Download case study (PDF document)

How does the security imperative impact on free movement of people? How do liberal democracies negotiate the relationship between freedom of movement and security? How do they structure the paradoxical nature of security policies that risk undermining what they claim to protect?

Dr Jef Huysmans, a senior lecturer in government and politics, is exploring these issues in a research project called MIDAS – Migration, Democracy and Security.

The two-year study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, examines how, in the context of 9-11, this paradoxical relation between security and liberal democracy has been negotiated. In particular it focuses on whether and how political processes have turned migration and asylum into a security concern and what effects this securitisation of migration and asylum has had on liberal democracy.

The project examines the securitization – the legitimization of exceptional measures in the name of security – of free movement of people through a comparative study of Germany and Britain.

“Our case studies are the debates and policy-making processes in Britain and Germany in relation to migration and asylum,” says Dr Huysmans, from the OU’s Faculty of Social Sciences. “Although both countries are EU states and similar in many respects, the policy debate following 9/11 has shown different forms of securitisation. Why?”

Dr Huysmans, who works on this research with Professor Thomas Diez from the University of Birmingham, said the project would contribute to migration and refuges studies by emphasizing that the securitisation of free movement was “not just an outcome of politics, but a process that constrains and possibly also reshapes the nature of democratic politics.”

“Our findings will allow us to assess critically how policies on the regulation of free movement have been framed and developed since 9/11, to what extent they have undermined civil liberties, and which policy alternatives are available.”