Frontex and the convergence of humanitarianism,human rights and security

Abstract

While there has been growing scholarly interest in the convergence of humanitarianism and security in contemporary EUropean border governance, much of the existing literature has neglected the role of human rights in this process. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Frontex officials, this article takes the simultaneous portrayal of the agency as rescuer of migrants at sea, promoter of fundamental rights and defender of EUropean citizens against migrant threats as a starting point to rethink the relationship of humanitarianism, human rights and security in the governing of EUropean borders. Conceptualizing them as discourses of protection that render their subjects vulnerable in various ways, the article contributes to a deeper understanding of the connections and combined effects of humanitarianism, human rights and security in EUropean border governance. Finally, it shows that Frontex’s positioning in humanitarian, human rights and security terms has strengthened the agency in three ways. First, it has allowed Frontex to cooperate with a range of actors in ‘managing’ EUropean borders. Second, it has enabled the agency to become a ‘go-to’ solution to diverse crises in border governance. Third, it has allowed Frontex officials to shift blame for human rights abuses to member-states.

Keywords

Border control Frontex human rights humanitarianism security

Introduction

In recent years, there has been growing scholarly interest in the connections between humanitarianism and security in EUropean border governance.¹ Some analyses have focused on state actors’ use of humanitarian language and/or practices, including by looking at Frontex, Mare Nostrum or the European Commission (Campesi, 2014; Cuttitta, 2014; Garelli and Tazzioli, 2017; Pallister-Wilkins, 2015, 2018; Tazzioli, 2016; Vaughan-Williams, 2015). Others have examined the growth and proliferation of nongovernmental, humanitarian actors in EUropean borderlands, often noting their diverse relations with security actors (Cuttitta, 2017; Stierl, 2017; Walters, 2011). Meanwhile, there has been a lack of engagement with another prominent discourse in contemporary border governance: that of human rights.

This article takes Frontex’s use of humanitarianism, human rights and security language as a starting point to rethink the relationship of these discursive formations in the governing of borders and migration in contemporary EUrope. Frontex is one of the key actors drawing on humanitarianism and human rights alongside a focus on border security in narrating EUropean borders (Aas and Gundhus, 2015). In published documents, statements and interviews, Frontex officials present the agency as a protector of EUropean citizens, promoter of fundamental rights and saviour of lives at sea. This opens up two questions. First, what enables references to humanitarianism, human rights and security to coexist in the accounts of Frontex officers? Second, what are the effects of their simultaneous articulation by Frontex? In addressing these questions, the present article seeks to show that a focus on securitization and humanitarianism in isolation falls short of recognizing the complex connections between those formations and human rights, which have important implications for border governance.

The article will proceed by briefly reviewing how humanitarianism and human rights have been discussed within critical security studies. Drawing on interview data, it subsequently presents how humanitarianism, human rights and security are articulated within Frontex’s organizational discourse. Building on this mostly empirical discussion, the article then explores how the concomitant deployment of humanitarianism, human rights and security by Frontex is possible in more general theoretical terms. Lastly, it examines the effects of the agency’s simultaneous portrayal as a saviour of lives, promoter of rights and protector of EUrope on its position in EUropean border governance.

Humanitarianism and human rights in critical security studies

Connections between security and humanitarianism within the context of migration governance are not new and have attracted increasing scholarly attention. Fassin (2012) analysed how humanitarianism and security worked together in the governing of Sangatte camp and has been influential in exploring the prevalence of ‘humanitarian reason’ in the contemporary world. Ticktin (2011) showed how humanitarianism works as a strategy of government in France, where an opening of ‘humanitarian’ residence permits was accompanied by a closing down of rights-based routes. Agier (2010: 30) referred to humanitarianism as ‘a form of policing’, problematizing its use as a strategy of control in refugee camps.

Within critical security studies, Aradau (2008) has provided the most in-depth analysis of the convergence of security and humanitarianism/human rights to date. Using a Foucauldian approach, she shows how a politics of pity mobilized by NGOs on behalf of victims of trafficking is compatible with and gradually morphed into a rationality of risk management. She argues that being at risk (of trafficking or abuse) is often coterminous with being a risk to society (of becoming a perpetrator of abuse or an irregular migrant), and that the inscription of riskiness into women’s biographies subverts the pity mobilized by NGOs. In analysing the governance of human trafficking, Aradau raises pertinent points regarding the cooperation between NGOs and police, the incorporation of a ‘victimization’ approach in the security dispositif, and the merging of humanitarianism/human rights and security in the governance of trafficked women.² Importantly, however, she does not distinguish between humanitarianism and human rights, and uses the terms interchangeably. Other analyses of humanitarianism in border governance have continued in this vein.

Vaughan-Williams (2015), for instance, contrasts humanitarian policy discourses with the ‘animalization’ and deaths of irregularized individuals at sea or in camps and detention centres. Attesting a ‘conceptual crisis’ (Vaughan-Williams, 2015: 6) in contemporary scholarship, he argues that analyses pointing to a gap between humanitarian ‘rhetoric’ and violent ‘reality’ fail to grasp that border practices are inherently ambiguous, simultaneously understanding people on the move as at risk and as risks. Reworking existing scholarship on biopolitics and combining this with insights from Agamben, Derrida and Esposito, Vaughan-Williams provides valuable insights into the thanatopolitical and zoopolitical potentialities of EUrope’s biopolitical borders, and argues that EUrope’s border crisis can be understood as an auto-immune crisis, an excess of EUropean border security practices. Like Aradau, however, he conflates humanitarianism and human rights in his analysis, treating references to saving lives and protecting rights as one and the same.

