MIGRATION AND SECURITIZATION: AN ASSESSMENT IN THE CONTEXT OF HUMAN SECURITY

Abstract

Migration has become a popular subject in many fields such as international relations, political science, sociology, psychology, security studies, labor economics and public administration. As the number of immigrants in the world gradually increases, the saturation of immigrants in the receiving societies and the irregular and illegal dimension of the process comes to the forefront, the issue of migration has reached at the top of the agenda. Individual or mass mobility, seen as a natural process of humanity, has been subjected to politicization and then to securitization, especially in the late and immediately after the Cold War. Migrants, previously encouraged for the development of national economies, have been mentioned with various security problems and have been expressed as threats through discourse. Immigration, which has started to be seen as a process affecting individual, society, state, region and international security areas, has become an area where the state authorities have focused on as an important subject of discussion. While the national security concerns are more involved in the security-migration relationship, it is remarkable that the relationship between migration and individual security is less talked about. The security threats forcing individuals to migration, they face during the route, they confront in receiving countries and the problems expressed by individuals in the receiving communities should be addressed in this context. In this study, first of all, the securitization approach and the process of migration getting into the security field will be examined. Then, the relationship between migration and individual security will be considered within four headings. This study is thought to contribute to the field in terms of systematically dealing with the process of establishing the relationship between migration and security and revealing the ways in which individuals are affected from this process.