From Common Pact to National Paths : A study on National Crisis Framing and the Implementation of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum.

This thesis studies how national governments use crisis framing to shape their national implementation in light of the current national implementation phase of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum. Employing Bacchi’s (2009) WPR approach, this thesis comparatively examines the underlying assumptions and effects of problem representation in the discourse surrounding national implementations of the Netherlands, Poland and Spain. By drawing on crisis framing theory and securitisation theory, the thesis explores how these problem representations reflect a crisis framing and how they affect the national implementation of the Pact. In conclusion, I find that while all three governments invoke crisis narratives, they strategically utilise this to pursue different implementation strategies. These strategies impact the national implementation and cohesion of solidarity among member states, as well as EU integration. Moreover, even on the background of a binding legal framework, discursively constructed crisis framings shape diverging national compliance trajectories that can either reinforce or weaken solidarity and affect the overall direction of European integration.