The Securitization of Migration: Strategies, Processes and Consequences for Migrant and Refugee Survivors of Gender-Based Violence

In a turbulent world where migration and forced migration are constantly on the rise, governments and states are increasingly developing discourses that frame their national security as control over their borders and “irregular” migrants and asylum seekers as threatening their sovereignty. Such discourses around the world lead to states adopting policies and practices, such as detention, deportation, externalization of borders, “shrinking” of external borders for migration purposes, readmission agreements, off-shore processing, push-backs, limited protection (“suspension in a constant state of arrival”) and even outright “refoulement” in order to manage migration, especially the kind that is “irregular”. Together these policies and practices illustrate an increasing trend, the “securitization of migration”. As states are constrained by international obligations to respect human rights and international law, state policies and practices may pay token attention, while bypassing, circumventing or setting them aside. Our theoretical framework is a contextual global approach to the problem of securitized migration that results in distinct forms of violence with gender and intersectional consequences in national contexts. A contextual global approach recognizes the global prevalence of phenomena and processes but also emphasizes the need to examine specific historical, spatial, economic, social, political, and cultural contexts and their impacts (Abraham 2018, Abraham and Vasil, 2025). We invite papers in this open session that examine the strategies, policies and practices, that governments deploy in their efforts to ensure “national security” and the forms of gender-based and intersectional violence they result into, particularly for migrant and refugee survivors and their families.