerged that expand the scope of security and threat concepts. In the classical understanding of security, while the issues were largely state-centered, its scope expanded after the mentioned period and became a concept in which many different parameters were evaluated together. In this context, the Copenhagen School also put forward a critical approach to the classical understanding of security, included more than one discipline in the analysis of the concept of security and carried out its analyzes on this basis. The Copenhagen School expanded the scope of the concept of security through the theory of "securitization" by putting forward their criticisms in the early period of security studies that the concept was built only on the central basis of the state. According to the theory in question, threat is a concept that can be constructed by actors through speech act and forms the basis of security studies. At this point, he included the phenomenon of migration in security studies within the scope of securitization theory. In this thesis, it will be discussed to what extent the migration crisis caused by the civil war in Syria affects EU security and migration policies. In the thesis, the policies of the EU in the fight against illegal immigration through the securitization theory of the Copenhagen School will be analyzed through the reports and discourses prepared by the EU institutions between 2011-2020. In this context, it will be evaluated whether the EU follows an effective and sustainable policy in the management of the Syrian refugee crisis.