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Introducing the EC Hotspot Approach: A Framing Analysis of EU’s Most Authoritative Crisis Policy Response
Author(s) -
Bousiou Alexandra,
Papada Evie
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
international migration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.681
H-Index - 64
eISSN - 1468-2435
pISSN - 0020-7985
DOI - 10.1111/imig.12689
Subject(s) - framing (construction) , refugee crisis , crisis management , hotspot (geology) , commission , political science , european commission , refugee , sociology , political economy , law and economics , economics , law , european union , economic policy , history , archaeology , geophysics , geology
Out of the policy initiatives that emerged in the aftermath of the “Refugee Crisis”, none is more elusive that the hotspot approach. Our aim in this article is to shed light upon what kind of policy output the hotspot approach entails, by conducting a framing analysis of key European Commission (EC) documents. We draw on discursive institutionalist approaches which focus on the policy process. Within the policy process, we focus particularly on identifying policy frames as organizing principles and key ideas, in order to trace the representation of the problem and solutions to it. Our findings show how the hotspot approach, in incarnating both the problem and the solution to migration as primarily a concern for management, represents another string in the long‐standing tensions of the harmonisation of the EU asylum and migration policies.