Due to the changing nature of security after the Cold War, the tradition of explaining security problems only in terms of their military dimension has begun to be questioned. Ontological security, which finds its place in critical security studies, criticizes the limitation of the security of states to concepts such as danger, power and anarchy only within the military framework. Ontologically security-seeking states, like individuals, seek stability both internally and in their interactions with "others" and seek to make the external world relatively secure and stable by developing routine relations with other states ( Mitzen, 348). In this sense, the European Union has contributed to peace and security by creating an area of economic stability on the European continent after the Second World War. However, the European Union's attempt to Europeanize migration policies by incorporating them into the founding treaties creates ontological insecurity. As is well known, Europeanization is a process that leads to change(Olsen, 2002). The fact that the European Union's decisions on migration do not produce positive results on the continent causes anxiety among ordinary Europeans, thus leading them to ontological insecurity (Kinnvall, Manners ve Mitzen,2018: 249-265). This situation develops a protectionist reflex in member states and state-centered immigration policies emerge as a reflection of this reflex ( Mitzen, 2018: 393-413) .

Keyword (s): Ontological Security, migration, europeanization

In recent years, supranational governance, marked by the continuous transfer of competencies from nation-states to international institutions like the European Commission (EC), has seen an increase in its authority. Consequently, this shift has prompted the politicization of these institutions, moving away from a technocratic approach to decision-making that was once conducted behind closed doors. The EC is also subject to the politicization process through increased salience and contestation over its policies and legitimacy. However, while there is recognition of the Commission's responsiveness to the politicization process in the literature, the current studies fall short of elucidating how this responsiveness and politicization is reflected within the sphere of external relations, where the EC's formal power is limited. It is crucial to understand this because the EC has amplified its role and responsibilities in external relations, owing to the increasingly blurred lines between internal and external affairs due to globalization and growing global interdependence.

To fill the gap, this study integrates a framework on the EC’s influence in external relations with the existing literature on the politicization of international institutions. Drawing from the debates on intergovernmentalism versus neofunctionalism, it questions whether the EC aims merely to be an effective agent, thereby affirming its necessity to member states, or if, due to ongoing politicization, it formulates its own political positions, problem definitions, and solutions in the realm of external relations. Even more crucially, the study concentrates on potential internal political contestation within the Commission to understand whether there are contested patterns and responses to the ongoing politicization process among Commission officials.

This study attempts to answer these questions by examining the policies and policy content crafted by the EC on Turkey in the context of the migration crisis, adopting the process-tracing methodology. This approach is supplemented by interviews with officials from the Commission and the European External Action Service (EEAS) and an analysis of official documents. I argue that the EC's relations with Turkey during the migration crisis offer significant generalizability because they reflect the multidimensionality of the EU’s external relations and the intertwined nature of external and internal affairs.

The results contribute to the literature by demonstrating that the EC’s external relations are politicized as well through three informal mechanisms: (a) decisions on the prioritization of policies, tasks, and projects; (b) the instrumentalization of information asymmetries and issue linkage; and (c) the influence of increasingly politicized officials in inter-institutional meetings.

Following Brexit, the UK government has been focussed on “taking back control” of the country’s borders. In this paper I seek to understand the lived experience of post-Brexit bordering practices from the perspective of the EU nationals most directly targeted and impacted. I consider the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) as emblematic of the UK’s post-Brexit border regime and engage a counter-archive of testimonies from EU nationals to better understand the lived experience of applying for and using the EUSS. Specifically, I draw on ontological security studies literature to better understand how navigating this changing status has impacted on the sense of being and belonging of EU nationals post-Brexit.

I find that the manifestation and experience of contemporary everyday bordering practices are grounded in a logic of contingency and through this introduce the concept of the Damoclesian border – the experience of the border is mediated by the individual circumstances of those targeted, but ultimately, the contingencies underpinning the manifestation of the border mean that is not possible to know with certainty when, where, or with what outcome the next border will be encountered. This uncertainty and contingency works to disrupt the ontological security of those targeted.

The 2015 ‘refugee crisis’ has given momentum to new policies for European integrated border management. One of these policies is the ‘hotspot approach’, first mentioned in the European Commission’s Agenda on Migration in April 2015. The hotspot approach relies on an unprecedented level of collaboration between EU agencies (Frontex, European Asylum Support Office, Europol and Eurojust) to provide rapid support to ‘frontline’ Member States when faced with disproportionate migratory pressure at their external borders. Presented as a humanitarian response aimed at speeding up and ensuring effective protection for asylum seekers, the hotspot approach has been criticized by NGOs and academics for its ineffectiveness and the violation of fundamental rights it entails. This communication contributes to the nascent scholarship that examines the political logics behind the hotspot approach. It shows that, despite criticism, the hotspot approach has become the cornerstone of the New Pact on Migration and Asylum (NPMA), especially the new screening procedure of third country nationals at the external borders of the EU. We argue that the managerial approach based on inter-agency cooperation that underpins the NPMA contributes to the intertwining of two distinct professional logics: that of safeguarding the rights of individuals seeking international protection and that of protecting internal security by detecting criminal and terrorist risks. This entanglement blurs not only the distinction between migrants and asylum seekers, but also between the roles and mandates of the agencies involved. Eventually, it further contributes to the depoliticization of the ‘border procedure’ and reveals how migrants are increasingly perceived as potential security risks.

The role of the ECtHR in expanding and strengthening human rights protection in Europe has been unprecedented. The ECtHR’s judgments have not only affected the protection standards in the respondent states but have an erga omnes effect. The ECtHR itself had argued that the scope of its influence exceeds the individual states as it strives to determine ‘issues on public-policy grounds in the common interest, thereby extending human rights jurisprudence throughout the community of European Convention States’. It has been however increasingly argued that the ECtHR has in some cases, shifted its jurisdiction into regressive direction (see Helfer & Voeten 2020) purportedly in reaction to the criticism by the member states. This concern primarily the politically sensitive discussions on the scope of rights of particular groups – prisoners, migrants, and suspected terrorists – where the tendency in the member states has been to narrow down these rights.

In this paper we scrutinize the erga omnes effects of the recent judgments of the ECtHR in cases of border control mostly at the external borders of the EU, with a special focus on irregular migration to the EU and pushbacks. The pivotal judgment is the N.D. & N.T. v. Spain that became a point of reference for further cases. In the N.D. & N.T. the Court created a significant exception when it declared that the people on the move could be deprived of the protection of the Convention due to their own conduct. It has been argued that the exceptions made by the ECtHR contradict the development of international human rights law (Hakiki, 2022) and shift the court’s mandate from primarily safeguarding individuals’ human rights towards foregrounding the sovereignty of the states (Carrera 2020).

We argue that N.D. & N.T. and further judgments not only weaken the protection of migrants against the practices of collective expulsion but have much broader effects. These judgments show in particular that the ECtHR has internalized the practices of bordering with the effect of portraying migrants as a group as less deserving than members of other groups to have their rights protected. This is visible for instance in attaching a lesser evidential weight to the experiences of migrants or even challenging their right to have their cases heard by the Court. The erga omnes effect of these judgments is the strengthening of the already restrictive approaches towards migrants’ rights in the EU member states.