The evolution of EUropean border governance through crisis: Frontex and the interplay of protracted and acute crisis narratives

Abstract

Crisis narratives are widespread in migration and border governance globally, including in EUrope. In response, a body of scholarship that critically scrutinizes crisis narratives and imaginaries has emerged. Building on and further extending this scholarship, this article questions the dichotomy between ‘normality’ and ‘crisis’ in border governance. Focusing on four moments in which crises were declared in relation to migration and EUropean borders and their immediate aftermath, we examine how the European Union border agency Frontex framed these events through an analysis of its press releases, annual reports, and practices. In so doing, we argue that narratives pertaining to border practices beyond moments of ‘crisis’ invoke fears of uncontrolled mass migration of unruly ‘others’ as an ever-present possibility and perpetual threat to EUrope. Within this article, we propose a differentiation between protracted and acute crisis narratives. Focusing on the political work that these two narratives do in relation to EUropean border governance, we demonstrate that the interplay between these crises narratives has contributed to Frontex’s evolution and expansion over the last two decades while further consolidating the externalization and fortification of EUropean borders.

Introduction

Invocations of ‘crises’ ¹ have come to shape political and public debates on governing European Union (EU) borders over the last two decades. In response, a body of scholarship that critically scrutinizes narratives and imaginaries of ‘migration or refugee crises’ has emerged and developed, not least in response to continuous invocations of such imaginaries and narratives in policy discourses and the media (Sachseder et al., 2022; Squire et al., 2021; Stierl, 2020). This scholarship has shown that political actors might deliberately mobilize crisis narratives to create supposed moments of exception that allow for expansions of power and authority (Cuttitta, 2014; Mountz and Hiemstra, 2014). Conjuring up migration crises allows states and other actors to “expand their powers and enhance and reconfigure enforcement regimes” (Mountz, 2020: xix). Hence, moments of purported crisis lend themselves to critical analysis.

Focusing on four moments in which crises were declared in relation to EUropean ² borders and their immediate aftermath, this article questions the dichotomy between ‘normality’ and ‘crisis’ in border governance. Indeed, we argue that even banal and routine border practices in EUrope are underpinned by notions of what we define as protracted crisis: even routine practices rely on fears of uncontrolled mass migration of unruly ‘others’ as an ever-present possibility and perpetual threat to EUrope. Analyzing Frontex’s framings of events taking place at EUrope’s borders, we argue that while protracted crisis narratives coexist with narratives invoking acute crises, there is a qualitative difference between the constantly looming threat of being overwhelmed by racialized ‘others’ and a fully grown ‘migration crisis’. This article examines the interplay of protracted and acute crises narratives and shows how both have contributed to Frontex’s expansion and further consolidated the externalization of EUropean borders.

Our article first assesses existing literature on both Frontex and crisis in the context of EUropean border governance, within the interrelated fields of Political Geography, Critical Border and Security Studies, as well as legal and EU Studies. We then highlight three key interventions by Frontex in ‘migration crises’ at EUrope’s external borders between 2006 and 2011 before examining the crisis of 2015, when over one million people crossed EUrope’s external borders. In assessing these four situations, we focus on the role that Frontex has played in shaping crisis narratives through their operational responses and public rhetoric. Building on these empirical examples, we make the case that Frontex has evolved through crisis. We follow these observations with conceptual reflections on the evolution of border governance through crisis, arguing that the interplay between protracted and acute crisis narratives has been crucial in enabling Frontex to continuously evolve. Finally, we consider the implications of both protracted and acute crisis narratives for imaginaries of EUropean border governance more generally.

Frontex’s protracted and acute crisis narratives

Since its formation, Frontex has been studied by scholars across a diversity of fields, including EU and organizational studies (Perkowski, 2019; Pollack and Slominski, 2009), legal studies (Fink, 2018; Moreno-Lax, 2018; Mungianu, 2016), and the related fields of Critical Border and Security Studies as well as Political Geography (Kasparek, 2021; Mountz, 2020; Neal, 2009; Pallister-Wilkins, 2015; Perkowski, 2018, 2021; Vradis, et al., 2020). Seeking “to promote a ‘pan-European model of integrated border security’” (Vaughan-Williams, 2009: 24), the agency has become a prime example for examining forms of border security beyond the sovereign nation-state. Although communalizing border security has never been a smooth process, Frontex has come to be regarded as “a catalyst for the Europeanization of border controls” (Stachowitsch and Sachseder, 2019: 109). With its mandate to ensure “integrated border management” of EUrope’s external borders, Frontex has engaged in selective and diffuse forms of “borderwork” (Rumford, 2006: 164) through varied activities, including border checks and surveillance, the creation of risk analyses, the investigation of cross-border crime, as well as its cooperation with both EU Member States and third countries.

Despite the importance of its activities and evolution in its own right, Frontex needs to be understood as part of a wider political system of EUropean border governance. In particular, Frontex’s foundation served “as a way for the Commission and the Member States to effectively shift the blame for the loss of life and human suffering” (Rijpma, 2012: 92). Its institutional setup emerged as a compromise between diverse interests among different Member States and the European Commission (Neal, 2009). The agency has been described as semi-independent, as it is largely autonomous but also partially controlled by Member States’ representatives (Paul, 2017): Frontex’s management board is composed of representatives of each Schengen Member State as well as the Commission. Its budgetary authorities are the European Parliament and the Council. As such, the agency has exemplified more general transformations in the governance of contemporary borders, where a myriad of actors is involved in the ‘doing’ of borders and the managing of (migration) risks both within and beyond the nominal space of EUrope.

