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

Eugenio Cusumano, Martina Abisso and Diego Caballero‐Vélez

Journal of Common Market Studies, 2026, vol. 64, issue 1, 312-340

Abstract: Securitization scholarship concentrates on the discursive association between undocumented migration, terrorism and crime. Our textual and visual analysis of Italian, Spanish and Maltese newspapers between 2013 and 2020 demonstrates that the discourses securitizing irregular mobility as a health risk became more salient than those linking migration to terrorism already since the 2014 Ebola epidemic. After the COVID‐19 outbreak, associations between migration and infectious diseases also dwarfed discourses linking migration to crime. The pervasiveness of health securitization discourses in both conservative and progressive Southern European newspapers shows that narratives of people on the move as both ‘a risk’ and ‘at risk’ are not solely coexisting but mutually reinforcing, framing migrants as carriers of diseases precisely because of their vulnerability. Our visual analysis also highlights that, once portrayed by media, the systematic use of biohazard clothing in European Union (EU) border enforcement missions becomes itself discourse, securitizing irregular migration no less than written texts.

Date: 2026
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