Forced Migration Security Challenge in the Visegrád Countries

Abstract

After the opening of the Western Balkan migration route and the sudden increase of asylum applications at the Eastern frontier of the Schengen zone, forced migration is considered to be a significant challenge in the Visegrád countries. The analysis of the political discourse in the four countries highlighted the extraordinary measures taken recently. Besides the national measures, regional cooperation became more and more important, suggested by the dozens of V4 joint statements, non-papers and joint letters adopted since 2015. Securitization of forced migration and creating a regional security complex around this topic is not necessarily an irreversible process, but depends on the domestic political climate in the countries of concern. Critical security studies (the Copenhagen and the Paris School) give different explanations of state behaviour in terms of forced migration as a security challenge. Excellent academic work has been done in the field of Western European migration policies, but the Visegrád migration and asylum policy is still an uncharted territory. Although both theoretical concepts have their limits, they proved to be useful in order to understand the political shift of the V4 countries.