The Role of Information and Communication Technology in the EU Response to the 2015 Refugee Crisis

Abstract

The 2015 refugee crisis – as the mass influx of migrants from the Middle East is commonly dubbed – tested the European Union’s ability to react to large-scale humanitarian emergencies. Apart from various organizational, social and political changes that the 2015 refugee crisis has brought to the European Union, it has also marked the growing role of information and communication technology (ICT) in the EU’s asylum and migration policies. Drawing from the critical perspective of international relations and such concepts as securitization of migration, the paper aims to analyse the engagement of ICT by EU institutions and individual Member States during the refugee crisis in 2015.