Indeed, Frontex’s dispersed border enforcement activities have signified Balibar’s (2002: 84) assertion that borders are no longer “at the border” but materialize, instead, “wherever selective controls are to be found”. Critical Border Studies scholars and Political Geographers have sought to trace EUrope’s selective controls, noting how proliferating EUropean borders have become increasingly deterritorialized, offshored, and externalized (Bialasiewicz, 2012). Political Geography scholarship has explicitly focused on these extra-territorial operations of the agency (Borg, 2014; Johnson, 2017; Reid-Henry, 2013). Frontex, symbolizing these processes unlike any other EU actor, has come to be regarded as “a European border performance that complicates the traditional geopolitical imaginary of the EU” (Peoples and Vaughan-Williams, 2015: 179), not least by engaging in a range of operations seemingly distant to EUrope, such as along the West African coast. As Cuttitta (2022: 15) argues, the operations of Frontex and individual EU states’ militaries, in collaboration with countries such as Libya, have resulted in the space of the Mediterranean Sea becoming “one of intensified externalization” (see also Cobarrubias, 2020). This process of externalization has relied on a logic of deterrence, making strategic use of a dangerous and deadly environment – the Mediterranean – in seeking to discourage migrants from attempting border crossings (see de Léon, 2015).

In addition to the externalization of EUropean borders, Frontex has also been closely bound up with the securitization of migration (Léonard, 2010). Léonard and Kaunert (2020) have argued that following 2015, Frontex moved towards an end-point in a continuum of security that is characterized by a focus on existential threats, militarization, and survival. As such, they argue (2020: 11) that the agency has contributed to a “spiralling of the securitization of migration in the EU”. Others have been more cautious regarding Frontex’s role in securitization processes. Neal (2009: 353) warns against focusing primarily on the “spectacular dialectic of norm/exception” regarding Frontex, arguing instead for examining “an ongoing process of incremental normalization.” Other scholars have focused their analysis not on securitization per se but on Frontex’s relationship to crisis narratives. Jeandesboz and Pallister-Wilkins (2014: 121) contrast what they frame as Frontex’s more managerial logic with the crisis labelling conducted by professionals of politics, arguing that “[t]he managerial outlook of the EU border agency not only co-exists with the spectacular politics unfolding through crisis labelling; it has rather regularly been at odds with it.” On the other hand, Sachseder et al. (2022: 13) show that Frontex’s risk analyses centrally rely on gendered and racialized crisis narratives. In our article, we seek to extend existing analyses by arguing that Frontex has fostered what we call ‘acute’ and ‘protracted’ crisis narratives, moving beyond binaries of ‘norm’ and ‘exception’ or ‘crisis’ and ‘normality’.

According to Lindley (2014: 2), the concept of crisis, which conventionally denotes “an exceptional turn of events”, “demands our attention, communicating a sense of danger and urgency.” In our article, we follow Dines et al. (2018: 441), who suggest conceiving of crisis as “a powerful narrative device”. Rather than ‘objectively’ describing exceptional events unfolding in the world, such a narrative device “produces a set of meanings that structure knowledge of social phenomena and, crucially, shape policy decisions, governance structures but also our own approach as academics to studying the world” (Dines et al., 2018: 441), invoking a crisis thus does something. Deploying crisis narratives can be viewed as a vehicle for securing political consent. Drawing on Edelman (1977: 44), Jeandesboz and Pallister-Wilkins (2014: 124) suggest that crisis labelling presents

three claims: (1) that the particular event or sequence thus labelled ‘is different from the political and social issues we routinely confront’; (2) that it ‘came about for reasons outside the control of political … leaders’; and (3) that it ‘requires sacrifices in order to surmount it’.

The constant framing of “migration as crisis”, in particular in relation to unauthorized forms of human movement toward regions in the ‘global north’, highlights, for Lindley (2014: 1, original emphasis), “a powerful contemporary resonance” between migration and crisis, which has even become a “routine association”. Indeed, crisis narratives in relation to migration have become such regular phenomena in EUrope over the past two decades that a state of crisis seems increasingly indistinguishable from a state of ‘non-crisis’. As such, Roitman (2014: 16) refers to the protractedness of crisis:

the term ‘crisis’ no longer clearly signifies a singular moment of decisive judgment; we now presume that crisis is a condition, a state of affairs, an experiential category. Today, crisis is posited as a protracted and potentially persistent state of ailment and demise.

While the supposed dichotomies between crisis and non-crisis, crisis and routine, or crisis and normality have become eroded, so that speaking of states of routine becoming disrupted by moments of crisis appears nonsensical, it is nonetheless conceptually worthwhile to distinguish between what we refer to as acute and protracted crisis narratives that underwrite the borderwork of Frontex specifically and EUropean forms of migration and border governance more generally.

Distinguishing narratives invoking moments of acute crisis from those producing periods of protracted crisis enables us to identify the different dynamics that these narratives create. As Mountz (2020: xix) highlights: “Migration crises persist because crisis does political work.” Importantly, though, protracted crisis narratives and acute crisis narratives do different kinds of political work. While narratives invoking moments of acute crisis produce urgency, demanding speed of decision-making as well as emergency interventions, those characterizing protracted crisis insist on constant vigilance, surveillance, and preparedness. In relation to migration governance, both rely on a representation of racialized ‘others’ as a threat to EUrope. Whereas protracted crisis narratives invoke the need to keep this threat at bay through constant monitoring, patrolling, and anticipating future developments, acute crisis narratives create openings for urgent interventions and emergency measures. The latter create windows of opportunity for rapid political change or reinforce previous norms and practices that characterized an ongoing state of protracted crisis. Invoking the need to act urgently, they often draw on what is well known and established, i.e. on pre-existing measures and modes of governance (see Jeandesboz and Pallister-Wilkins, 2016).