Other scholars have focused their analyses exclusively on the articulation of humanitarian and security practices. Like Aradau and Vaughan-Williams, Pallister-Wilkins (2015, 2018) draws on a Foucauldian understanding of government in analysing the intersection of humanitarianism and policing in EUropean border governance. Examining the representation of Frontex’s activities, and drawing on work in what she calls critical humanitarianism studies – most prominently Fassin (2012), Ticktin (2011) and Agier (2011) – Pallister-Wilkins notes that, historically, both humanitarianism and policing have been bound up with notions of care and control. Reaffirming that humanitarianism and policing should not be thought of as opposites, Pallister-Wilkins (2015: 55) contends that ‘there is nothing contradictory in the use of humanitarian ideas and practices in European border policing’. Examining EU hotspots, she points to the double function of humanitarianism as a liberal diagnostic (Reid-Henry, 2013) that enables, on the one hand, the maintenance of liberal order at times of growing hostility towards refugees across Europe and, on the other, the efficient management of the ‘refugee crisis’ in the Greek islands (Pallister-Wilkins, 2018).

As noted, Pallister-Wilkins limits her analysis to humanitarianism and security, despite the prominent roles that human rights have had within Frontex and in the setting up of the hotspots. Indeed, she argues that

Frontex can talk in humanitarian terms, ask for humanitarian action, and manage risk in the name of human beings but, importantly … Frontex cannot uphold human rights, neither can they ensure territorial security as both human rights and border policing remain the sovereign responsibility of the member states. (Pallister-Wilkins, 2015: 66)

Regardless of any legal argument made here, this stance stops short of engaging with the centrality of human rights claims in Frontex’s organizational narrative. Beyond issues of legal competence – and accountability – there are important questions around the ability of institutional actors like Frontex to combine human rights, humanitarian and security talk, as well as the effects of representing border controls in these terms, which this article will explore.

Unlike other scholars, Aas and Gundhus (2015) have differentiated between humanitarianism and human rights in their analysis of border policing in EUrope. Meanwhile, they focus primarily on what they discuss as the challenges of policing humanitarian borderlands, where incoherencies between, on the one hand, the rhetorical importance given to humanitarianism and human rights and, on the other, a practical focus on minimizing risks for state security prevail, thereby reifying the ‘rhetoric’ versus ‘practice’ gap criticized by Vaughan-Williams (2015). Drawing on Fassin (2012), they understand Frontex as an example of how humanitarianism has come to shape contemporary policing, even if primarily in rhetoric. Challenging Fassin’s suggestion that a proliferation of humanitarian reason and governance occurs at the expense of human rights, they find that ‘the language of humanitarian assistance has grown alongside an intensified organizational focus on human rights’ (Aas and Gundhus, 2015: 14). By focusing their analysis on the ‘gap’ between humanitarian and human rights rhetoric and security practices, however, Aas and Gundhus stop short of analysing the conditions of possibility for the simultaneous articulation of human rights, humanitarianism and security concerns within Frontex, and the effects this has had on the agency.

In addressing the two latter concerns, this article explores how humanitarianism, human rights and security were articulated by Frontex’s staff and management, which represent a relatively coherent organizational culture in an otherwise highly fragmented organization (Perkowski, 2016). Moving beyond discussions of ‘rhetoric’ and ‘reality’ in the policing of humanitarian borderlands, and bridging existing discussions on humanitarianism and security and human rights and security, it analyses how the convergence of humanitarianism, human rights and security in Frontex’s organizational discourse can be understood from a theoretical perspective, while also examining the effects that Frontex’s positioning in these terms has had on border governance.

In doing so, it draws on a Foucauldian understanding of humanitarianism, human rights and security as discursive formations – that is, instances where ‘between objects, types of statement, concepts, or thematic choices, one can define a regularity (an order, correlations, positions and functionings, transformations)’ (Foucault, 1972: 38). While being characterized by particular rules of formation, discursive formations are dynamic and in constant historical flux, they are ‘forming formedness’: their principles of order are continuously overridden and ever changing (Angermuller, 2014: 15). In analysing the interrelationships of discursive formations, the aim of this article is not to understand individual actors’ intentions in making utterances or drawing new connections. Instead, the focus is on what makes such connections and transitions between discursive formations possible, on mapping the proximities, analogies and symmetries that allow for their interplay (Foucault, 1972).

Methods

Established in 2005, Frontex was founded in response to a perception that the external borders of the Schengen zone needed to be controlled more effectively as internal border controls were abolished. While member-states generally agreed that better cooperation in this field was necessary, Frontex has been described as a compromise between those keen to set up an EU border police – including Germany, Italy and the European Commission – and those expressing reservations regarding such ambitions, including the UK (Neal, 2009). As such, Frontex was tasked with coordinating the cooperation between member-states and providing several other services to them, without replacing the work of national border guards. Since its foundation, Frontex has grown at great speed in terms of budget, staff members and responsibilities. Its founding regulation has been amended twice, increasing the agency’s powers and resources (European Parliament and Council, 2007, 2011). It was finally rescinded in October 2016, when Frontex was formally transformed into a more powerful ‘European Border and Coast Guard Agency’ (European Parliament and Council, 2016).

While its mandate and competences have been gradually expanded, the agency has become a controversial and symbolically charged actor in EUropean border governance. Set up to satisfy a diversity of interests and objectives, Frontex remains accountable to the Council and the Parliament, which constitute its budgetary authority, and is governed by a Management Board that consists of a representative of each Schengen member-state as well as two members of the European Commission. With the agency being partially controlled by an array of diverse institutions that often have divergent priorities and understandings, staff report feeling pressed to respond to contradictory demands (Perkowski, 2016). The implications of this will be further discussed below.

