Julia Sachseder, Senior Research Fellow, Central European University

After eight years of negotiations among the 27 member states, the European Parliament has enacted a comprehensive reform of the EU’s asylum procedures through the Migration Pact. While the pact has been commended for promoting efficiency and solidarity among member states, critics caution that it may compromise the right to asylum, e.g., by expanding the list of “safe” countries and by externalizing border management. In a case study of the European border and coast guard agency, Frontex, and its central knowledge practice risk analysis, this contribution investigates the discursive construction of external border security. It specifically explores how gender and race serve as sense-making tools in the problematization of migrants and non-European spaces with implications for policy, practice and institutional demands. These include enhanced access to databases, expanded surveillance, increased data gathering, and extended operations into third countries through externalization. It shows how Frontex’s risk analysis co-constructs migrant bodies and spaces as justification for further fortification and simultaneously as a potential for European expansionism into third countries, and as such is central for paving the way for externalization. The article concludes by suggesting that the transformation of external borders from mere fortified lines to zones extending into neighboring countries reveals the profound connection between migration politics, colonial and geopolitical interests, and their implications for human rights and democratic principles.

1. Introduction

After eight years of negotiations with the 27 member states, the European Parliament has decided on a fundamental reform of asylum procedures in the EU[1]. The so-called Migration Pact aims to manage migration flows and enhance border controls to prevent irregular migration and reduce the burden on EU member states. Strategies to do so include the reduction of the number of new arrivals, the acceleration of asylum procedures, and the relocation to the external borders with the overall aim “to establish a new balance between collective responsibility and solidarity”[2]. According to Nicole de Moor, the Belgian State Secretary for Asylum and Migration:

“The asylum and migration pact will ensure a fairer and stronger migration system that makes a concrete difference on the ground. These new rules will make the European asylum system more effective and increase solidarity between member states. The European Union will also continue its close cooperation with third countries to tackle the root causes of irregular migration. Only jointly can we find responses to the global migration challenge.”[3]

Yet, while the pact has been lauded for its efficiency and solidarity between the member states, critiques have already warned that the right to asylum in the EU might be undermined, through e.g., the expansion of countries considered safe, and externalization, i.e., the outsourcing of tasks and responsibilities in border protection and migration management to actors from third countries. Germany is expected to decide on Rwanda-like agreements following the Italy-Albania deal. The Hungarian and Danish EU Presidencies will further prioritize this topic while European leaders, including Ursula von der Leyen and the European Conservatives (EPP), have already articulated their aim to bring migration agreements with Morocco and Lebanon next in line after Tunisia, Mauritania, and Egypt on top of the agenda[4].

This migration pact is not the result of a process isolated from broader political developments but partly reflects and reproduces the current political discourse in Europe that has increasingly framed migrants and migration as significant threats to European values, welfare, and security[5]. The narratives surrounding migration are not neutral but are heavily influenced by gender and race, e.g. relying on stereotypes of male migrants as threats and female migrants as passive individuals in need of protection[6]. They are also linked to the perpetuation of (post-)colonial self-representations of Europe as modern and progressive in contrast to the ‘culturally backward Others’[7]. These narratives are not only instrumentalized for political purposes, seeking to capitalize on fear and insecurity for electoral gains. They are also fostered by security agencies, such as the European border and coast guard agency Frontex, for institutional and economic growth[8]. In both cases, the narratives form the backdrop for problem definitions and solutions, such as joint measures in and with third countries through externalization. As a result, the external borders transform from solely a fortified line into a zone expanding towards neighboring countries. This transformation underscores how deeply intertwined migration politics are with geopolitical interests and their consequences for human rights and democratic principles.

This contribution takes these current developments as an entry point for discussing how the security of external borders is discursively constructed, how gender and race matter in such constructions, and how they make intelligible the potentially harmful bordering practice of externalization. In the following sections, it will first contextualize Frontex’s growing role in EU migration management and explain the relevance of its risk analysis for externalization. Knowledge-based security practices such as risk analysis are a particularly important site for studying the links between migration and externalization because they provide the data, interpretations, and foresight mechanisms upon which policy changes and associated solutions are based[9]. Secondly, the contribution will show how constructions of both migrant bodies and non-European spaces are underpinned by gender and race and serve as a means to give justification to externalization as a solution to the “migration challenges”[10]. With this, the contribution seeks to place the role of Frontex, its risk analysis and their relation to externalization center stage. Addressing and critically reflecting upon the processes that construct migration as a threat and give way to harmful bordering practices is especially important considering the continuum of violence, insecurities and even death at the EU’s external borders. These developments might ultimately undermine the EU’s commitment to international human rights standards and its own foundational principles of dignity and respect for individuals.