Even against a background of protracted crisis narratives, political and organizational actors continue to selectively frame some events as acute crises that need to be urgently responded to. The two modes of crisis thus coexist and interrelate: when migration is constructed as a protracted crisis, this forecloses alternative ways of understanding and imagining migration. Against this backdrop, increases in arrivals are readily understood as an urgent and acute crisis, a breach of the defenses against threatening others. Meanwhile, the designation of acute crises lends credibility to the constant threat of being or becoming overwhelmed also in ‘normal’ times, thus giving renewed strength to protracted crisis narratives. Importantly, both forms of crisis narratives construct migrants as “invasive, undeserving, and exploitative vis-a-vis Europe as a socio-cultural and political-economic space that represents prosperity, welfare, and security,” and are based on a “postcolonial-racial hierarchisation of non-European geographies” (Sachseder et al., 2022: 13).

Frontex actively contributes to protracted and acute crisis narratives. An analysis of its press releases, risk analyses, and annual reports reveals that the agency frames migration as protracted crisis by constantly (re-)producing an image of uncontrolled mass migration as an ever-present possibility and potential threat to EUrope as a space of security and welfare. Indeed, Frontex’s narratives – even when taking place beyond moments of acute crisis – are rooted in deep-seated fears of a EUrope besieged by masses of racialized others. Similar crisis narratives also underpin other ‘routine’ activities by the agency such as vulnerability assessments, which Frontex conducts to identify ‘weaknesses’ in Member States’ border controls. While Frontex narrates migration as protracted crisis by continuously invoking migration as an ever-present threat to EUrope, it uses terms such as ‘exceptional’, ‘urgent’, or ‘crisis’ only at particular historical conjunctures. Indeed, the agency’s vulnerability assessments are framed as serving “the purpose of preventing crisis at the EU external borders” (Frontex, 2022, our emphasis).

Already in 2007, the then Frontex Executive Director Laitinen regarded the prevention of crisis as Frontex’s main task. In a press release entitled “Frontex – Facts and Myths”, Laitinen sought to clarify “some misunderstanding in the European press on the role of Frontex”, particularly with regard to the creation of the Rapid Border Intervention Teams (RABITs), which would be “a very good instrument for providing support for a limited period of time in exceptional and urgent situations” but not meant “to provide long-term assistance” (Frontex, 2007a, original emphases). He continued:

The raison d’être of Frontex are not emergency operations but the consistent introduction of well planned regular patrols by Member States, in order to limit urgent missions and to integrate the management of borders in all its dimensions defined by the Member States. Doctors say that the best intensive care unit cannot replace prophylaxis; I would say that it applies also to borders.

The use of the notion of prophylaxis, which commonly refers to treatment given to prevent disease and/or to prevent it from spreading, is particularly revealing in this context. Laitinen appears to regard the agency’s function to serve Member States in developing border ‘management’ systems that would lessen the likelihood of the outbreak of emergency situations in the first place. Response mechanisms such as the RABITs, for Laitinen, should be reserved for exceptional moments, whereas the main task of the agency would be to avert crisis situations from occurring. Though willing to engage in ‘acute’ crisis situations if need be, Frontex’s key role would be that of advising Member States in how to prepare and how to be vigilant, given the ever-present possibility of a significant breach of EUropean borders.

The notion of prophylaxis speaks to a specific sense of crisis. Prophylaxis is key in preventing a protracted state of crisis from turning into an acute one. Kasparek (2021: 220) has noted how this metaphor by Laitinen points to a conception of migration in terms of a disease that cannot be fully eradicated but kept at bay and at a certain acceptable level through a rationality of precaution. Thus, besides revealing colonial tropes around racialized others as potential carriers of disease, or even as disease, Laitinen highlights the different senses of crisis that Frontex seeks to respond to. This difference between invoking migration as an ever-present threat, thus producing a sense of protracted crisis, and invoking an acute migration crisis or emergency, matters. As argued above, both modes of crisis narratives produce different kinds of political work, unleashing different political dynamics. While feeding into and building on each other, analyzing them as distinct – yet interrelated – narrative devices enables more nuanced analyses of contemporary dynamics in EUropean border governance.

From crisis to crisis: three Frontex operations at EUrope’s external borders

In this section, we offer snapshots of three Frontex operations, beginning with the so-called ‘Canaries crisis’ off the West African coast in the mid-2000s, followed by the first deployment of Frontex’s RABITs in Greece in 2010, and the launch of Operations Hermes in the central Mediterranean in 2011. Our analysis focuses on these three moments, as they were deemed acute crises which reverberated on a EUropean level at the time, widely framed as emergencies requiring urgent intervention. This section is centrally based on an analysis of Frontex’s press releases and annual reports, which is complemented with media reports, other Frontex publications, and analyses by NGOs for contextualization where appropriate. While press releases give insights into how Frontex constructed acute or protracted crises as they occurred, annual reports provide a review of the previous year and thus allow for a more elaborate construction of narratives. Analyzing both types of text enables us to trace the interplay of acute and protracted crisis narratives in Frontex’s framing of events at EUropean borders, and to analyze the agency’s role in perpetuating different imaginaries of crisis over time.

