The European Union's struggle with illegal migration: The issue of Syrian refugee crisis

In this study the policies and practices of the EU in dealing with illegal migration are examined with respect to the Syrian refugee crisis. While the EU has developed motivation to prevent migrants from entering the EU countries, addressing migration as a security issue, mainly the transformation process the EU has undergone in its migration policies over the years is discussed. In this study, the Syrian refugee crisis is selected as the case in order to reveal the change in the EU's approach towards securitization of migration after 2015. In this context, firstly, security and ontological security concepts are discussed. In the second part, the struggle of the EU in managing the illegal migration is discussed via focusing on the process of EU's securitization of migration. In the last part, the legitimization of the practices of the Syrian refugee crisis is discussed in the context of ontological security. The study, which is constructed around securitization theory, concludes that in the process of migration crisis, the national interests of the member states overwhelm the preferences of the member states in migration policies, and that they could not overcome the problems in the common asylum system, and then try to deal with the migration crisis by short-term solutions. The case study reveals that the EU that puts emphasis on border security has dealt with the issue of illegal migration via externalization of it through neighborhood policy and readmission agreements in the context of ontological security after 2015. Thus, it is put forward that the EU has changed the dimension of the securitization of migration and placed emphasis on the continuity of securitization approach in this issue. The study convincingly argues that the EU which has considered the refugee crisis as one of the biggest challenges it has faced with in 2015, has created a kind of self-defense mechanism in the context of ontological security and that the process of illegal migration that the EU has problems in managing appears to become a crisis of its own.