This significant shift blemishes the image of the EU as a “normative power” and contravenes the original region-building spirit at the core of the Barcelona Process. In order to explain this change, Emmanuel Blanc proposed an emotional approach, centering on insights of social psychology and more generally located within constructivism in international relations. An in-depth discourse analysis of official EU documents, as well as an analysis of resulting practices on the ground, reveal the causal link between the socially constructed fear of migrants and the EU’s departure from the normative approach to migration towards a more control-oriented one.

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