The ‘Canaries crisis’ and Operation Hera (2006)

Migrant arrivals to the Canary Islands increased significantly in the early-mid 2000s. Leaving Gambia, Senegal, Mauritania, the Western Sahara, or Morocco on precarious wooden boats – commonly referred to as cayucos and pateras – an annual average of 7300 migrants reached the Spanish archipelago between 2001 and 2005, rising to over 30,000 in 2006 (Frenzen, 2016). While the overall death toll remains unclear, some estimates speak of the disappearance and/or capsizing of one-in-three boats leaving the West African coast during the year of peak arrivals (Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de Andalucía, 2007). The increase in migrant crossings and deaths at sea prompted the Spanish government to portray migrant arrivals as an unprecedented crisis, requiring not only a Spanish, but also a collective EUropean response (Vaughan-Williams, 2009). In October 2006, the Spanish government called for a crisis meeting at an EU summit. A spokesperson noted at the time: “We are the southern frontier of Europe […]. Anyone who enters our country enters the EU” (Fuchs, 2006). The European Commission (2006) agreed, referring to “the flow of illegal migrants trying to make their way into Spain as a truly European problem.”

The then newly established Frontex agency, as Carrera (2007: 13) notes, “was presented as the solution to the constructed spectacle which was qualified as ‘a European problem’.” The creation of a narrative invoking a moment of acute crisis was thus pivotal for the first deployment of Frontex personnel to the EUropean external border. Requested to assist by Spain in May 2006, Frontex launched its first ‘Joint Operation’ – Hera I – two months later. According to Frontex (2006), Hera I consisted of the “deployment of three subsequent groups of experts from France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom in the Canary Islands”, whereas Hera II, commencing in August 2006, consisted of the deployment of a range of maritime and aerial assets in order to patrol “the coastal areas of Senegal, Mauritania, Cape Verde and the Canary Islands.” Aiming “to detect vessels setting off towards the Canary Islands and to divert them back to their point of departure thus reducing the number of lives lost at sea”, Frontex (2006) hailed the dual Hera operations a success, preventing the crossing of over 3500 migrants in 2006 and decreasing arrivals significantly over the following years.

Over a decade later, Operation Hera continues to be upheld as an exemplary response to a migration crisis. Hera I and II were swiftly followed by Hera III and then further successor operations. Even as arrival numbers had dropped and what had been framed as a moment of acute crisis had passed, successor operations continued to patrol along the West-African coast during the summer months (Frontex, 2017a). Frontex’s repeated deployment of Hera operations in the region was praised by EUropean politicians. In 2017, the former French interior minister Gérard Collomb referred to the Spanish–EUropean handling of the Canaries crisis in collaboration with countries of departure as a good example that should inform responses to ongoing migration crises (ElDiario.es, 2017). Though framed as “a migration control success story”, Frenzen (2016: 294) considers Hera’s “success” to be based upon “the violation of migrant rights, including the violation of the non-refoulement obligation and the right to leave a country.” For Vaughan-Williams (2009: 28), Hera epitomized the “offshoring” of EUropean borders, where “Frontex increasingly polices the EU’s borders by taking its bordering practices directly to the populations it deems to pose the greatest threat.”

Operation Hera set a precedent for joint EUropean border security practices and the externalization of border enforcement to third countries. Meanwhile, it also turned Frontex into the much sought-after institutional response of EUrope to framings of both acute and protracted crises declared in relation to migrant arrivals. Indeed, Frontex’s intervention in response to what was framed as an acute crisis turned into a long-term practice furthering a protracted crisis narrative. By continuing to routinely deploy joint operations in the region also beyond what had been labelled as an acute crisis, Frontex created a sense of protracted crisis, implying that migratory movements continued to constitute a potential threat and needed to be held in check through the yearly renewal of operation Hera. Translating the acute crisis narrative of 2006 into a protracted crisis narrative, moreover, shaped how subsequent increases in migratory arrival numbers were to be understood. In fostering a sense that Spain might be overwhelmed by a mass of racialized ‘others’, for example when Leggeri suggested in 2018 that Spain would be his “greatest worry” in terms of migration (Deutsche Welle, 2018), Frontex decreased space for alternative interpretations of increased migrant arrivals.

The ‘Aegean crisis’ and Frontex’s RABITs (2010)

Following calls by Member States for Frontex to take urgent and rapid action and thus to strengthen its role in moments of acute crisis, the European Commission (2007) and European Parliament amended Frontex’s regulation in 2007 to allow the development of RABITs. A Frontex press kit on the RABIT mechanism notes that “(t)he basic idea of Rapid Border Intervention Teams was to create such a mechanism that could allow, in case of urgent and exceptional migratory pressure, rapid deployment of border guards on a European level” (Frontex, 2010a). The RABITs were comprised of a pool of 500 to 600 agents drawn from across 26 Member States, and deployment would occur following a request from a Member State, although the final decision rested with the Executive Director of Frontex. RABITs were intended to provide short-term assistance for up to three months at a time and were thus specifically designed to intervene in moments of acute crisis.

During the second half of 2010, Greek authorities reported a substantial rise in migration crossings along its land border with Turkey. In October 2010, prior to the first RABIT operation, roughly 7500 unauthorized border crossings were detected at the Greek–Turkish land border, while for the entire year of 2010 a total of nearly 48,000 persons were detected (Frontex, 2012: 9). Believing this to be a situation of “urgent and exceptional migratory pressure,” Greece made an official request to Frontex for the deployment of a RABIT mission on 24 October 2010. Within four days, Frontex responded to the request, and on 2 November 2010, the first ever deployment of RABITs was sent to the border between Greece and Turkey. As Borg (2014: 570) noted, this was “the first time in the EU’s history that an EU force was deployed to patrol a Member state’s land borders.” In its coverage of the new operation, Frontex (2011d: 15) largely followed Greece’s framing of an acute crisis, speaking of a “drastic increase in migratory pressure” and arguing that the situation at the Greek–Turkish border had to be brought “under control” (Frontex, 2010b). Despite a slight decrease in detections across all EUropean borders, the use of this language created the impression of a threatening trend that needed to be urgently stopped.

