Navigating contradictions: justifications and imaginaries of the initiators of European migration information campaigns

European states employ migration information campaigns (MICs) to discourage irregular migration to Europe by people from the Global South. Campaigns are justified by their initiators in various ways. On the one hand, campaigns are said to protect ‘potential migrants’ by helping them to make informed decisions (‘care’). On the other hand, campaigns respond to Europe's security objective of restricting migration flows (‘control’). Researchers have looked at various intermediaries involved in these campaigns. Yet, little attention has been given to individual European policy actors who decide on the funding and design of campaigns and how they navigate between campaigns' contradictory intentions to care for ‘potential migrants’ and to control borders. How do European campaign initiators justify the need for MICs? And what does this tell us about the migration imaginaries of those who develop migration governance measures? Based on interviews with European policymakers and campaign designers in the Netherlands and Senegal, this article examines their discursive acts of legitimation. It shows that in justifying their everyday work, they imagine themselves as humanitarian actors, and ‘potential migrants’ as depoliticized subjects in need of care. While initiators do sometimes examine campaigns critically, they build a worldview in which care is instrumental to border enforcement and in which compassion becomes a form of repressive ‘soft’ bordering.