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- Convenors:
-
Agnieszka Radziwinowiczówna
(University of Warsaw)
ioana vrabiescu (VU Amsterdam)
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- Formats:
- Panel
Short Abstract
This panel explores how hybrid wars and open military conflicts legitimise immigration enforcement, asking how conflict logics and affects are mobilised to justify border violence, deportations, and the mobility governance.
Long Abstract
The Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine and its ongoing hybrid warfare against neighbouring states have reconfigured European regimes of mobility and control. Since 2021, “Russia-inspired” crossings on the EU’s eastern borders have been construed as hostile acts, allowing states to invoke security rationalities to suspend asylum rights and expand enforcement infrastructures. War here exceeds its military domain, operating as a discursive and affective technology of legitimacy through which deportations, pushbacks, and the criminalisation of solidarity become thinkable and permissible.
These dynamics extend beyond wartime emergencies, transforming everyday mobility in border regions long shaped by cross-border work, trade, and kinship. This happens, as border crossings with Belarus and Russia close in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland. Paradoxically, even the open military conflict does not impede deportations to insecure countries, as Ukrainians remain among the most deported nationalities in Poland.
While scholarship often treats warfare as producing displacement that leads to protection, this panel asks how war itself authorises immigration control. How are the idioms, affects, and infrastructures of warfare mobilised to legitimise enforcement? How does the invocation of conflict recast the moral and legal boundaries of refuge, deportation, and belonging?
In line with the EASA 2026 theme, this panel explores how the invocation of war reinforces political and moral polarisation between citizens and foreigners as well as documented and illegalised migrants. The panel aims to advance debates in the anthropology of mobility, political anthropology, and border studies by exploring how warfare operates as a framework of justification within contemporary migration regimes.
Accepted papers
Session 1Paper short abstract
This presentation examines how the political construction of instrumentalisation of migration as a hybrid threat not only justifies border closures but entails a shift towards pre-emptive policies, undermining the rule of law and reinforcing authoritarian trends in migration governance.
Paper long abstract
Following the EU–Belarus border crisis since 2021, migration has been increasingly reframed as a hostile act orchestrated by foreign states to undermine national sovereignty and social cohesion. Likewise, Finland closed its border with Russia at the end of 2023 after arrival of 1,300 asylum seekers based on alleged instrumentalisation of migration without further evidence. Based on ongoing research on transformations of border and asylum policies in Finland and the EU, this presentation discusses new framing of migration and its wider implications for migration governance. The instrumentalisation of migration framework established in EU policies intertwines with broader military discussions on hybrid threats, reflecting the changed geopolitical environment. Rather than merely evolving the securitisation of migration characteristic of EU policies for decades, the instrumentalisation of migration implies a transformation of migration governance towards pre-emptive policies. While low-probability, high-impact scenarios justify exceptional measures targeting future possibilities in the present, pre-emptive policies involve a performative logic that brings emergent threats into being irrespective of their actual occurrence. Unlike risks immanent to irregular migration and its organization in the securtisation framework, the instrumentalisation discourse implies exogenous threats attributed to unspecified political purposes of hostile foreign states beyond actual cross-border movements. By affiliating migration with forms of warfare, these new framings entail the militarisation of migration that justify drastic responses and restructuring of border and asylum regimes. In addition to extending authoritarian logics of migration governance, the instrumentalization of hybrid threats supports the wider militarisation of society and the erosion of the rule of law.
Paper short abstract
There is a rapidly progressing intertwining of migration management and militarisation at the EU’s Eastern border, which we call “militarigration”. Given current developments, especially in Poland, we aim to present this concept and outline how it differs from securitisation.
