The framing of migration as a hybrid military threat. Insights from the Ceuta’s 2021 ‘crisis’

Abstract This article focuses on the empirical case of the large crossing of Ceuta’s borders in mid-May 2021. This crossing is fully inscribed in the continuum of ‘migration crises’ and ‘border spectacles’ but deserves unique analytical attention because of its characteristics—its size, timeframe, and strong connection with international and geopolitical issues—and consequences. Our hypothesis is that political and media narratives surrounding this ‘crisis’ have served as a cornerstone for a new twist in the spiral of securitization and militarization of migration issues, related to NATO’s recognition of the ‘instrumentalisation’ of undocumented border crossings as a ‘hybrid military threat’ and leading to the EU Crisis and force majeure regulation. This article covers a 2-fold analytical vacuum: (1) examining a previously unexplored empirical case; and (2) deploying an innovative methodology through analysing both textual and visual narratives. At the intersection of media studies, political sociology, international relations, and critical security studies, this article shows how media textual and visual narratives during the 2021 Ceuta crisis were key to reframing migrants both as ‘victims’ and ‘weapons’: victims of the Moroccan government, which would turn them into weapons against the Spanish government. This allowed to reconcile the moralization and threat frames that were in opposition to one another in the debates around the 2015 refugee reception crisis. It is precisely this narrative shift that enacted the transformation of migration crossings at the external borders of Spain and Europe into a military hybrid threat.