Initially planned to remain until February 2011, the mission was extended until 3 March 2011, exceeding the stated three-month maximum duration of a RABIT deployment. Frontex (2012), in its General Report for 2011, listed the deployment under a section titled ‘Success Stories’, highlighting a reported 76% reduction in irregular migration in the Evros region by the close of the operation. Although the RABIT mission was presented as a short-term intervention, it was announced in February 2011 that it would be succeeded by a permanent joint operation, again encompassing the Greek–Turkish border, as well as the Bulgarian–Turkish border: on 4 March 2011, Joint Operation Poseidon Land began. While the RABIT mechanism can only be implemented on a short-term basis, in response to a situation of ‘urgent and exceptional migratory pressure’, joint operations are classified as permanent operations by Frontex. Frontex, however, was clear in stating that there would be little distinction between the two missions, only that the proceeding Joint Operation Poseidon would be of a longer duration.

While Frontex’s first RABIT intervention was thus framed by the border agency and Greece as an urgent response to a moment of acute crisis, it was replaced with a nearly identical long-term operation that institutionalized ‘exceptional’ practices as the new ‘norm’ of border governance in the region over the following years, instilling a sense of protracted crisis even after migratory arrivals decreased. Though seeking to reinforce ‘border prophylaxis’ in the Aegean, Frontex’s presence could not prevent a dramatic increase in crossings to Greece in 2015, when over 856,000 people reached the Greek islands by boat, leading to an proliferation of acute crisis narratives, which we return to discuss.

The ‘Mediterranean Crisis’ and Operation Hermes (2011)

The spring of 2011 saw an increase in migration to EUrope as a result of uprisings in Tunisia and Libya. Over a million people fled fighting and violence in Libya, most of them seeking refuge in Tunisia and Egypt. Albeit small in comparison to the displacement taking place in North Africa, Italy and Malta saw an increase in boat arrivals. In the first half of 2011, 48,000 people arrived in Italy from North Africa, while Malta received about 1500 individuals. As arrival numbers in Italy increased in early 2011, Frontex (2011c) issued a statement on 14 February, highlighting the “sudden migratory situation in Lampedusa” and announcing that operational responses were being prepared. Italy’s request for assistance followed a day later. As a response to the highly visible construction of a moment of acute crisis, Frontex brought the deployment of Joint Operation Hermes forward. Originally planned to commence in July, Hermes was launched on 20 February 2011 . The operation was led by Italy and aimed at “detecting and preventing illegitimate border crossings to the Pelagic Islands, Sicily and the Italian mainland” (Frontex, 2011b).

Reporting on the events of 2011 in subsequent annual reports, Frontex (2012: 21) referred to them as a “migratory crisis situation”, as “massive and disproportionate migration flows” (Frontex, 2012: 49), and as a “migration crisis” which “demanded a reinforced operational response package” (Frontex, 2013: 51). This framing corresponded with a wider narrative of an acute crisis at the time (European Commission, 2011a) that Frontex pro-actively promoted and that successfully translated political upheavals in North Africa as a migration crisis for EUrope. Operation Hermes, which had originally been envisaged as an activity against an always lingering, protracted crisis, thus turned into an acute crisis response. In March 2011, Hermes’ operational area was widened, and the operation was extended (Frontex, 2011a). Operation Hermes continued to shape governance practices also beyond this moment of acute crisis.

Once again, the interplay of protracted and acute crisis narratives is noteworthy in this context: First launched in 2007, before an acute crisis in the Central Mediterranean was declared, Hermes was regularly relaunched in 2012, 2013 and 2014, when it was replaced by Joint Operation Triton, deployed in the same operational area. Signaling a need to patrol and act against sea crossings of potentially threatening ‘others’, the agency prefigured framings of increased migratory arrivals in 2011 as acute crisis requiring an urgent intervention. This narrative subsequently gave credence to the need to continue to routinely deploy operations in the Central Mediterranean, as the acute crisis had passed and a state of protracted crisis was reinstated.

‘The’ crisis of 2015 and the development of a European Border Guard

On 13 April 2015, a boat carrying about 550 people capsized in the central Mediterranean Sea, leaving over 400 people dead. Only five days later, the largest shipwreck in the recent history of the Mediterranean Sea occurred, when a migrant boat trying to escape from Libya rammed into a merchant vessel and sank. While estimates of the death count differ, survivors speak of over 1000 fatalities (Leroyer, 2019). Considered by many a consequence of “the EU’s policy of non-assistance” (Forensic Oceanography, 2016), the head of the UNHCR (2015), António Guterres, called on EU Member States and institutions “to restore a robust rescue-at-sea operation and establish credible legal avenues to reach Europe. Otherwise people seeking safety will continue to perish at sea”. In the aftermath of the April shipwrecks, the European Commission (2015a) spoke of an emerging “crisis situation in the Mediterranean” when outlining the ‘ten-point action plan on migration’, marking the first time that the Commission invoked a crisis narrative in relation to 2015. In response, the budget of Frontex for joint maritime operations (Triton and Poseidon) was tripled (European Commission, 2015d). By the end of 2015, 3771 migrant deaths in the Mediterranean were officially recorded, though by all accounts this was an underestimate of the actual death toll (UNHCR, 2021).