The analysis presented in this article is informed by 16 semi-structured interviews and numerous informal conversations with Frontex staff, management and guest officers that were conducted between May 2013 and September 2014. Interviews involved staff from different Frontex units, guest officers participating in Frontex operations, and members of the agency’s Management Board and Consultative Forum on Fundamental Rights. To avoid standardized narratives, interview questions focused on interviewees’ understandings of the importance of border management, Frontex’s role in border governance, the changes they had witnessed within Frontex over time, the challenges the agency faced and the future of EUropean border guarding. This allowed interviewees to use their own framings and narratives when speaking about Frontex, rather than priming them to speak specifically about security, humanitarianism or human rights. In addition, observations were made during a meeting of the Management Board, during visits to joint operations in Bulgaria and Italy, and at Frontex events in Berlin and Warsaw. This data was complemented with an analysis of all press releases and annual reports published by Frontex from its foundation until 31 December 2014.

While interviews conducted with guest officers and observations at various events and operations inform the writing of this article, the analysis offered here focuses specifically on data obtained through eight interviews that were conducted with Frontex staff and management. In contrast with guest officers – who normally serve as border guards in their home countries and are seconded to Frontex operations for short periods of time – staff and management presented a fairly homogeneous organizational narrative. As this article focuses on Frontex’s public positioning as an agency rather than the perceptions of those temporarily implementing its operations, the following analysis is limited to the organizational narrative presented by staff and management and in Frontex publications.³ These interviewees worked in different Frontex units when they were interviewed, including in Risk Analysis, Operations, Fundamental Rights, Public Relations and Training. While there were some divergences in the ways individuals drew on humanitarian, human rights and security formations, their accounts were similar enough to produce an overarching organizational narrative that weaved together elements of security, humanitarianism and human rights.

Frontex as protector of EUrope, saviour at sea and promoter of rights

In this organizational narrative, Frontex was simultaneously constructed as a protector of EUrope from migrant threats, a saviour of migrant lives at sea and a promoter of fundamental rights. In the following subsections, each of these framings will be examined separately, before some of the connections and convergences across them are discussed.

Protector of EUrope

Frontex officials invoked different security imaginations (see Bigo, 2014). References to security concerns emerged most often when interviewees were asked about the importance of border controls, but also in relation to questions on Frontex’s role in border governance or general task descriptions. Some described Frontex as a gatekeeper, fending off a continuum of threats originating outside EUropean territory:

You don’t want someone coming from a specific country … put a bomb in the metro station and make it explode. You don’t want people to earn money in the UK working illegally in a restaurant and then sending the money somewhere to finance some illegal activities, drug trafficking, or for buying, purchasing drugs or for trafficking human beings. You don’t want people who come with the contagious diseases…. There are various dimensions of border control. (Interview 4)⁴

Reflecting the breadth of this continuum, threats were at times framed in highly individualized terms – ‘how would you feel if your daughter got raped and you only have this open border and the criminal can leave Europe and you’ll never find him again?’ (Interview 1) – and at other times related to the functioning of the state or society as a whole – ‘everybody will come here. And it will be a total disorder, so to say. And disorder in the bad sense of, like, not having sufficient jobs or food or anything’ (Interview 3). Here, the border was imagined as a solid line protecting EUrope from potential threats outside, and invoked as locus of sovereign decisionmaking (see Salter, 2008): ‘[at the border] is when the decision is made whether you enter or not. So the moment of truth, in a way’ (Interview 3).

While this imagination emerged prominently in the interviews, it coexisted with an understanding of borders as filters, describing Frontex’s role as detecting and identifying individuals: ‘our goal as concerns border control is to assure that everybody that is crossing the border is properly identified, and this is the task. Even those that are arriving by boat’ (Interview 7). Some noted that this also entailed the fluidity of borders: ‘the border crossing traffic should be as fluent as possible’ (Interview 5). Here, borders were described in a way that is in line with an understanding of security as ‘not so much establishing limits and frontiers, or fixing locations, as, above all and essentially, making possible, guaranteeing, and ensuring circulations: the circulation of people, merchandise, and air, etcetera’ (Foucault, 2009: 51). Relying on the principles of freedom of circulation and the protection of population life, security in this sense simultaneously implies the management of ‘risk’, based on calculations of probability and statistical distributions (Bigo, 2008). Related to this, interviewees emphasized the centrality of risk analyses to Frontex’s work, framing the agency as an analyst of risks. In particular, they highlighted the importance of improving preparedness and operational responses to anticipate future developments at the borders ahead of time.

Frontex officials thus mobilized two understandings of border security and Frontex’s role in maintaining it. While different emphases were apparent, reflecting the diverse roles and professional ‘dispositions’ of interviewees (Bigo, 2014), both imaginations emerged as integral parts of the agency’s organizational narrative.

Saviour at sea

In addition to border security, interviewees also emphasized the importance of saving lives, for instance when Interviewee 2 spoke about the impact of EUROSUR on Frontex operations:

If you have a better idea, or a mechanism of early detection of some situations, you can respond in a faster manner. So it will help in a way to detect … the boats at sea, for instance. So it will support in search and rescue activities, for sure, but it’s only improving some mechanisms that are already in place, in a way.

