The crisis discourse’s blind spot: EU-level politicization and the endogenization of the migration crisis

ABSTRACT The strong state-centric orientation of the EU crisis discourse has produced an important blind spot that limits our understanding of the Migration Crisis. Conceptually engaging with international migration studies and the politicization/identity nexus that postfunctionalism has put on the map in EU studies, this contribution advances original empirical evidence to visibilize the ongoing intra-EUropean struggle over the meaning of the crisis and the identity relationships underlying it. As the findings show, the externalizations the dominant crisis narrative promotes on the order dimension (vis-à-vis the EU) are clearly challenged by the European Commission as a politicizing agent: Along the EUropean identity markers ‘responsibility‘ and ‘solidarity‘, it has endogenized the Migration Crisis, located difference in the Member State-collective and consistently pursued integrative steps and the development of competencies. Taking into account this ‘crisis resolution‘ counter-narrative allows to enhance our understanding of the Migration Crisis and of the permanent contestedness of European (dis)integration.