2. Frontex and its risk analysis in migration management

Externalization has become an important practice of countries and the EU to outsource their border control and immigration enforcement responsibilities to other countries, often those located outside their own borders[11]. This practice is used to manage and control migration flows, often to prevent migrants and asylum seekers from reaching a country’s own territory[12]. In the EU, it has gained particular relevance since the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015/16 and has since then developed into one of the main political responses and solutions to the perpetual crisis narrative. Numerous scholars have already shown that the recurring invocation of ‘migration crises’ or ‘migration challenges’ is not a self-evident reaction to an objective urgency arising out of changes in the scope and forms of migration[13]. Rather, it is a complex societal process that is consequential and productive[14], as it enables and legitimizes some policies and practices, while foreclosing others.

Constructions of migration as crisis are however not only in the interest of political parties but also driven by security agencies[15]. While media and political discourses are important catalysts of problematizing migration, border security institutions also construct and reproduce notions of ‘migration crises’, with concrete effects on how migration is governed, borders are managed and what the appropriate strategies are to protect the borders. This allows them to gain new competencies, technological tools, increased budgets, and more political influence. Unlike in political discourse, security actors often do not operate publicly but exert their expertise in specialized committees and legislative processes[16]. Especially in European border protection, there is a noticeable increase in externalization, partly due to the lobbying of national security agencies and partly due to European bodies such as the border protection agency Frontex[17].

Frontex, which is responsible for managing the EU’s external borders through the prevention and detection of irregular migration and cross-border crime, monitoring migratory flows, SAR operations, and research and development, utilizes a range of textual and visual material to problematize not only migrants and migration but also the inside and outside of Europe with consequences for where migration is seen as appropriately managed and manageable[18]. Although Frontex is a contentious actor that has faced multiple scandals regarding the involvement in externalizations, illegal pushbacks and other human rights violations as well as mismanagement, fraud, and corruption, its relevance in securing the external border of the Schengen Area has grown immensely since its foundation in 2004.

In a process of continuous expansion, Frontex’s capabilities and responsibilities were significantly widened, particularly in the areas of returns, border checks, enhanced surveillance and data collection and activities in/with third countries. These extensions manifested in two mandate reforms in 2016 and 2019, which solidified the agency’s central role in the implementation of the Integrated Border Management (IBM) strategy. The 2019 reform specifically strengthened its competences in agreements and activities with third countries in the context of increased border externalization, including its surveillance capabilities, trainings and joint operations such as in the Africa  Frontex  Intelligence  Community,  working arrangements (e.g., with Belarus, Morocco, or Turkey), in technical assistance projects  (e.g.,  in  North  Africa),  or  within  the  framework  of  the Global  Approach  to  Migration  and  Mobility[19].

A main way through which Frontex produces the urgency of migration as a potential threat to the EU, and thereby gives legitimacy to externalization is risk analysis. A complex process of data-driven assessment of risks at the external border and the ‘pre-frontier area’, risk analysis defines the rationale and scope of Frontex Joint Operations[20], and serves as the basis for policymaking and resource allocation as well as intervention into member states’ border protection[21]. As a preemptive security practice, risk analysis attempts to foresee and control developments at the border by projecting past data into the future. For this, the agency relies on data produced in the course of operations [22] by technological tools at its disposal for knowledge- and intelligence gathering (e.g. EUROSUR), and provided by member states. A standardized methodology – the Common Integrated Risk Analysis Model (CIRAM) – is used by the Frontex Risk Analysis Network (FRAN), which comprises member states, international organizations and third countries, to gather and interpret this data.

Risk analysis suggests that it is a technical and objective process, but like any form of knowledge production, it is not a neutral assessment of reality but is involved in its construction. With migration being “a particularly non-scientific risk”[23], risk analysis fulfills functions that exceed the ‘objective’ assessment of risks for the purpose of guiding operational practices. It directly influences and defines the justification and scope of Frontex operations in terms of personnel, resources, and practices, which in turn flow back into risk assessments through collected data, “lessons learned” and evaluations of “best practices”. It also plays an important role in policymaking at the EU level and for member states and in resource allocation, for example, within the External Border Fund, the Schengen Governance Package, the impact assessment of EUROSUR, the Schengen Compliance Mechanism, and the Internal Security Fund.