As the above quote illustrates, technological development was at times linked to improved search and rescue capacities, which were described as an integral part of Frontex operations. Most frequently, interviewees mentioned search and rescue when asked about challenges Frontex was facing, as this example shows:

I think it’s very important for us to, you know, to be honest. To be, to actually … yeah, not raise false expectations about saving lives in the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean is two and a half million square kilometres. And a wooden boat, with a lot of people on it, in bad weather is very difficult to detect. So I’m sure, you know, we should be working towards more technological and all possible solutions, so more people can be saved. But we also need to be realistic about it. (Interview 1)

Several staff members expressed a fear of being blamed for deaths at sea and pointed to the practical difficulties of search and rescue, but also insisted that member-states were responsible for coordinating such operations. While they highlighted that the agency was doing its best to rescue people, they simultaneously stressed that Frontex remained a security organization: ‘Frontex is not there to solve the problem’ (Interview 4); ‘I don’t think we want to become [a search and rescue] agency’ (Interview 6); ‘we are not a search and rescue organization’ (Interview 1); ‘Frontex has no mandate or competence to coordinate search and rescue cooperation’ (Interview 2); and ‘Frontex is not a search and rescue agency. It’s a border agency’ (Interview 3). In the interviews, a fine line between emphasizing that Frontex was doing everything it could and pointing out that search and rescue was not something the agency was responsible for emerged. Positively highlighting Frontex’s adherence to international legal frameworks while guarding the agency against criticism based on a more expansive reading of humanitarian duties, interviewees endorsed a limited, rule-of-law humanitarianism.

Focused on relieving unnecessary suffering and death, interviewees’ concerns with saving lives are humanitarian in nature. Within humanitarian thought, there is a key tension between solidarity and inequality:

On the one hand, moral sentiments are focused mainly on the poorest, most unfortunate, most vulnerable individuals: the politics of compassion is a politics of inequality. On the other hand, the condition of possibility of moral sentiments is generally the recognition of others as fellows: the politics of compassion is a politics of solidarity. This tension between inequality and solidarity, between a relation of domination and a relation of assistance, is constitutive of all humanitarian government. (Fassin, 2012: 3)

Both Fassin (2010) and Agier (2011) note that humanitarianism has the power to let live and to let die – the politics of search and rescue is epitomical of this. They argue that the life that is either sacrificed or saved tends to be thought of as ‘bare life’ – that is, mere biological existence without a social or political dimension to it (Agamben, 1995; Fassin, 2010):

Humanitarianism occupies the whole space of life, including the political space: situations in which the victim and the guilty, the true refugee and the false refugee, the vulnerable and the undesirable occupy the whole representation of the person, and sound the end of the citizen who may say what he or she wants without condition. (Agier, 2011: 202)

Finally, Agier (2011) notes that the ‘management of undesirables’ relies on the combined forces of both humanitarianism and the police, which work together in limiting human mobility. Disciplinary power is central to humanitarianism, and humanitarian interventions often channel people to specific places, keeping them from moving further afield. As an example, Agier notes that humanitarian arguments were used to justify plans to control mobility beyond EUropean frontiers. The argument that stopping people from departing in North Africa would save their lives was at times also echoed in the interviews, as will be further discussed below.

Promoter of fundamental rights

In contrast to humanitarian obligations, fundamental rights were endorsed unambiguously in the interviews, and were frequently juxtaposed against what was framed as unjustified external criticism. Human rights focus on the entitlements of victims and might be viewed as more emancipatory than humanitarianism: ‘Duties are owed to the other person, whereas charity can be weighed against other considerations’ (Basaran, 2015: 213). Fundamental rights were most often invoked in general task descriptions, but also referenced in relation to the role of Frontex in border governance, the effects of past regulation amendments or changes in cooperation with other actors. When speaking about Frontex’s use of debriefers to obtain information for its risk analyses, Interviewee 4, for instance, emphasized their centrality in this process:

Author:

You mentioned the importance of speaking to migrants. I was wondering, are they open and motivated to talk about how they got into Europe?

Interviewee 4:

This is part of the, let’s say, a lot of work. How to motivate them to talk… And we have developed a methodology of work which we have also, let’s say, verified with the organizations. We have, let’s say, a group of organizations which are looking at respect of fundamental human rights and it’s called Consultative Forum…. So we try to align also our practices, our procedures to the respect of fundamental rights. So that [we] are not in any way, let’s say, violating possibly any human rights.

While interview questions did not ask about fundamental rights, references to rights emerged in all but one interview in descriptions of Frontex’s activities or organizational changes through time. Presented as an integral part of the agency’s organizational discourse and everyday activities, they were even described as ‘boring’ by one interviewee:

Author:

How would you describe Frontex’s main tasks and responsibilities?

Interviewee 1:

… Also we create trainings for everybody, that everybody sees a need for, like a training for border guards on detecting victims of trafficking. Or trainings on fundamental rights…. Of course, I don’t want to be boring and talk about fundamental rights, you know, how it’s always in our operational plans, there are codes of conducts, there are trainings about it. Just to make sure that you know, when Frontex has an operation, it’s carried out up to the highest standards. We get criticized anyway, but we can do what we can do, you know.

Like this interviewee, officials often referenced unjustified external criticism, while emphasizing the importance of fundamental rights within the agency. Others emphasized that fundamental rights had not been violated in Frontex operations. Most highlighted that already before the introduction of the Consultative Forum on Fundamental Rights and the Fundamental Rights Officer, fundamental rights had been important to Frontex.

The wide circulation of human rights among institutions like Frontex points to a fundamental ambiguity in their politics:

rights are not just defenses against social and political power but are, as an aspect of governmentality, a crucial aspect of power’s aperture. As such, they are not simply rules and defenses against power, but can themselves be tactics and vehicles of governance and domination. (Brown, 2004: 459)

Human rights can both conceal and legitimize dominant structures, on the one hand, and serve as a tool to expose inequalities, on the other. By framing struggles in terms of individual rights, human rights can obscure the roots of injustices and focus on small improvements for particular groups rather than questioning exploitative structures or political systems (Douzinas, 2007). Meanwhile, human rights are not ahistorical or acultural, but embedded in power relations (Douzinas and Gearty, 2014). In particular, they have been intimately tied up with statehood: human rights regulate the relationship between states and their citizens. While they limit the authority of states over their citizens, they also reinforce state power (Merry, 2006; Salter, 2012). As Mutua (2001: 203) phrased it, ‘the state is the guarantor of human rights; it is also the target and raison d’être of human rights law’. Accordingly, it is important to note that fundamental rights do not threaten Frontex’s mandate: they are compatible with border control and do not question the sovereign’s right to decide who may cross nation-state borders.

