Locked together: co-dependent securitisation and the migration – security nexus in Greece

This article reconceptualises the Greek migration–security nexus as a form of co-dependent securitisation. Drawing on psychological work on co-dependence and enmeshment, it examines how selected political and security actors have, since the early 1990s, recurrently constructed migrants as a chronic, manageable threat through which to assert authority and justify institutional roles and resources. Empirically, the article combines critical policy discourse analysis of 28 purposively selected texts with interpretive process tracing to examine four key episodes: post-socialist inflows and early regularisation, austerity and intensified migration control, hotspots and the EU–Turkey Statement and the Evros stand-off, Covid-19 governance and the emergence of Closed Controlled Access Centres. Across these episodes, the analysis identifies four recurring dimensions, namely asymmetrical mutual dependence, blurred boundaries between care and control, chronic crisis talk and stratified over-responsibilisation, that inform an interpretation of the migration–security nexus as co-dependent. The article thus offers a theoretically informed interpretation of both the resilience of securitisation and the recurrent limits of desecuritisation in Greece, and demonstrates how concepts from psychology can be operationalised in International Relations without reducing politics to individual pathology. It concludes by outlining what loosening co-dependent securitisation would require for more democratic, rights-respecting forms of migration governance.