Prof Kaunert and Dr Joana de Deus Pereira have been awarded a prestigious Marie Curie Fellowship for two years, starting from November 2018. Marie Curie Grants, as part of the prestigious H2020 research funding programme of the European Union, are very competitive, as only 10-12% of applications are successful. Each award is worth ca. € 200,000. Prof Kaunert and Dr Joana de Deus Pereira will investigate the role of the security industry as a shaper of European migration policy. Looking back over the last 20 years of EU migration management policy, the growth and development of a security industry within a hybrid space has become more and more palpable, whereby European and non-European security forces operate alongside NGOs, humanitarian groups and international organizations, and whereby private security companies play a key role supplying technology, military equipment, hardware and intelligence services. In parallel, the European Agenda for Migration is reflecting more and more the blurring of the lines between internal and external security, with policy outputs echoing the weight of the security industry.
This project seeks to understand the increasing role of private security companies and the weight of the security industry in the way EU migration management policy is shaped and produced. Later advances, not only in security field in general, but also in the migration field, in particular, illustrate that the market for security is continuously flourishing and a demand market is fed by evolving migration flows. In order to understand the level of influence of private security actors in the design of EU migration policy making, we will use process-tracing methodology to observe the changing pathways of migration policy process and understand when and why this changed has occurred. Therefore, this project seeks to answer: