The Master's thesis called "The Effects of Securitising Migration: The case of Slovakia and the Czech Republic" aims to analyse the extent to which is migration constructed as a security threat in crucial conceptual and strategic documents regarding migration, drafted by the Ministry of Interior of the Slovak Republic and the Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic. Given that the Ministry of Interior is a key player in the field of migration in both countries setting the direction of migration policy on conceptual, legislative and implementation level, it enters a discursive field of migration by offering its own understanding of migration, which has a great impact on the policymaking in the area of migration, migration practice and consequently on the life of migrants. Despite the fact that both Slovakia and the Czech Republic have one of the lowest shares of foreigners within population in the whole European Union as well as neither of the two countries have been the final destinations of migrants during the so called refugee crisis, we can identify the dominant role of security discourse in both countries. To get a better insight into a wider social context, the thesis also builds on the number of "texts and talks" dealing with the issue of migration beside the official policy documents and...

This thesis examines the migration policy changes that were adopted by the European Union during the so called ‘refugee crisis’ 2014-2016 and problematises the discourses that were deployed by EU policy makers. It builds the method and theoretical framework around Vivien Schmidt’s discursive institutionalism, and complements it with constructivist conceptual theories around discourses that are identified through the researched empirical material. The primary material is to a large extent based upon official documents from the EU such as regulations and communications, but also includes speeches from officials such as Jean Claude Juncker (President of the Commission), Donald Tusk (President of the Council) and Martin Schulz (President of the European Parliament). The findings are comprised of discourses that can all be connected to the EU imaginary. The thesis also concludes that there has been a continuation of the securitisation of migration during the ‘refugee crisis’ as well as a normalisation of this discourse. In regards to the communicative and coordinative skills of the EU actors, it becomes clear that the former still is problematic, whilst the coordinative discourses have increased the cooperation within the EU institutions during the time period studied.

This article examines the securitisation of migration in the British-French border zone, based on applied practices to tackle migration. The border zone is characterised by measures, aiming to discourage people from staying in the area and crossing the border to the United Kingdom. Based on data obtained from semi-structured interviews and different textual documents, this thesis analysed whether practices applied in the border zone are “instruments of securitisation” and thus perpetuating the construction of migration as a security threat. Thereby the analysis was based on different criteria as put forward by the theoretical framework.  Ultimately, I argue that different measures, initially applied to tackle migration, do also perpetuate the securitisation of migration.