Introduction
The 2015 migration crisis marked a turning point in European Union policymaking, as migration gradually came to be framed not merely as a humanitarian issue but also as a matter with significant security implications. Within this context, the migration of Afghan nationals assumed particular importance in EU migration policy, given the persistence of political instability and the intensification of displacement in Afghanistan, particularly following the Taliban’s return to power in 2021. Despite the significance of this issue, much of the existing literature has focused on the legal, statistical, and administrative dimensions of migration, while comparatively little attention has been devoted to the discursive representation of Afghan migrants in European political and media discourse. Discourse analysis is particularly important because dominant representations of migration are not simply descriptive. They actively contribute to legitimizing policies, shaping institutional priorities, allocating resources, and structuring policy practices.
The central research question is: How has Afghan migration been represented in the political and media discourse of the European Union, and what role have these representations played in shaping EU migration policies? The article argues that Afghan migration has largely been represented through a multilayered process of securitization in which security-oriented, technocratic, and humanitarian rationalities operate simultaneously.
Methodology
The study adopts an analytical-critical approach based on the Copenhagen School’s theory of securitization and Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis, which examines discourse at the textual, discursive, and social levels. In contrast to state-centric approaches, the Copenhagen School conceptualizes security not as an objective condition but as a discursive and intersubjective phenomenon produced through linguistic and political interactions. The concept of securitization, developed by Ole Wæver, refers to the process through which issues that would ordinarily be addressed through routine political processes are constructed as matters of existential urgency. Through this process, an issue is represented discursively as a threat to survival, thereby legitimizing the adoption of extraordinary measures.
The empirical data consist of three main categories: official EU documents, including European Commission communications, statements, and policy frameworks; reports issued by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex), the EU agency responsible for supporting border management and security; and selected media texts from The Guardian, POLITICO Europe, and Kathimerini. The analysis covers the period from 2015 to 2025. Approximately 80 institutional and media texts were analyzed using NVivo through a combination of theory-driven and data-driven coding. The resulting concepts were organized into three principal conceptual clusters: securitization, rights-based discourse, and technocratic discourse.
Findings and Discussion
The findings indicate that EU migration policy toward Afghan migrants has been shaped by three major discursive patterns.
Securitization Discourse
Following the 2015 migration crisis, EU migration policymaking was reconfigured in ways that increasingly framed migration through security and managerial lenses. The use of terms such as “crisis,” “influx,” and “illegal crossing” in official discourse contributed to shifting migration from the domain of routine policymaking into a sphere of urgency. In Frontex reports, Afghan migration, alongside migration from Syria and the Sahel region, is represented as a challenge to the effective functioning of the EU’s border-management system. Terms such as “threat,” “disorder,” “smuggling,” and “migratory pressure” also recur frequently in these reports.
The Threat-Victim Dichotomy
EU migration policies toward Afghan migrants have been articulated within a persistent tension between rights-based and security-oriented discourses. While official documents emphasize the EU’s moral responsibility and its commitment to protecting asylum seekers, migration is simultaneously represented as a potential source of social instability and a challenge to domestic order. This dual representation serves an important political function. Representing migrants as victims allows the EU to preserve its commitment to human rights and humanitarian values, while their simultaneous representation as potential threats reinforces the legitimacy of restrictive and control-oriented migration policies.
Technocratic and Bureaucratic Discourse
Alongside these securitizing processes, another layer of discourse has emerged that is predominantly technical, managerial, and bureaucratic in character. Within this framework, migration is treated primarily as an operational and data-driven policy problem, while concepts such as “risk management,” “security screening,” and “surveillance systems” have become increasingly prominent in the policy lexicon. The substantial increase in Frontex’s budget, from €535 million in 2021 to €845 million in 2023, provides a clear indication of the institutional and structural consolidation of this discourse.
In contrast, a rights-based and humanitarian discourse, articulated by civil society organizations such as the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) and Amnesty International, as well as by liberal media outlets such as The Guardian, emphasizes human dignity, humanitarian protection, and moral responsibility. These narratives, however, have generally remained peripheral to the dominant policy discourse, although at certain critical junctures they have influenced official decision-making. For example, the Afghanistan Country Guidance issued by the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) in 2024, drawing on evidence of widespread repression in Afghanistan, recognized the need for international protection for a broad range of Afghan asylum seekers.
Conclusion
The study demonstrates that, between 2015 and 2025, security-oriented discourse played a decisive role in shaping EU migration policies toward Afghan migrants. Discursive representations did not merely describe migration; they actively contributed to making particular policy responses possible and to legitimizing them. The construction of Afghan migration as a security threat helped create the political and institutional conditions for increased funding and expanded powers for Frontex, more extensive security screening procedures, and the institutionalization of return policies.
The study’s principal theoretical contribution lies in proposing a three-layer typology of the securitization of Afghan migration: classical institutional securitization, technocratic-bureaucratic securitization, and conditional humanitarian securitization. This typology challenges a common assumption in the securitization literature that securitization necessarily occurs through an explicit speech act and the declaration of a state of exception. The findings suggest that, in contemporary EU migration policy, securitization can also become embedded through the normalized language of policymaking, the bureaucratization of decision-making, and the simultaneous operation of security and humanitarian rationalities.
Methodologically, the combination of the Copenhagen School’s securitization theory with Fairclough’s model of critical discourse analysis demonstrates that the securitization of Afghan migrants is not solely the outcome of explicit political decisions. Rather, it can gradually become institutionalized through normalized policy language, bureaucratic practices, and media representations. The findings also offer practical guidance for migration policymaking in Iran, one of the principal host countries for Afghan migrants. They suggest that an exclusively security-oriented approach, although potentially effective in strengthening administrative controls in the short term, may in the longer term contribute to greater social marginalization and make migration governance more complex and difficult.