Looking back to the last 20 years of EU migration management policy, it has become more and more palpable the growth and development of a security industry within a hybrid space, where European and non-European security forces operate alongside NGOs, humanitarian groups and international organizations, and where private security companies play a key role supplying technology, military equipment, hardware and intelligence services.
The European Agenda for Migration already reflects the blurring of the lines between internal and external security, with policy outputs echoing the weight of the security industry.
EU policy on migration has been mirroring the blurring of the lines between internal and external security, and this fact has promoted and widened the already active market for security. This has been particularly true internally, at the policy- making level (essentially through lobbying), and externally, in particular in the Mediterranean region where the role of the private security actors in migration management is especially multifaceted - private actors are the main suppliers of top technological border control equipment and trained personnel. Moreover, providing on-the-ground expertise, private security actors also provide risk analysis for NGO’s, for Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) operations, support for FRONTEX operations.
One key aspect of this hybridisation is the growing ties between the representatives of the security industry and the European Commission. One of the most visible examples of this are the outcomes of the High-level Security Roundtables hosted and promoted by the European Organization for Security (EOS - the biggest private platform for security and defence industry based in Brussels) during the peak of the migrant crisis in 2011. The roundtables were held with the patronage of the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, Cecilia Malmström, and resulted in the reinforcement of the policies towards border control. One of the measures of greatest impact, operation HERMES, was launched days after the roundtable. Presently, EOS has an active cooperation with DG HOME, DG MARE and DG ENTR to support and advise the European Commission on several areas, namely smart border initiatives, as well as supporting the implementation of EUROSUR and helping with the design of the Common Information Sharing Environment (CISE).
Taking into consideration the apparent growing importance of the private security industry in the design and implementation of EU migration management policies, I think that there is a need for a comprehensive and deep analysis, in order to understand the full extent and implications of this relationship.
This project seeks to understand the increasing role of private security companies and the weight of the security industry in the way EU migration management policy is shaped and produced. Later advances, not only in the security field in general, but also in the migration field, in particular, illustrate that the market for security is continuously flourishing and a demand market is fed by evolving migration flows. In order to understand the level of influence of private security actors in the design of EU migration policymaking, we will use process-tracing methodology to observe the changing pathways of the migration policy process and understand when and why this changed has occurred. Therefore, this project seeks to answer:
How do private security actors and defence industry shape the European migration management policy inside and outside the EU borders?
Who are the main private security actors and defence companies shaping and lobbying EU’s migration management process?
What are the impacts of outsourcing security in EU migration management?
How is EU migration policy evolving and adapting to borderless security threats?
How does the private security industry shape the security agenda? How and why private security actors play a key role in driving it?
More importantly, it is relevant to highlight that the interdisciplinary dimension of the research is in direct correlation with how the European Commission frames the migration problem, in line with the Global Approach to Migration and Mobility (GAMM) , and how it is addressed within the different DG’s (for example the importance of migration within DG Research).especially what is their role into the forthcoming articulation between smart technological borders and EU Home Affairs and Migration Agenda.