Risk analysis is thus a main way of conveying Frontex’s perspectives on how to view and govern migration to different audiences and represents an interface between internal processes, the EU level, and broader societal debates. As such, risk analysis is not only an important means of communication that represents the agency’s institutional interests within the EU architecture as well as opposite member states and the wider public. With its technocratic, expertise-driven, allegedly depoliticized character[24], it is also a governance tool and vehicle for managing and securing the European borders through externalization.

3. Making externalization intelligible: Gender and race in border security

As a sense-making security practice embedded within societal and political power relations[25], risk analysis makes threats and insecurities intelligible, defines policy problems and solutions, and makes normative claims about the appropriateness of bordering practices. In this meaning-making, gender and race are important categories in both the problematization of migrants and migration, and in the wider construction of (non-)European spaces and territories. These constructions are intensified in attempts to distinguish contemporary migratory movements from the ‘normal’ state of affairs – a narrative that has not only justified continued investment in and the transfer of additional powers to Frontex but that also gives legitimacy to harmful border control and management policies and practices[26]. As such, they constitute the knowledge base of border security and have material consequences for the (in)security of borders through their capacity to construct externalization as a viable and necessary solution[27].

In particular, risk analysis makes migrants knowable and governable through intersectional processes of gendering and racialization. These processes make intelligible dualistic notions such as deserving/undeserving, refugee/migrant, bonafide/irregular through constructions of masculinized and racialized migrants, e.g. the ‘terrorist’ or ‘economic migrant’ imagined to be young and masculine, and through colonial notions of the unknown and deceiving migrant that needs to be known, surveilled, and categorized. These constructions are juxtaposed with the legitimate (business) traveler, imagined as white, and the feminized and racialized refugee portrayed as vulnerable, naïve, and exploitable who needs to be saved and protected by the white, male border guards. Visuals, such as photographs and data visualizations, are a powerful tool with regard to the gendered and racialized problematization of migrants[28]. Photographs for example either invisibilize migrants or depict them as threatening ‘masses’ of black and brown bodies, pictured alongside white, male border guards. Maps hypervisibilize the criminal agency of migrants, depicted as lines and arrows ‘invading’ and ‘overrunning’ Europe, while invisibilizing bordering practices.

These Self/Other subjectivities are co-constituted with and made meaningful against the backdrop of spatial imaginings of un/inhabitable territories that need to be either protected or conquered, surveilled or controlled[29]. These colonial imaginings not only represent far-flung territories as a racialized threat and ‘problem-spaces’, whereby non-EU countries of transit and origin are associated with criminality, terrorism, and ‘economic’ migration. They also create interior zones of safety against outside ‘zones of (embodied) affectability’[30]. In the context of increasing EU border externalization, spatial imaginings have become growingly ‘expansionist’[31]. This trend is away from a ‘defensive’ perspective to the extension of Frontex’s sphere of influence through border externalization as a potential ‘solution’ to migration ‘crises’. This perspective incorporates non-EU territories into Frontex’s remit of border management and is connected to Frontex’s claims for and justifications of an extended reach into third countries, including Turkey[32] and the Balkans[33].

While these regions used to be represented as hosting threats waiting to come to Europe in earlier risk analysis reports, in recent years they have been increasingly framed as victims of “unprecedented numbers of migrants, which overstretched the capacities of the affected countries”[34] and thus became integrated as part of the solution in the context of border externalization. These spatial imaginings for example promoted agreements for cooperation in securing the border and conducting returns, such as the 2016 EU-Turkey agreement, as a main reason for why migration pressure was eased after the 2015 ‘crisis’[35]. In this EU-Turkey Statement, a total of 6 billion euros was paid for the support of Syrian refugees in Turkey, the expansion of Turkish migration management, the establishment of refugee reception centers and returns of irregular migrants from Greece[36]. The Balkans were equally presented as a key site of Frontex activity, including an agreement that initiated the first Joint Operation outside EU territory in Albania in 2019[37].

