Irregular and Infectious? COVID‐19, Ebola and the Securitization of Migration to Southern Europe

Securitization scholarship concentrates on the discursive association between undocumentedmigration, terrorism and crime. Our textual and visual analysis of Italian, Spanish and Maltesenewspapers between 2013 and 2020 demonstrates that the discourses securitizing irregularmobility as a health risk became more salient than those linking migration to terrorism alreadysince the 2014 Ebola epidemic. After the COVID-19 outbreak, associations between migrationand infectious diseases also dwarfed discourses linking migration to crime. The pervasiveness ofhealth securitization discourses in both conservative and progressive Southern European newspa-pers shows that narratives of people on the move as both ‘a risk’ and ‘at risk’ are not solelycoexisting but mutually reinforcing, framing migrants as carriers of diseases precisely becauseof their vulnerability. Our visual analysis also highlights that, once portrayed by media, the system-atic use of biohazard clothing in European Union (EU) border enforcement missions becomesitself discourse, securitizing irregular migration no less than written texts