While shipwrecks and migrant fatalities featured as elements of acute crisis narratives, the mass movements of people were at the heart of such narratives. Indeed, the crossing of EUrope’s maritime borders by over one million people in 2015 has come to signify acute crisis itself. In view of significant migrant arrivals on the Greek islands in the Aegean Sea and further movements toward northern EUrope along the Balkans, the European Commission (2015c) spoke in September 2015 of “a crisis of unprecedented magnitude”, indeed of “the largest refugee crisis since the end of World War II”. Throughout 2015, Frontex utilized and amplified narratives of the ‘migratory and refugee crisis’, reporting a “surge” and a “wave of migrants” in May 2015 (Frontex, 2015d), speaking of an “exceptional migratory and refugee situation facing the European Union” (Frontex, 2015b) over the summer and an “emergency situation for Europe” (Frontex, 2015e) by August. The “massive migratory pressure” in 2015 (Frontex, 2015a), prompted a “critical migratory situation” (Frontex, 2015c), for which Frontex, as Deputy Director Arias Fernandez criticized, had not received sufficient support from EU Member States.

Reflecting on the crisis of 2015, Frontex’s General Report (2016: 6) suggested that it was “the most challenging time the Agency has experienced since its creation.” Arguing that “[t]he EU had to work last year in crisis mode at political and operational level” as “throughout the summer-months scenes of chaos from the border areas spoke of a situation that seemed to be out of control”, Frontex faced “a real stress test” and “acted as crisis response mechanism” (Frontex, 2016: 6–10). The agency’s framing of 2015 as an acute crisis did not occur in isolation but resonated with wider media and political narratives at the time. As arguably the most influential authority in analyzing and responding to migratory trends in EUrope, however, Frontex’s active framing of unfolding events as an acute crisis carried significant weight.

Narrating events in 2015 as an acute crisis not only led to a sharp increase of Frontex’s funds for maritime operations, but also to “a massive increase of guest officers on the ground” in 2015 (Frontex, 2016: 6). The agency’s overall budget grew from €97.9 million in 2014 to €143.3 million in 2015 and €238.7 million in 2016. This acute crisis also created an opening for further institutional growth: In December 2015, the European Commission (2015b) published a new proposal on reforming Frontex, re-awakening the idea of an EU border guard corps that it had previously considered in 2002. While this suggestion was expected to be hugely contested by observers at the time, the proposal was deliberated and passed by the Parliament and the Council in less than a year. In their analysis of the legislative process, Niemann and Speyer (2018) highlight that the political context offered a window of opportunity for the Commission: Member States were eager to show that they were making progress on EU border governance at a time when EUrope was widely perceived as being overwhelmed by increasing numbers of arrivals. In October 2016, the new regulation entered into force, renaming Frontex as the European Border and Coast Guard and granting it a range of new competences and unprecedented independence from Member States.

Following the peak of the migration crisis of 2015, Frontex transformed its acute crisis narrative into a protracted crisis narrative over the following years, using migration crisis as a central trope in explaining its work. The border agency referred to 2015 as a situation of unprecedented scale that, in order to be avoided in the future, required a strengthening of Frontex’s budget and mandate. In doing so, Frontex instilled a sense of heightened vigilance long after the crisis had ended (see Perkowski, 2021). In 2019, Leggeri noted that “(t)his is the third consecutive year in which the numbers of arrivals have been falling” so that there would be “no burning crisis” any longer at EUrope’s external borders (EUobserver, 2019). Nonetheless, he stressed that “(o)ur external borders will be tested very likely in 2019 again”. In view of this ever-present possibility of an acute crisis, Leggeri considered Frontex’s increased budget and resources as “necessary steps in order to prepare the agency in its role today and possible reinforcement tomorrow” (EUobserver, 2019). Importantly, the spatialization of crisis played a key role in enabling this transition from acute to protracted crisis: “shifting the geographical focus onto regions or ‘routes’ where migration numbers remain high, despite an overall decline” enabled Frontex to uphold “a notion of perpetual crisis” after the acute crisis ended (Sachseder et al., 2022: 13).

In September 2018, less than two years after Frontex’s transformation into the European Border and Coast Guard, the Commission (2018) launched a new proposal to establish a 10,000-officer strong ‘standing corps’ by 2020. The ambitious timeframe and the suggestion to equip the standing corps with executive power led to significant concern among Member States. Arguably, the sense of ongoing, protracted crisis contributed to their willingness to compromise: an agreement was reached by Spring 2019, and the new regulation entered into force in December 2019 (European Parliament and Council, 2019). In addition to establishing a standing corps, the regulation also grants Frontex a greater role in relation to returns and increased opportunities to cooperate with non-EU countries. It constitutes the fourth change to Frontex’s mandate since the agency was established in 2004.

Evolution through crisis

As we have demonstrated through our analysis, acute and protracted crisis narratives are widespread in relation to Frontex and EU border governance more broadly. Producing crisis narratives in relation to migration has become a regular practice in EUrope over the past two decades. Examining four key moments portrayed as acute crises between 2006 and 2016, we have shown that Frontex actively participates in crisis narratives and profits from them. In this section, we analyze the effects that both acute and protracted crisis narratives have had in shaping border governance, arguing that Frontex has evolved and grown considerably because of different modes of crisis invocations. Importantly, we do not seek to establish whether or not particular events should be classified as crises, but instead focus on how invocations of acute and protracted crises have enabled particular policy developments and practices, while foreclosing others.

