The EU Migration Regime in the Context of the Permanent State of Exception

Abstract

This article addresses the recent development of the EU asylum and
migration policy (AMPEU) following the escalation of the migration wave in
2015. It has two main objectives – the conceptual and the analytical
objective. By reconceptualizing the AMPEU as a specific type of
international ‘migration regime’, it firstly introduces its complex structure
comprised of several semiautonomous policy fields and shows their
important interconnections. The empirical section provides an analysis of
major political/security measures launched in 2015 and early 2016 to
reform the AMPEU and stresses the regime’s flexibility in terms of
absorbing them. It further reviews the different discursive legitimization of
emergency solutions and their limitations. Using Giorgio Agamben’s
postulate of ‘state of exception’ or ‘permanent state of emergency’ the
author concludes the article by pointing out how the migration
management led to a normalization of what were originally emergency
instruments. He claims that there is a strengthening logic of ‘permanent
exception’ in everyday EU migration policy making.