The European Union as a humanitarian border: the production of vulnerability in the New Pact on Migration and Asylum

Abstract

This article critically examines the EU’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum through the conceptual lens of the ‘humanitarian border’, which captures the entanglement of care and control in migration governance. Analyzing European Commission documents, it shows how the Pact invokes humanitarianism while reinforcing securitized and exclusionary practices. Three mechanisms produce migrant vulnerability: migration securitization, selective categorization of care, and pressure to perform as the ‘deserving refugee’. These dynamics expose tensions in liberal democracies, where humanitarianism legitimizes restrictive border policies. The article contributes to debates on humanitarian bordering, showing how vulnerability operates as conditional rather than universal protection.