Connections and convergences

Throughout the interviews, officers made humanitarian, human rights and security claims alongside each other, without apparent difficulties in reconciling them. Importantly, they also connected the three formations with each other. This occurred in diverse ways during the interviews, for instance during discussions about risk analysis:

So, an understanding what’s going on in Libya for us is key…. We need to know how many, how many migrants are trying to reach, or are staying in the North of Africa…. Are they willing to face the bad weather conditions in winter? If this is the case, we need to do something to try to save their lives, or to prevent them from departing … but knowledge about what happens in countries of transit and departure and origin of migrants is very important to determine the risk, the level of risk [for member-states]. (Interview 4)

Here, people on the move are simultaneously positioned as risks and at risk: they are presented as potentially risking death at sea, requiring life-saving interventions, and as determining the risk level for whether member-states will become subject to irregular migration. This interviewee’s bringing together of different modalities of risk – for EUropean states, on the one hand, and migrants travelling without authorization, on the other – is characteristic of the interplay of the formations of humanitarianism and security within Frontex’s organizational discourse. It also resurfaced in discussions on Frontex’s work on identification and detection:

Interviewee 7:

We want to detect everyone, also to support and rescue those in need, but also to avoid that people arrive undetected and are able to continue their journey throughout Europe…. Also, another concern is that if you detect you can support. So if a person is illegal, can be exploited, can be, can happen so many things and we don’t know who this person is, if he has arrived or not … if we identify, we can support.

Detection and identification were framed as central tasks of Frontex, and were presented not only as vital for addressing security concerns but also as saving lives by allowing timely search and rescue operations and facilitating the provision of support and protection for people on the move. The anticipation of future trends through risk analysis as well as detection and identification practices were thus framed as allowing Frontex to address security, humanitarian and human rights concerns simultaneously.

Moreover, elements of all three discursive formations were also articulated together in an anti-smuggling narrative. In this narrative, smugglers are blamed for the deaths and suffering of people on the move and for risks faced by EUropean member-states, understood to be caused by smugglers’ greed and disrespect for human lives. As Interviewee 7 explained:

there was a boat last week that sank, they were forced by the facilitators, on purpose they sank the boat with the migrants. And this is something, you know – this is really the issue at this point, you know? … Because it’s not like we are against, we as Frontex are against migrants. Here, no one is against migrants. They are not criminals, they are people; they are trying to look for their lives, and some of them escaping, and this is not our target. Or better: we want them to be identified, and then from there there are procedures so that those that are entitled to asylum get proper asylum request or international protection. Our, also one of our main focus is facilitators. These are the people that we are very, very much interested in. We … try as much as possible to bring them to justice.

Interviewee 7 linked Frontex’s work to security (bringing smugglers to justice), humanitarianism (avoiding deaths) and human rights (accessing rights-determination procedures). While irregular migration is constructed as a risk to member-states, the narrative of the ‘unscrupulous smuggler’ shifts the blame for this, as well as the risks faced by people on the move, to facilitators. Emphasizing the exploitation of individuals by facilitators allows for the construction of an image of Frontex as protecting individuals from harm and safeguarding their rights by fighting people smuggling. Accordingly, it presents the agency as a protector of EUrope and of smuggling victims simultaneously.

Security, humanitarianism and human rights as discourses of protection

Having discussed how security, humanitarianism and human rights are interwoven in Frontex’s organizational discourse, I examine in this section the conditions of possibility for their co-articulation. As noted, Frontex is accountable to various EU institutions as well as member-states, which pursue different agendas and have diverging priorities regarding the agency’s work, while Frontex itself does not have the institutional and legal resources to impose itself. Accordingly, the combination of humanitarianism, human rights and security in its organizational discourse reflects attempts to appease a variety of critics – ranging from the European Parliament to the Commission to the Council and individual member-states – to maintain legitimacy and secure organizational survival (Perkowski, 2016).

Importantly, however, Frontex is only able to position itself vis-à-vis its diverse constituents and stakeholders in this manner because all three formations function as discourses of protection that render their subjects vulnerable in particular ways. Understanding humanitarianism, human rights and security in this way allows for analysing their co-articulation in Frontex’s organizational narrative, while situating the agency’s positioning in a wider struggle over the meaning of protection within EUropean border governance: an attempt to secure agency survival in a contradictory environment that is constantly in flux (Huysmans, 2006).

In analysing humanitarianism, human rights and security as discourses of protection, Bigo’s (2006) etymological analysis is useful. Bigo differentiates between three dimensions of protection: tegere, praesidere and tutore. Protection as tegere invokes a sacred place and a protector shielding the protected from an enemy. It is related to sovereign decisionmaking and the vulnerability of the body of the protected – for instance, the body of the nation – who remains an active subject while being protected. The second dimension of protection, praesidere, involves the physical containment of the protected, for instance in a camp. Here, the protected is separated from potential enemies but simultaneously monitored and disciplined: ‘The protector supervises and monitors the protected which (or who) is dependent on the protector for the assumption of its sovereign autonomy’ (Bigo, 2006: 91). Lastly, tutore involves the notion of a protectorate, of profiling the present and future, of deciding for the protected what is best for them and enacting their complete dependency on the protector, while the notion of the enemy disappears.