While crisis narratives and responses have received considerable scholarly attention over recent years, the relationship between acute and protracted crisis requires further unpacking. Importantly, and despite the visibility of purported moments of acute crises, migration governance is shaped by both protracted and acute modes of crisis, which are closely interrelated and entangled. Crisis narratives are not absent from forms of migration governance that are commonly viewed as routine or business-as-usual modes of governance. Rather, they are deeply embedded in EUropean narratives of migration. Frontex is one of the key actors fueling both acute and protracted crisis narratives, and has grown and evolved through such narratives. As we have shown, measures that are reinforced or newly introduced as responses to acute crises are often prolonged in the wake of such moments, becoming part of the new ‘normal’ and instilling a sense of protracted crisis by invoking the need to be constantly on guard, vigilant, and prepared for renewed moments of ‘acute’ crisis. As such, narratives of acute and protracted crisis cannot be understood in isolation; they are mutually constitutive. Importantly, they are also spatialized in particular ways: While EUrope is presented in these narratives as a space of order and stability, EUropean space is constantly threatened by invasions from what are framed as chaotic, unruly ‘problem-spaces’ (Chamlian, 2016). This spatialization of crisis locates the origin of crisis outside of EUrope. It simultaneously legitimizes surveilling, monitoring, and patrolling of the pre-frontier area, fueling policies, and practices of externalization (Sachseder et al., 2022).

The ‘Canaries crisis’ of 2006 showed how the newly founded border agency established itself as the EUropean response to migrant crossings, in many ways epitomizing both the offshoring and the EUropeanizing of border governance. Reacting to increased crossings to the Canaries, Frontex experimented with novel border security practices off the West African coast that would serve as precedent for future responses to acute crises. Meanwhile, many of the activities introduced in response to this purportedly acute crisis were prolonged and expanded once the supposed crisis was over, meaning that the momentum created in this ‘exceptional’ moment was harnessed and continued into a period of protracted crisis.

Operation Hera constituted the agency’s first joint operation at sea, marking the beginning of many others to follow. Sea operations have remained one of the most visible and criticized Frontex practices and are central to its ongoing activities. In addition, Operation Hera closely relied on the cooperation of third states: Mauritanian and Senegalese officers were present on Frontex vessels and deemed ‘responsible’ for the return of those intercepted to the two countries’ coasts (Frontex, 2006). The cooperation with third states became central in responding to future moments of acute crises, while gradually becoming an integral part of Frontex’s ‘routine’ activities as well. In line with the agency’s framing of EUrope’s pre-frontier spaces as both the origin of and the solution to crisis, cooperation efforts today range from training activities and the deployment of liaison officers, to the carrying out of joint operations outside of EUropean territory, possibly soon including Senegal.

Frontex’s first RABIT operation further institutionalized the border agency as the rapid response mechanism to migrant ‘emergencies’ and thereby shaped its role and perception as EUrope’s border specialists (Borg, 2014). Moreover, the immediate succession of the Aegean RABIT mission by the more permanent Joint Operation Poseidon indicates the swift transitions that can occur between moments of acute crisis and periods of protracted crisis. Indeed, the ability to prolong measures that were introduced initially in response to acute crisis relies on a framing of migration as always threatening to get out of control, invoking a perpetual need to remain vigilant, prepared, and ready to intervene if necessary. It is this framing that is central to portraying migration governance as perpetually in crisis and erodes any differentiation between ‘crisis’ and ‘normality’.

The Mediterranean migration crisis of 2011 and especially the crisis of 2015 have cemented the role of Frontex as the concerted EUropean response to acute crises that no individual EU Member State could handle independently. In 2011, Frontex proactively positioned itself as a crisis response mechanism, issuing press releases that emphasized its readiness to respond to increased mobility before an official request by Italy to the agency had been made. Indeed, Frontex took an active role in framing increased arrivals as an acute crisis, while simultaneously positioning itself as the solution at hand. This positioning had palpable effects: The European Commission (2011b) announced in April 2011 that it was planning to reinforce Frontex’s budget with an additional €30 million, while Schengen Associated Countries added a further €1.8 million, constituting a post-hoc increase of 27.3% to the agency’s 2011 budget (Frontex, 2012). Demonstrating the swift transition between protracted and acute crises, Operation Hermes was regularly deployed before the acute crisis of 2011 and was also re-deployed on a yearly basis after the acute crisis had passed, until its replacement by Operation Triton.

When more than 1000 people died in shipwrecks in April 2015, prompting the Commission to speak of a migratory crisis situation, it was once again Frontex that received a significant financial boost. Despite the absence of an operational focus on search and rescue, Frontex was perceived as the crisis mechanism at hand. This understanding of Frontex as solution to acute crises also shaped institutional responses to large-scale arrivals in 2015 . Indeed, Frontex was at the heart of EUropean efforts to respond to the crisis of 2015, with the agency not only conducting its usual joint operations in Greece and Italy, but also being one of the key actors inside the newly founded ‘hotspots’ (Pallister-Wilkins, 2020; Vradis et al., 2020), as well as carrying out returns from Greece to Turkey after the EU–Turkey deal came into effect in March 2016.

The interplay of acute and protracted crisis narratives also had implications for Frontex’s budgetary growth beyond moments of acute crisis. Indeed, sea border operations constituted between 28% and 49% of Frontex’s budget between 2006 and 2016, when this information stopped being published in its annual reports. The repeated renewal of joint operations Hera and Hermes beyond moments of acute crisis thus contributed to the agency’s financial growth: Its budget for sea border operations alone increased from €9 million in 2006 to €108 million in 2016, contributing to a sharp increase of the agency’s overall resources and staff (Frontex, 2007b , 2017b).

