Technosecuritization: Digital Technologies and the Securitization of EU Migration Law

Abstract This article analyses how the growing use of digital technologies in the European Union’s (EU) migration management reflects and reinforces the securitization of immigration, and explores the resulting implications for human rights and, more broadly, for the core principles of the rule of law within the EU legal order. Drawing on securitization theory – particularly the contributions of the Copenhagen School and the Paris School – it conceptualizes digital technologies not merely as technical tools, but as security practices in themselves, embedded within broader assemblages of surveillance, control, and risk governance. The central claim is that the EU is undergoing a process of technosecuritization, whereby digital infrastructures – such as biometric databases, algorithmic profiling systems, and interoperable data networks – contribute to the normalization of exceptional governance practices at the borders and within migration procedures. These technologies facilitate a form of security-oriented governance that often escapes both democratic deliberation and effective judicial scrutiny, reallocating institutional power primarily to border control agencies and automated systems. Following a brief Introduction, Part 2 of this article outlines the conceptual framework of securitization by bridging securitization studies with legal scholarship on technology, governance and human rights. Part 3 examines key tools of EU law to show how legal norms authorize and entrench security-driven digital governance, while also assessing the consequences for human rights, fundamental freedoms and institutional balance. The Concluding Remarks offer a reflection on possible normative safeguards to ensure that the evolution of technological governance does not come at the expense of the rule of law.