'Securitized' Solidarity? Explaining Member States’ Motivations for Participation and Patterns of Participation in Joint Operations at the External EU Borders

Sammanfattning: Joint Operations at the external borders of the EU are axiomatic for EU’s border management policy and constitute forms of collective action involving the efforts of two or more Member States for the purpose of securing the common borders. Nevertheless, participation in joint operations is based on voluntarism and guided by the principle of solidarity, which should act as catalysts encouraging MSs’ participation in Joint Operations. Scrutinising the phenomenon from the perspective of collective action theory offered both a theoretical and empirical puzzle, as states as rational actors, would be expected to ‘free-ride’. Yet, despite the voluntary nature and the lack of institutional ‘coercion’, Member States do participate extensively in joint operations. This raised a bi-dimensional enquiry, related to the question of motivations of MSs’ participation, and adjacently to patterns of participation in Joint Operations. Regarding motivations, the findings of the paper seem to suggest that participation in joint operations has been predominantly security-driven and connected to the provision of border/internal security (as collective goods), but also to a certain extent norm-driven, and connected to the provision of refugee/migrant protection (as collective good). A salient finding was that the Member States’ security concerns have led to the appropriation of solidarity for security-ends and, as such to ‘securitized’ solidarity. Regarding patterns, the findings seem to suggest a positive correlation between the degree of commitment to human rights of Member States and the degree of participation, but almost no correlation between state’s geographic propinquity to the external borders and participation.