Thus, risk analysis constructs borders as a zone of both fortification and expansion that not only requires military protection and defense spending but also demands preemptive, outward-looking technologies, knowledges, cooperation with third countries and externalization. In and through externalization, Frontex becomes the ‘pioneer’ venturing beyond EU territory to discover, manage and tame the racialized Other. While IBM, introduced in the 2016 mandate extension and strengthened in the 2019 mandate, already reflects these demands, the new Pact on Migration[38] consolidates Frontex’ central role in border management, even further centralizing its power in providing practical support in the development of border management capacities, ‘optimizing’ ‘voluntary’ returns, and in border checks, cooperation with third countries and externalization.

Taken together, postcolonial imaginings of non-European geographies and Self-Other dualisms provide the grounds for Frontex’s claims to extended competencies not only in engaging with and monitoring third countries but also in externalization as “key element(s) of successful migration management”[39]. Gender and race are pivotal in this process either by explicitly linking migrants’ assumed gender and nationality to criminality, fraud, welfare overstretch, and violence, by implicitly masculinizing and racializing migrants as invasive, undeserving, and exploitative, or by constructing the non-European spaces as both a problem and potential vis-a-vis Europe as a socio-cultural and political-economic space that represents prosperity, welfare, and security.

4. Making the link: gender, race and externalization in Frontex’s risk analysis

This contribution has shown how gender and race as sense-making tools are inscribed into understandings and problematizations of both migrants and spaces and how these were mobilized as a justification and rationale for externalization as a solution to the ‘migration challenge’. The way they constitute EU border security is thus not only a matter of representation but has implications for policy and practice, underpinning specific institutional demands that range from access to databases over widening of surveillance and data gathering activities to an extended reach into third countries through externalization practices. As the meanings of migrants and spaces produced in risk analysis are inscribed into institutional processes, risk analysis is not outside of broader anti-migration sentiments in the EU. Rather, risk analysis co-constructs migrant bodies and spaces as both a problem of fortification and a potential for European expansionism into third countries, and as such is central for externalization.

Yet, externalization risks undermining international law, such as the obligation for sea rescue and the principle of “non-refoulement” – the principle of not returning individuals to countries where they face dangers like torture and persecution, in addition to the devastating conditions in the accommodation and care of refugees in many third countries. Externalization further necessitates collaboration with authoritarian regimes that commit human rights violations within their own countries and are further strengthened through cooperation with the EU, as evidenced by reports of systematic violence against migrants from both externalization zones, including North Africa and the Western Balkans[40]. At the same time, both national governments and EU bodies risk disavowing insecurities and risks which migrants face in their countries of origin, on the move, at the EU borders or in third countries, as well as the broader structural inequalities, postcolonial legacies, the North-South divide, and ongoing crisis of global capitalism and the welfare state that underpin migration.

Taken together, although externalization has been criticized for (re)producing or even perpetuating violence and insecurities and failing to address or even ignoring the root causes of migration, the new Pact on Migration continues to rely on and even fosters externalization[41]. As this reflects a deeply problematic and alarming development on the European level that prioritizes short-term political and institutional gains over long-term and sustainable solutions, the EU urgently needs to rethink and reflect upon its own complicity in and responsibility for security for all.

Footnotes

[1] European Council (2024). The Council adopts the EU’s pact on migration and asylum, retrieved June, 10 2024, from https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2024/05/14/the-council-adopts-the-eu-s-pact-on-migration-and-asylum/

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Hahn, Helen (2024). Die Schwachstellen des EU Migrationspakts. Der Standard. Retrieved, 24.06.2024 from https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000218500/die-schwachstellen-des-eu-migrationspakts

[5] Sachseder J, Stachowitsch S and Binder C (2022) Gender, race, and crisis-driven institutional growth: Discourses of ‘migration crisis’ and the expansion of Frontex. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 48(19): 4670–4693.

[6] Gray H and Franck AK (2019) Refugees as/at risk: The gendered and racialized underpinnings of securitization in British media narratives. Sec

[7] Davies Thom, Arshad Isakjee & Jelena Obradovic-Wochnik (2022): Epistemic Borderwork: Violent Pushbacks, Refugees, and the Politics of Knowledge at the EU Border, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, DOI: 10.1080/24694452

[8] Sachseder J, Stachowitsch S and Binder C (2022) Gender, race, and crisis-driven institutional growth: Discourses of ‘migration crisis’ and the expansion of Frontex. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 48(19): 4670–4693.