These three dimensions of protection coexist in contemporary border governance. While humanitarianism, human rights and security formations can include all of them, different dimensions of protection and related techniques of government are emphasized in Frontex’s organizational narrative when speaking about security, saving lives or protecting rights. The sovereign decisionmaking of tegere is articulated only in relation to security, where the protected is the community of EUropean states that decided to share a common border and is threatened from the outside, with the protector – Frontex – enacting protection in the name of this sovereign. On the contrary, praesidere, closely connected to disciplinary power, is connected to humanitarianism, human rights and security simultaneously. Surveillance, patrolling, detection and identification are framed by interviewees as protecting EUrope from migrant threats, saving migrant lives and facilitating the protection of migrants’ rights at the same time. Lastly, tutore is closely related to biopolitics. While its agency-annihilating dimension emerges in Frontex’s organizational discourse most clearly in relation to humanitarianism, the focus on profiling the present and the future emerges also in relation to security.

Drawing on different registers and technologies of protection, humanitarianism, human rights and security become combinable in Frontex’s organizational narrative. Moreover, each discursive formation produces an unequal power relationship between protector, protected and/or enemy (Bigo, 2006), and constructs a migrant ‘other’. While security claims as tegere position migrants as threats, human rights and humanitarian claims as praesidere and tutore construct them as victims. Importantly, both are ‘incompatible with those of the subject and the citizen’ (Agier, 2011: 215). ‘Illegals’ and ‘victims’ are racialized categories, imagined as non-white and non-Western, and the transition between them is frequent and random (Douzinas, 2007; Mutua, 2001). Edkins argues that the differentiation between ‘us’ and ‘them’, which all three discursive formations share, ‘is the reason … why an increase in talk of normative criteria and the moral basis of humanitarianism is accompanied so closely by the incorporation of the independent humanitarian movement in practices of governance’ (2003: 255). A similar point can be made regarding human rights: it is the white, Western citizen that figures in all three discursive formations as the implicit ‘us’.

As a result of the subjectivities and governmental techniques they produce and employ, humanitarianism, human rights and security render their subjects vulnerable in particular ways. Security produces vulnerability in two ways: it emphasizes the vulnerability of states vis-à-vis migrant threats and exposes these ‘threats’ to greater risks through security technologies, rendering them more vulnerable. Frontex explicitly engages in the construction of the first sense of vulnerability in its risk analyses, where the vulnerability of the border and the ability of specific member-states to deal with migratory pressures is at the centre of analysis. The second sense of vulnerability is produced indirectly, as a result of restrictions on human mobility in a world where life chances and possibilities of survival vastly depend on one’s place of residence. While legal travel has become faster, cheaper and safer than ever before, those who are deemed ‘unwanted’ are left with no option but unsafe boats or trucks to attempt perilous journeys to EUrope.

Importantly, of course, EUropean states and migrants exposed to their bordering practices are not equally vulnerable: vulnerability is laced with power structures. Rather than addressing this unequal distribution of vulnerability (Butler et al., 2016), however, humanitarianism and human rights shore up the power differentials producing these vulnerabilities in the first place. Frontex’s references to humanitarianism are framed as addressing the vulnerabilities that emerge through restrictive policies, in particular deaths at sea. In conceptualizing migrants as bodies to be saved, stripped of agency, it reproduces their vulnerability, however, by exposing saved bodies to the very control practices that rendered them vulnerable in the first place. Having saved lives at sea, these lives are then processed according to rules that foresee their detention and identification, at times culminating in deportation. Similarly, Frontex’s claims to human rights are framed as addressing migrants’ vulnerabilities to exploitation and rights abuses. In focusing on rendering specific bordering practices rights-compliant, they simultaneously legitimize EUrope’s right to control its borders and to exclude those who are deemed unwanted. Stabilizing an inherently violent system, they reproduce the vulnerability of those who are locked out: even rights-compliant detention and deportation practices increase individuals’ vulnerability to mental health issues, poverty or violence.

While humanitarianism and human rights have been among the main discursive tools of those seeking to oppose violent border practices, they have proven combinable with a concern to protect EUrope from potential threats: humanitarian and human rights concerns could be reconciled with longstanding practices by security actors such as Frontex, including patrolling activity and surveillance (which can save lives) and the return of ‘unwanted’ arrivals to countries of origin and transit (while respecting fundamental rights safeguards). In sum, the simultaneous mobilization of humanitarianism, human rights and security in Frontex’s organizational narrative is enabled through their similarities: they are all discourses of protection that render their subjects vulnerable, including by ‘othering’ migrants and relying on biopolitical and disciplinary techniques of government. These similarities and connections have created the conditions of possibility for their concomitant articulation in contemporary EUropean border governance.

The effects of Frontex’s organizational narrative

Frontex at the heart of new coalitions

Importantly, the simultaneous articulation of humanitarianism, human rights and security in Frontex’s organizational narrative produces particular effects. In line with critical border studies (e.g. Wonders, 2006), this article understands borders as processes that are constantly being (re)produced by a variety of actors. Numerically small in comparison with member-states’ border agents and state bureaucrats, Frontex is among the bureaucracies that conceptualize the border as well as performing it on site, while seeking to ‘harmonize’ border practices across member-states. Accordingly, analysing the effects of its positioning is of particular relevance.

First, Frontex’s emphasis on the importance of fundamental rights and search and rescue has provided new possibilities for cooperation with NGOs and international organizations, as the following two examples show. First, a panel discussion at the European Day for Border Guards 2013 discussed the need to ‘manage’ migration effectively, improve crisis preparedness and identify those with protection needs from amid ‘mixed flows’ (Frontex, 2014a). Panellists from Frontex, the Italian government, Médecins Sans Frontières and the European External Action Service mobilized humanitarianism and human rights in ways that contributed to a managerial discourse in which humanitarianism, human rights and security converged. In particular, there was a shared emphasis on identifying new arrivals, which was framed as the basis for responding according to the risk they posed, the needs they had or the rights they held.

