Crisis, normality and European regional migration governance

Abstract

While crises can be seen as drivers of policy and institutional developments, this chapter shows that it is actually understandings of ‘normality’ and what is ‘normal’ that have been key drivers of EU migration governance. By focusing on how organisations frame and make sense of international migration, the chapter shows that understandings of normality often centre on the potential for large-scale and potentially destabilising migration to the EU. The chapter then charts how these particular understandings and their effects of normality have played a powerfully constitutive role in European Union migration governance since the late 1980s and framed responses to the post-2014 ‘migration crisis’ that centred on boat arrivals across the Mediterranean.