Speaker
Description
Border securitisation, externalisation, and the criminalisation of humanitarian assistance in migration contexts have become increasingly prominent features of European migration governance. This paper explores the phenomenon of the criminalisation of solidarity through a comparative overview of these practices in France, Italy, Greece, and Spain, alongside the liminal case of Serbia as a non-EU transit country along the Balkan route. While in EU migration hotspots, the criminalisation of solidarity is predominantly institutionalised through legal and judicial frameworks, the Serbian case demonstrates how humanitarian assistance can be constrained through informal and extralegal governance practices, producing effects comparable to formal criminalisation. By examining the impact of these practices on non-state actors, primarily humanitarian NGOs, the paper highlights how policies of border securitisation and the criminalisation of humanitarian aid not only target irregular migration, but actively restructure the space for humanitarian action. It argues that such policies not only have severe consequences for migrants and humanitarian actors, but also reshape understandings of the rule of law, human rights, and human dignity. Drawing on the concept of vernacular humanitarianism, solidarity is conceptualised as an established, non-institutionalised practice that increasingly becomes an object of security governance. This perspective allows for an overview of how everyday practices of care and assistance are transformed into sites of political contestation, where moral obligation collides with legal restriction and security rationalities. Placed in the context of broader political and cultural transformations of migration governance, the paper explores whether these practices undermine solidarity-based forms of action and contribute to shifting collective values in contemporary Europe. Finally, it examines how the suppression of humanitarian work reconfigures cultural narratives of care, responsibility, and ethics within increasingly securitised migration regimes.
Key words: securitisation, border policy, migration, criminalisation, solidarity
| If you are submitting an Open Panel proposal, have you included all four abstracts in attachment? | No, I am submitting a Closed Panel abstract |
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| Would you like to be considered for travel funding through the NetSec COST Action? | Yes |
| Are you a member of the NetSec Management Committee? | No |
| What discipline or branch of humanities or social sciences do you identify yourself with? | Social Policy; Social Work; Political Science |
| Which of the following best describes your stage of the career? | PhD Candidate |
| In which country is your home institution? | Serbia |
| What is your gender? | Female |