Blog post archive

Tuesday, 12 Apr 2022
Different Responses to Mobility at Europe’s Borders

In the weeks since Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine significant proportions of Ukraine’s population has gone on the move, the majority of whom are internally displaced. By 29th March 2022, 4 million people had fled Ukraine across borders to neighbouring countries: Poland (2 million in 3 weeks), Slovakia, Hungary, Romania ...

Wednesday, 24 Nov 2021
European Union-Belarus Border Crisis: Why the narrative of “hybrid warfare” is dangerous

The 2021 EU-Belarus border crisis was preceded by a rapid deterioration of the already strained European Union (EU)-Belarus relations, in most part due to the Ryanair 4978 incident and the concomitant wide-ranging sanctions imposed by the EU on the authoritarian government of the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has often been referred by the media ...

Saturday, 2 Oct 2021
Denmark Leading the Race to the Bottom: Hostility as a form of migration control

Since the refugee crisis of 2015, Denmark, the first signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention, has been at the forefront of the debate around deterrent migration policies. Until recently, Denmark has been recognized as an egalitarian country with an exemplary welfare system. Now, this reputation might have been irrevocably tarnished ...

Tuesday, 3 Apr 2018
Popular Anti-Immigration Movements – and the Response of Democracy

All across Europe, we see growing opposition to immigration. Tough measures imposed by governments are limiting immigration but are not having the same effect on opposition to immigration. Mounting polarization is putting Europe’s democracies as well as European cooperation to the test. I recently visited Warsaw, and then travelled on ...

Thursday, 18 Jan 2018
Debunking the Security Myth of Military Might

By Vitoria Basham Using and maintaining military force as a means of achieving security:  a flawed idea? In my recent article published in Security Dialogue I critique the longstanding idea that military force and the maintenance of strong armed forces provides security. This idea forms part of the social contract ...

Monday, 16 Oct 2017
The transactional politics of border control in the Aegean

The images of migrants and refugees trying to reach the European mainland by boat are well known. Much less is known about how border surveillance at sea actually takes place. The research for our article ‘Surveillance at sea: The transactional politics of border control in the Aegean’ brought us to ...

Tuesday, 1 Dec 2015
The Syrian Refugee Crisis & The Two Europes

In the early September days of 2015, for the second time in a quarter century, Hungary became the site of a European refugee drama. In 1989, during the months preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall, hundreds of East Germans trying to flee their “Workers and Peasants State” had besieged ...