This focus on identifying and dividing individuals into ‘victims in need’ and ‘others’ works within a wider risk management narrative that is central to Frontex. While NGOs might argue for exceptions to a risk-based understanding for specific categories of people according to their presumed need or legal entitlement, in doing so they ‘confirm the security norm against which these outliers are to be measured. Claiming that exceptions need to be made, they (unwillingly) contribute to targeted risk management that depends on these very categorizations’ (Van Munster, 2009: 143; see also Bigo, 2002). Moreover, through the presentation of new arrivals as victims to be assisted, and/or threats to be carefully screened, they are juxtaposed with the figure of the EUropean citizen and produced as racialized ‘others’.

A further example of Frontex’s changing relations with NGOs and international organizations is the agency’s Consultative Forum on Fundamental Rights, consisting of nine NGOs, two EU agencies and six international organizations that regularly advise Frontex on human rights. Initially, there was opposition to the Forum, which Frontex was obliged to establish by a regulation amendment passed by the European Parliament and Council:

To be completely open, initially the member-states fought massively against that, both in Brussels … and in the Management Board, against the Consultative Forum…. Then it was pushed through somehow, and once you have it, you have to see that you make the best of it. (Interview 9)

Notably, the strengthened position of the European Parliament through co-decision as opposed to its limited powers at the time of Frontex’s foundation was decisive here: it was the Parliament that pushed for the establishment of the Consultative Forum, despite resistance among member-states (European Parliament, 2011; Statewatch, 2012). While interviewees explained that they had been sceptical at first, they came to view the Forum positively and found cooperation to be constructive. Far from being perceived as a threat to Frontex’s work, it was described as an additional support for the agency in improving its work. As the Forum provides assistance to draw up or adapt codes of conduct, or to mainstream human rights throughout Frontex’s activities, it supports Frontex in optimizing and legitimizing those activities.

While cooperating with NGOs and international organizations in various ways, the agency also maintains close links with national border guards and the security industry (Lemberg-Pedersen, 2013). Accordingly, Frontex is positioned as a key contact point between diverse social worlds and finds itself at the heart of emerging coalitions of actors working together in optimizing EUropean border controls. Despite their cooperation, however, Frontex’s relationship with humanitarian NGOs remains an ambiguous one. As noted, the agency mobilizes a limited, rule-of-law humanitarianism and only embraces humanitarianism as praesidere and tutore. In doing so, it negates the agency of those seeking to enter EUrope irregularly and at times clashes with NGOs advocating a more expansive vision of the Mediterranean as a humanitarian space (Cuttitta, 2017). While Frontex’s mobilization of humanitarianism and human rights has positioned the agency at the centre of a growing network of actors seeking to optimize EUropean border controls, this position is thus not stable and fixed in time, but remains subject to constant processes of renegotiation.

Frontex as a solution to diverse ‘crises’

While Frontex is viewed as a risk management agency by some (see Jeandesboz and Pallister-Wilkins, 2014), this article argues that it draws on two modes of enacting insecurity (Huysmans, 2014). In addition to its prominent focus on risk management, Frontex also dispatches border guards to external borders in times of ‘crisis’ and engages in framing events in exceptionalist terms.⁵ This section explores what such invocations of crises do in contemporary EUropean border governance.

In its public documents, Frontex first invoked a crisis in 2011, the year of political upheavals in North Africa and increased boat departures towards EUrope. The agency designated arrivals in Italy as a ‘mass influx of migrants’ (Frontex, 2013: 51), a ‘migratory crisis situation’ (Frontex, 2012: 21), ‘massive and disproportionate migration flows’ (Frontex, 2012: 49), and a ‘migration crisis’ that ‘demanded a reinforced operational response package’ (Frontex, 2013: 51).⁶ While the agency’s reporting on the ‘crisis’ of 2011 resonated with a wider narrative that labelled the arrivals as ‘exceptional’ (e.g. European Commission, 2011), Frontex took a proactive role in the framing of this ‘crisis’.⁷

Importantly, declaring a crisis is productive (Roitman, 2014: 35). Roitman highlights that the concept initially implied decision and judgment. As the New Keywords Collective (2016: 11) notes, this ‘draw[s] our attention to the new spaces of intervention and government that discourses about the (multiple) European “crises” have opened up’. Indeed, crisis narratives produce ‘response-able’ actors (Van Reekum, 2016). When EUropean governments, agencies, volunteers and NGOs cooperate to respond to ‘crises’ in the Mediterranean, their interventions work to affirm their agency and humanity, while simultaneously projecting the Mediterranean as a EUropean space of care and control. Meanwhile, the term ‘crisis’ no longer invokes a singular moment of decision and judgment, but has come to be understood as a protracted state of being (Roitman, 2014).

Frontex has come to profit from the proliferation of crisis narratives in this protracted state of ‘crisis’. The agency’s planned budget was increased repeatedly in response to events framed as ‘crises’ in the Mediterranean, including in 2011, 2014 and 2015. In 2011, the declared ‘crisis’ was connected to a perceived loss of control over EUropean borders, as increased numbers of individuals left from Tunisia and Libya at the height of the ‘Arab Spring’ (Carrera et al., 2012). In 2014, Frontex’s budget was increased to allow it to step in for Italy’s Mare Nostrum operation, justified by a need for continued search and rescue activities (European Commission, 2014; Frontex, 2015). The 2015 budget increase came in response to the deaths of more than 800 individuals in a single incident in April of that year (European Council, 2015).

Frontex has thus emerged as a ‘go-to’ solution to a variety of ‘crises’ in EUrope. The agency’s status as the almost automatic solution proposed by policymakers in response to diverse border ‘crises’ in recent years relies on its positioning as rescuer at sea and protector of EUropean citizens, as a security and humanitarian actor. While the agency pursues a risk management discourse, not only does it declare crises itself at times, but it has also profited from other actors’ invocations of ‘crises’ in EUropean border governance. Importantly, declarations of crises – also when coming from outside the agency – have thereby strengthened Frontex (see also Campesi, 2014).

