ABSTRACT
A number of scholars have evidenced the domination of securitization policies with regard to irregular migration in Europe (Huysmans 2006). These policies have resulted in the de-politicization of the management of irregular migration and the exclusion of undocumented residents from the political community. At the same time, recourse to the issue of migration in elections has clearly contributed to its politicization in national contexts. Securitization, in other words, wards off alternative ways to frame or respond to migration (Wæver 1995). Understood here as the construction of unauthorized migration as a threat to the state and democratic society, securitization is the process by which the otherness of undocumented immigrants is constructed and their political existence denied. Within a framework of security, undocumented immigrants cannot be conceived as political beings; they cannot be part of, or participate in, the political community.
