Painting refugees as a weapon. Exceptional law and asylum seeker rights in the Finnish political discourse around ‘coercive engineered migration’

Abstract

The emergence of what Finnish authorities termed ‘instrumentalized migration’ from the the Russian side of the border in 2023 resulted in a total border closure and the adoption of an exceptional law entitled the Border Security Act. If triggered, the Act enables Finland to temporarily block access to asylum procedures on a limited part of its border. This thesis analyzes the implications of the Border Security Act for asylum seeker rights and Finnish migration policy as a whole. The research material consists of legislative documents encompassing government, opposition, and civil society perspectives during the bill’s adoption and renewal in 2024–2025. Critical discourse analysis is employed as a method along with a theoretical framework based on securitization theory and Agamben’s State of Exception. The main contribution to existing research is expanding the limited field of human rights approaches to coercive engineered migration. The main objective is to examine how different actors portray migrants and their human rights in relation to the Border Security Act, and how these discourses contribute to the legitimization of restrictions to migrants’ fundamental rights in Finnish asylum policy overall. In summary, apart from a few de-securitizing voices, the material reflected a highly securitized perception of coercive engineered migration, wherein discourses about existential threat to national security and the Finnish nation are combined with common tropes of anti-migration rhetoric. Overall, the results demonstrate a tendency for Finnish lawmakers to overlook the human rights of migrants whether intentionally or unintentionally when responding to migration-related ‘crises’, as well as a need for the deeper incorporation of human rights frameworks in the political discourse and practice around coercive engineered migration.