Migration Power Europe: Diplomacy, Crises and Power Struggles at the EU Periphery

Abstract This article introduces the conceptual framework of migration power Europe to dissect the multiple forms of power at play in how the European Union (EU) and its member states navigate migration diplomacy, through and beyond the apparent display of ‘Fortress Europe’. Through two cases of ‘crisis’ which bring to light power struggles at the EU periphery – the 2020 Greek–Turkish and 2021 Spanish–Moroccan border crises – the study develops a model comprising four dimensions of European migration power: compulsory, institutional, structural and productive. The cases illustrate the EU's use of compulsory migration power, as seen in its two member states' militarised responses to and violent containment of the influxes of migrants, backed by the rapid deployment of Frontex in Greek waters, as well as in the wielding of EU political conditionality through financial assistance reduction threats. Institutional migration power is evident through the EU's reliance on pre‐existing bilateral agreements, such as the 2016 EU–Turkey Statement, and coordinated intra‐EU institutional responses that facilitated swift support for Greece and Spain. The EU's structural migration power is reflected in the material dependencies created through pre‐existing financial and capacity‐building arrangements, where Turkey and Morocco's roles as gatekeepers could be leveraged for political gains, and in the way the EU's aid reinforced Greece's and Spain's capacities to restore border security. Finally, productive power emerges through competing narratives over migration weaponisation: Greece and the EU framed the 2020 crisis as an external threat to European security, whilst Morocco's actions in 2021 were condemned as a breach of fundamental international norms. Migration power Europe provides a holistic framework for bridging the ‘normative power Europe’ and ‘Fortress Europe’ perspectives and for asking how European power relates to vulnerability and to responsibility.