[9] Stachowitsch S and Sachseder J (2019) The gendered and racialised politics of risk analysis. The case of Frontex. Critical Studies on Security 7(2):

[10] Achilleos-Sarll, C., Sachseder, J., & Stachowitsch, S. (2023). The (inter)visual politics of border security: Co-constituting gender and race through Frontex’s Risk Analysis. Security Dialogue, 54(4), 374-394. https://doi.org/10.1177/09670106231182314; Sachseder J, Stachowitsch S and Binder C (2022) Gender, race, and crisis-driven institutional growth: Discourses of ‘migration crisis’ and the expansion of Frontex. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 48(19): 4670–4693.; Stachowitsch S and Sachseder J (2019) The gendered and racialised politics of risk analysis. The case of Frontex. Critical Studies on Security 7(2):

[11] Lemberg-Pedersen, Martin. 2015. “Losing the Right to Have Rights.” In Europe and the Americas. Transatlantic Approaches to Human Rights edited by Erik André Andersen and Eva Maria Lassen, 393-417. Leiden: Brill

[12] Hilpert, I. (2022). Fragile Buffer Zones. The Externalization Dynamism in the Field of Border Security and Possible Alternatives. Zeitschrift für Migrationsforschung, 2(1), 165 – 175. https://doi.org/10.48439/zmf.v2i1.158

[13] Jeandesboz, Julien and Polly Pallister-Wilkins. 2016. “Crisis, Routine, Consolidation: The Politics of the Mediterranean Migration Crisis.” Mediterranean; Vaughan-Williams, Nick. 2015. Europe’s Border Crisis. Biopolitical Security and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press

[14] Roitman, Janet. 2013. Anti-Crisis. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.

[15] Leese, M. (2020). Migration und Sicherheit, Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, https://www.bpb.de/themen/migration-integration/kurzdossiers/migration-und-sicherheit/; Sachseder J, Stachowitsch S and Binder C (2022) Gender, race, and crisis-driven institutional growth: Discourses of ‘migration crisis’ and the expansion of Frontex. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 48(19): 4670–4693.

[16] Leese, M. (2020). Migration und Sicherheit, Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, https://www.bpb.de/themen/migration-integration/kurzdossiers/migration-und-sicherheit/

[17] Sachseder J, Stachowitsch S and Binder C (2022) Gender, race, and crisis-driven institutional growth: Discourses of ‘migration crisis’ and the expansion of Frontex. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 48(19): 4670–4693.

[18] Sachseder J, Stachowitsch S and Binder C (2022) Gender, race, and crisis-driven institutional growth: Discourses of ‘migration crisis’ and the expansion of Frontex. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 48(19): 4670–4693.; Achilleos-Sarll, C., Sachseder, J., & Stachowitsch, S. (2023). The (inter)visual politics of border security: Co-constituting gender and race through Frontex’s Risk Analysis. Security Dialogue, 54(4), 374-394. https://doi.org/10.1177/09670106231182314

[19] Hilpert, I. (2022). Fragile Buffer Zones. The Externalization Dynamism in the Field of Border Security and Possible Alternatives. Zeitschrift für Migrationsforschung, 2(1), 165 – 175. https://doi.org/10.48439/zmf.v2i1.158

[20] Gundhus, Helene O.I. 2018. “Negotiating Risks and Threats. Securing the Border through the Lens of Intelligence.” In Moral Issues in Intelligence-Led Policing, edited by Nicholas R. Fyfe, Helene O.I. Gundhus, and Kira Vrist Rønn, 221–45. London: Routledge.; Horii, Satoko. 2016. “The Effect of Frontex’s Risk Analysis on the European Border Controls.”  European Politics and Society 17 (2): 242–58.; Peers, Steve, Elspeth Guild; And Jonathan Tomkin. 2012. EU Immigration and Asylum Law, Volume 1: Visas and Border Controls. Text and Commentary. 2nd ed. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.; Paul, Regine. 2017. “Harmonisation by Risk Analysis? Frontex and the Risk-Based Governance of European Border Control” Journal of European Integration 39 (6): 689–706.

[21] Fjørtoft, Trym N. 2021. “​​More power, more control: The legitimizing role of expertise in Frontex after the refugee crisis.” Regulation and Governance Online First: 1-15.