Frontex as EUropeanizing force

While Frontex’s use of humanitarianism has positioned it as a solution to various ‘crises’ in border governance, and its avowal of humanitarianism and human rights has allowed it to become a connection point between diverse actors in border governance, the emphasis on human rights within the agency also affects its relations with member-states. Interviewees presented the agency as improving and harmonizing standards of border guarding across EUrope:

[T]he operation strategies, the trainings that Frontex does, the question of human rights, how do I implement human rights in operational plans, all the things that the training unit does, has certainly contributed to a higher level in Europe generally, also a higher average level in border protection and a more uniform praxis of controls than we had before. (Interview 9)

Frontex was presented as improving and harmonizing practices across EUrope, including in relation to human rights. Indeed, interviewees claimed that particularly Greece and Bulgaria, and sometimes former communist states more generally, were lacking a tradition and history of human rights. Scandinavia (particularly Finland) and Germany, on the other hand, were praised for their respect for fundamental rights.⁸ As Interviewee 1 stated:

[I]t’s cultural. I mean there is, without criticizing anybody, but there is a difference in…. Probably the Finns started training their border guards in the issues relating, you know, fundamental rights in border control … probably earlier than Bulgarians.

Often, interviewees implied that states in EUrope’s southern and/or eastern periphery had to catch up, and that Frontex was helping them ‘develop’ in this regard. This framing feeds into a wider discourse that questions the ‘EUropeanness’ of these member-states. As Douzinas (2007: 74) notes, ‘the Balkans are approached as peripheral parts of the civilized world, placed in Europe by accident of geography rather than achievement of history or culture’. While some states were portrayed as not understanding the importance of human rights, Frontex operations were presented as exposing problematic practices, and as putting pressure on the respective countries. In this narrative, Frontex is thus constructed as a truly EUropean actor bringing best practices and human rights to ‘problematic’ states in EUrope’s southeast.

By constructing Frontex as a ‘EUropeanizing force’, this narrative further strengthens the agency and enables officials to shift blame away from it. Several interviewees emphasized that the human rights situation in Greece had improved thanks to Frontex (see also Aas and Gundhus, 2015). In addition, interviewees asserted that human rights were not violated during agency operations. Some acknowledged that abuses might be committed by member-states outside of Frontex operations, but not during Frontex-led activities: ‘I can say that the Frontex operations … are properly done. Then, the member-state issue is a bit more tricky’ (Interview 3). Rather than denying the rights-related criticism brought against border guards in EUrope, interviewees distanced the agency from such reports by pointing to the responsibility of member-states. According to them, it was better to have a Frontex presence in ‘problematic’ states than to leave national border guards up to their own devices. Instead of being seen as part of the problem, Frontex was thereby constructed as a solution to violence and abuse by member-states.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this article has shown that incorporating human rights in analyses of the connections and combined effects of humanitarianism and security enriches existing accounts of contemporary border governance. Frontex’s interconnection of all three discursive formations in its organizational discourse has been rendered possible by the similarities they share: humanitarianism, human rights and security are discourses of protection that use biopolitical and disciplinary techniques of government, create unequal power relationships between protector, protected and/or enemy, and render their subjects vulnerable in particular ways. By drawing on understandings of humanitarianism and human rights as praesidere and tutore, Frontex has been able to include these within a broader conceptualization of security as tegere, praesidere and tutore. The thus-enabled framing of Frontex as a saviour of lives, promoter of human rights and protector of EUrope has strengthened the agency in multiple ways. First, it has allowed Frontex to serve as a connection point between security, humanitarian and human rights actors. Second, it has enabled it to become positioned as the solution to a variety of ‘crises’, ranging from deaths at sea to heightened arrival numbers, leading to an expansion of Frontex’s resources. Third, it has allowed the agency to be constructed as the solution to human rights violations and concerns at EUrope’s borders.

While this article has analysed the similarities and interconnections between human rights, humanitarianism and security, and the ways in which these have strengthened Frontex, it has also hinted at the ambivalences and ambiguities underpinning this development. Despite sharing a number of similarities, the three discursive formations are not one and the same. By embracing them proactively, Frontex opens itself up to criticism on human rights and humanitarian terms: both formations leave room for more expansive, agency-avowing mobilizations. As a result, Frontex’s relationship with NGOs remains ambiguous and at times fraught with conflict.

More importantly, perhaps, understanding humanitarianism, human rights and security as discourses that produce vulnerability allows for more-nuanced analyses of their effects: vulnerability does not straightforwardly entail a lack of agency, but can be mobilized as resistance. Those who refuse to stay on land, who decide to put their lives on the line and board unseaworthy boats, are not just passive victims or ‘bare lives’. Their determination to keep moving while risking their lives is ‘a resistance to unjust and violent regimes that mobilizes vulnerability as part of its own exercise of power’ (Butler, 2016: 26). Defying mobility restrictions, they expose and challenge the brutality of the EUropean border regime every day.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their very helpful comments on this article. Thanks also go to Christina Boswell and Andrew Neal for their comments on the first draft.

Funding

The research for this article was made possible by a Chrystal Macmillan Scholarship, awarded by the School of Social and Political Science, Edinburgh University.

Notes

Nina Perkowski is a lecturer in Criminology at the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Hamburg. Previously, she was the research coordinator of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Mediterranean Migration Research Programme and a research fellow on the ESRC-funded project ‘Crossing the Mediterranean Sea by Boat: Mapping and Documenting Migratory Journeys and Experiences’ at the University of Warwick. Her research focuses on migration and border governance, critical security studies, and the relationships of humanitarianism, human rights and security.

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