Paper long abstract
The Eastern border of the European Union has emerged as a critical site of both migration management and regional security. Following a series of geopolitical crises—including the Belarusian instrumentalisation of migration in 2021 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022—EU member states bordering Russia and Belarus have implemented a range of measures to assert control over migration flows while reinforcing national and regional collective security. All of the above led to the rapidly progressing intertwining of migration management and militarisation at the EU’s Eastern border, which we call “militarigration”. The term refers to the deployment of military forces, armed personnel, and militarised infrastructure to regulate migration flows, effectively merging border security and defence objectives. It encompasses both material measures—such as fences, barriers, and checkpoints—and operational strategies, including surveillance, Frontex deployments, and military patrolling. The concept highlights how the militarisation of border controls transforms migration governance into a security-oriented, state-centric practice, in which the management of human mobility is inseparable from responding to existential threats to the nation. We argue that militarigration is the next step in the long-time observed securitisation of both migration and people on the move. The paper aims to present the concept of militarigration and how it differs from securitisation. The example will be the EU Eastern Border with a special focus on Poland.
Paper short abstract
This paper examines how Ukraine regulates migration and mobility within an emergency governance framework shaped by the full-scale Russian invasion. Ukraine operates under a protracted state of exception, with mobility and migration regulations becoming central mechanisms of wartime governmentality
Paper long abstract
This paper examines how Ukraine regulates migration and human mobility within an emergency governance framework shaped by the full-scale Russian invasion. Since February 2022, Ukraine has operated under a protracted state of exception, with mobility and migration regulations becoming one of the central mechanisms in the practice of wartime governmentality. The article employs qualitative literature review and document analysis, combined with an abductive research approach inspired by Schmitt’s and Agamben’s theories of the state of exception, as well as by practice-oriented approaches to emergency governance (Honig 2009; Adey 2016; Dean 2014) linking these frameworks with empirical case of Ukraine. The paper takes into consideration major measures in the form of martial law declaration, freedom-of-movement restrictions, and state-led evacuation policies. It also demonstrates how mobility of Ukrainians is dependent upon policies of those of the neighbouring countries, including specific mobility regimes created by the EU.
The analysis argues that Ukraine’s approach cannot be reduced to a simple model of suspension of law. Rather, it is a form of pragmatic emergency governance that fuses strong assertions of sovereignty and decentralized implementation by local authorities, civil society, and volunteer networks. This hybrid mode enables the state to retain control of population movements while mobilizing social resilience and improvisation to handle mass displacement. The Ukrainian case therefore complicates binary understandings of emergency governance by highlighting how migration regulation becomes an adaptive, lived practice within conditions of sustained war and uncertainty.
Paper short abstract
During martial law, most Ukrainian men cannot legally leave. Some cross borders undocumented through mountains, forests, or rivers. Thе presentation reveals the key characteristics of this emerging migration phenomenon.
Paper long abstract
The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine has transformed the migration dynamics of the Ukrainian population, particularly affecting the gender composition of migrants. During martial law, men of conscription age are largely prohibited from legally leaving Ukraine. Some seek alternative ways to cross the border by traveling undocumented through mountains, forests, or rivers.
The undocumented border crossings by Ukrainian men who leave the country despite legal restrictions is a largely overlooked phenomenon. This case represents a unique form of undocumented migration. Traditionally, undocumented migration refers to people entering a destination country without legal authorization. In contrast, this research focuses on individuals who do not have the legal right to exit their country of origin — a reversal of the conventional pattern that makes the case of Ukrainian men undocumented crossing the border especially significant in migration studies.
The presentation employs the primary source material consists of autobiographical video testimonies published on a public YouTube channels. Over 300 stories had been published on these channels. I included in my sample 30 video testimonies selected using a systematic sampling method in my sample.
The study identified:
• Three types of preparation for undocumented border crossing: physical, tactical, and equipment-related.
• Two types of risks associated: legal and survival risks.
• Two types of motivation: draft evasion and socio-economic difficulties
By shedding light on this underexplored phenomenon, the presentation contributes to a deeper understanding of war-induced mobility, state control, and the moral and practical dilemmas faced by individuals during times of crisis.