Securitization, humanitarianism, and the religious dimension of European migration policy

Učakar, Tjaša (author)

This article critically examines the evolution of EU migration policy discourse from 1989 to 2024, highlighting the shift from overt securitization to a more humanitarian and managerial framing, which still retains some securitization elements. By analyzing key policy documents, including the Hague and Stockholm Programmes, the Global Approach to Migration and Mobility (GAMM), and the 2024 Pact on Migration and Asylum, this paper demonstrates how migration has been increasingly framed as a technical and economic issue while still maintaining exclusionary logics. Although humanitarian language has softened, policy goals remain focused on containment, selective inclusion, and externalizing responsibility. The second part of the article explores the religious aspect of EU migration policy, arguing that, despite the formal secularism of EU institutions, religious identity, particularly Islam, is implicitly intertwined with discourses of risk, cultural incompatibility, and integration. Drawing on Peter Berger’s theory of pluralism, the paper highlights a fundamental tension between the EU’s normative claims to diversity and its implicit preference for secular Christian frameworks. The analysis examines pathways for integrating religious consultation into EU governance and its potential to address the persistent marginalization of religion as a factor in inclusion and political agency. By linking migration discourse to the often-overlooked role of religion, this article calls for a more coherent, pluralist-informed EU strategy for migration and integration.

• Language: English
• Keywords: European Union, migration policy, securitization, humanitarianism, religious pluralism, European identity, exclusion
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FF - Faculty of Arts
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Publication date: 16.09.2025
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: Str. 1-15
• Numbering: Vol. 16, iss. 9, 1190
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-173876
• UDC: [32:314.15]:061.1EU
• ISSN on article: 2077-1444
• DOI: 10.3390/rel16091190
• COBISS.SI-ID: 250263043
• Publication date in RUL: 24.09.2025

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Religions
• Shortened title: Religions
• Publisher: MDPI AG
• ISSN: 2077-1444
• COBISS.SI-ID: 520261657

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
• Description: A creative commons license that bans commercial use, but the users don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: Evropska unija, migracijska politika, varnost, humanitarizem, verski pluralizem, evropska identiteta, izključevanje

Projects

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: P6-0194-2019
• Name: Problemi avtonomije in identitet v času globalizacije