The political ‘migration crisis’ and the military-humanitarian response

‘We need more than a humanitarian response […] We need political leadership and action,’ Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said on 8 March 2016. Referring to the fact that ‘Europe is now seeing record numbers of refugees, and migrants, arriving on its shores’, Grandi stressed that ‘this emergency does not have to be a crisis, it can be managed’. Grandi, who was speaking to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, did not mention to what extent, in recent years, the militarisation of migration and border controls has been explicitly bound with notions of humanitarianism. Nevertheless, I guess he is aware that the current focus on both the humanitarian and security-related aspects of the phenomenon suggests a more complex logic of threat and benevolence that allows for a security-humanitarian response.