[22] Frontex. 2012. Common Integrated Risk Analysis Model. A Comprehensive Update. Warsaw: Frontex.

[23] Paul, Regine. 2017. “Harmonisation by Risk Analysis? Frontex and the Risk-Based Governance of European Border Control” Journal of European Integration 39 (6): 689–706.

[24] Fjørtoft, Trym N. 2021. “​​More power, more control: The legitimizing role of expertise in Frontex after the refugee crisis.” Regulation and Governance Online First: 1-15.

[25] Stachowitsch S and Sachseder J (2019) The gendered and racialised politics of risk analysis. The case of Frontex. Critical Studies on Security 7(2): 107–123

[26] Sachseder J, Stachowitsch S and Binder C (2022) Gender, race, and crisis-driven institutional growth: Discourses of ‘migration crisis’ and the expansion of Frontex. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 48(19): 4670–4693.

[27] Achilleos-Sarll, C., Sachseder, J., & Stachowitsch, S. (2023). The (inter)visual politics of border security: Co-constituting gender and race through Frontex’s Risk Analysis. Security Dialogue, 54(4), 374-394. https://doi.org/10.1177/09670106231182314

[28] Achilleos-Sarll, C., Sachseder, J., & Stachowitsch, S. (2023). The (inter)visual politics of border security: Co-constituting gender and race through Frontex’s Risk Analysis. Security Dialogue, 54(4), 374-394. https://doi.org/10.1177/09670106231182314

[29] Wynter S (2003) Unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom: Towards the human, after man, its overrepresentation – an argument. CR: The New Centennial Review 3(3): 257–337.

[30] Wynter S (2003) Unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom: Towards the human, after man, its overrepresentation – an argument. CR: The New Centennial Review 3(3): 257–337.

[31] Achilleos-Sarll, C., Sachseder, J., & Stachowitsch, S. (2023). The (inter)visual politics of border security: Co-constituting gender and race through Frontex’s Risk Analysis. Security Dialogue, 54(4), 374-394. https://doi.org/10.1177/09670106231182314

[32] Frontex (2012) Annual Risk Analysis 2012. Available at: https://frontex.europa.eu/assets/Publications/Risk_

Analysis/Annual_Risk_Analysis_2012.pdf (accessed 15 May 2023).

Frontex (2013) Annual Risk Analysis 2013. Available at: https://frontex.europa.eu/assets/Publications/Risk_

[33] Frontex (2011) Annual Risk Analysis 2011. Available at: https://frontex.europa.eu/assets/Publications/Risk_

Analysis/Annual_Risk_Analysis_2011.pdf (accessed 15 May 2023).

Frontex (2012) Annual Risk Analysis 2012. Available at: https://frontex.europa.eu/assets/Publications/Risk_

[34] Frontex (2016) Annual Risk Analysis 2016. Available at: https://frontex.europa.eu/assets/Publications/Risk_

[35] Frontex (2017) Annual Risk Analysis 2017. Available at: https://frontex.europa.eu/assets/Publications/Risk_

[36] Hilpert, I. (2022). Fragile Buffer Zones. The Externalization Dynamism in the Field of Border Security and Possible Alternatives. Zeitschrift für Migrationsforschung, 2(1), 165 – 175. https://doi.org/10.48439/zmf.v2i1.158

[37] Frontex (2019) Annual Risk Analysis 2019. Available at: https://frontex.europa.eu/assets/Publications/Risk_

[38] European Council (2024). The Council adopts the EU’s pact on migration and asylum, retrieved June, 10 2024, from https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2024/05/14/the-council-adopts-the-eu-s-pact-on-migration-and-asylum/

[39] Frontex (2018) Annual Risk Analysis 2018. Available at: https://frontex.europa.eu/assets/Publications/Risk_

[40] Stachowitsch, S. (2018). EU-Außengrenzen: Die schmutzige Arbeit machen die Anderen. Der Standard, retrieved 15.06.2024 from https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000090845829/eu-aussengrenzen-die-schmutzige-arbeit-machen-die-anderen.

[41] Hahn, Helen (2024). Die Schwachstellen des EU Migrationspakts. Der Standard. Retrieved, 24.06.2024 from https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000218500/die-schwachstellen-des-eu-migrationspakts