Militarized governance of migration in the Mediterranean

Abstract This article focuses on the increasing use of military actors in the governance of migration in the Mediterranean basin. The article analyses maritime migration as distinct from migration via other routes. It investigates the understudied features of the securitization processes of maritime migration and discusses their repercussions for migrants' rights. To this end, building on critical security perspectives and inspired by critical geopolitics, the article conducts a textual and discourse analysis of NATO and the European Union's security assessments and strategies, and examines the practices ensuing from these organizations' security narrative. The article's main arguments are two-fold: first, it contends that framing migration as a ‘hybrid threat’ by NATO and the EU expands the spaces of containment of human mobility at the expense of migrants' protection and rights; and second, it argues that such a ‘threat discourse’ simultaneously provides legitimacy for military operations and eliminates accountability for infringement of the human rights of migrants and refugees. The article ends with a summary of the analysis and the subsequent conclusions, as well as suggestions for overturning the current trends of dehumanization of migrants and law-breaking in the name of security in the Mediterranean.