As discussed earlier, Frontex was reimagined and strengthened in response to both acute and protracted crisis narratives. While Frontex’s transformation into the European Border and Coast Guard in 2016 took place at record speed against the backdrop of an acute crisis, its 2018 reform was justified with the need to prepare for and avert the constantly looming threat of a repetition of events unfolding in 2015 and 2016. Indeed, the Commission suggested in 2017 that “(r)eturning to a pre-crisis mode of isolated, uncoordinated, national action is not an option and would betray years’ worth of collective work to better the collective European response to managing migration” (Rankin, 2017). Two years later, the Commission (2019) stated that “we have made more progress in the space of 4 years than was possible in the 20 years preceding them.” This progress was enabled by the interplay of acute crisis and protracted crisis narratives. Despite detecting no acute crisis in early 2019, Frontex continued to invoke the always present threat of EUrope being overrun by racialized others and shifted the geographical focus of its coverage to areas with relatively high arrivals, implying that the ‘burning crisis’ could re-ignite at any moment. References to 2015 kept windows of opportunity open for institutional growth, retaining momentum in Frontex’s transformative process.

Examining these transformations of the agency over time allows not only the ability to identify new policy interventions taking hold in response to purported crises, but also to critically question the ideological work that crises do in (re)defining “the very frameworks through which we understand migrants and mobility” (Williams, 2017: 272). In particular, both acute and protracted crisis narratives play on the danger allegedly posed by an unruly, threatening ‘other’. They reinforce the assumption that “violence at borders is inevitable to contain the threat of an invasive violence from the other side” (Brambilla and Jones, 2020: 295). This framing disregards the socio-political, historical, geographical and economic conditions that produce increased migrant mobilities in the first place, and relies on associations of migrants with terrorists, criminals, or otherwise dangerous ‘others’. As Brambilla and Jones (2020) highlight, it is in fact crisis narratives themselves that enable violence: the routinization of crisis narratives in border governance has been accompanied with a routinization of violence to manage such purported moments of exception.

Meanwhile, crisis narratives have constructed migration as a thoroughly EUropean ‘problem’ in need of a EUropean solution. Frontex, Kasparek (2010: 127) has argued, “represents the discovery of the European Union’s common external border as a space the EU is in dire want of gaining sovereignty over”. Crisis narratives over the last two decades have consistently relied on and further reinforced an imaginary of Frontex as the EUropean response mechanism to address both protracted and acute crises, rendering the spaces of crises EUropean. As we have shown, this has strengthened the agency and contributed to its rapid increase in powers and resources. Importantly, it has also affected how purported moments of acute crises were imagined. As Frontex was the crisis response mechanism available, the solutions to these crises were already sketched out through the agency’s practices and priorities: a greater focus on ‘border prophylaxis’ through intelligence gathering, intensified patrols, increased returns, and closer cooperation with third countries. The crisis to be responded to in such terms emerges inevitably as a security crisis for Member States. Alternative visions or understandings of events were not compatible with an understanding of Frontex as the solution at hand and would have required a far-reaching reimagination of EUropean engagement in spaces of crises.

Conclusion

As this article has shown, EUropean border governance has been shaped by an interplay of protracted and acute crisis narratives. This interplay has consolidated the externalization and securitization of EUropean borders, as practices and imaginaries invoked in times of acute crisis have come to shape periods of protracted crisis and narrowed space for alternative understandings of migrant arrivals and their periodic increases. Frontex has been one of the key actors using acute and protracted crisis narratives. Since its first intervention along the West African coast in 2006, the agency has fueled and institutionally profited from the incessant depiction of migration movements toward EUrope as crisis-inducing phenomena. The four empirical cases we have outlined demonstrate the ways in which Frontex has positioned itself as the central crisis response mechanism in EUrope.

That Frontex would come to inhabit this key role in the EUropean security architecture was not foreseeable when the agency was first founded. Its growth over the past two decades was the result of political processes in which the invocation of migration as crisis was key. Frontex was part and parcel in this process, constantly producing acute and protracted crisis narratives. In this way, and not least in view of continuous disunity among EU Member States on how to deal with the contentious issue of migration, Frontex has been able to prosper in terms of budget, mandate, and personnel. Establishing itself as the EUropean response to migration, Frontex has provided a readily usable template for the European Commission to present quick solutions to purported moments of crisis. This has had a two-fold effect: Not only has it allowed the agency to grow and expand in response to a diversity of purported crises, but it has also shaped understandings of the different crises at hand. As Frontex constituted the available solution, the problem was easily defined in line with the agency’s mandate and priorities: securing EUrope from external threats, racialized ‘others’ always seeking to breach EUrope’s borders.

Importantly, though, Frontex’s growth through crisis has not occurred without resistance. In addition to migrants defying the agency’s practices daily, with over 2.3 million people crossing maritime borders in arriving in EUrope over the past decade, a broad coalition of activists, journalists, scholars, and NGOs have critically scrutinized the agency’s practices since its inception. As a result of such investigations, executive director Fabrice Leggeri was forced to resign in April 2021. Most recently, a report by the European Anti-Fraud Office OLAF has been leaked, detailing Frontex’s collusion with human rights violations in Greece and elsewhere under Leggeri’s leadership (EUobserver, 2021). While crisis narratives indeed do political work, they are not unopposed – political struggles over narratives and imaginaries of migration, EUropean borders, and Frontex’s role persist.