Assumptions of ‘safety’ are central to the EU’s new Pact on Migration and Asylum. Much of the debate focuses on whether countries designated as ‘safe’ are truly safe. Visiting Fellows Michelle Pace and Frowin Rausis argue that while this is an important question, it risks overlooking a more fundamental one: what political work does the label ‘safe’ perform in contemporary asylum governance?
On 12 June 2026, the EU’s new Pact on Migration and Asylum entered into force. The notion of safety runs throughout the pact. It introduces an EU-wide list of ‘safe countries of origin’, enabling accelerated asylum procedures for applicants from those countries (currently Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Kosovo, Morocco, Tunisia and EU candidate countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Türkiye). It also expands the role of ‘safe’ third countries in asylum processing and return arrangements. Safety has become a key organising principle of Europe’s evolving asylum regime.
How the concept of safety can be used to shape asylum policy
Few concepts carry greater normative weight in asylum debates than safety. Like ‘integration’, it appears self-evidently desirable. Who could oppose safety? Yet precisely because of its positive moral appeal, the concept often escapes critical scrutiny. Discussions of safe-country policies frequently assume that safety is an objective condition that can be measured and verified. But safety is a concept which can be used for political ends to shape how states define and distribute their responsibilities towards refugees.
Debates about safe-country policies typically focus on whether designated countries are genuinely safe or whether such measures comply with international and European law. These are important concerns. Yet they tell us little about the politics of safety itself. To understand these politics, we suggest asking three questions: When is safety mobilised? Who defines safety, (and who deserves it)? Where is safety provided?
When is safety mobilised? Identifying ‘safe’ states outside Europe
Historically, safety within refugee protection frameworks referred to protection from persecution, access to fair asylum procedures, and respect for the principle of non-refoulement. The focus was on whether individuals seeking refuge could effectively access protection.
Today, however, safety increasingly serves a different purpose. As European states move away from territorial asylum and towards externalisation, safety is becoming less concerned with the protection of individuals arriving in Europe and more concerned with identifying states outside Europe as suitable locations for protection.
This shift reveals a striking paradox. Safety is becoming increasingly prominent in asylum governance at a time when European governments are simultaneously emphasising global insecurity and increasing defence spending. Yet asylum policies increasingly portray the world as containing a growing number of countries capable of safely hosting refugees.
Asking when safety is mobilised helps reveal why it is mobilised. The language of safety often becomes particularly important when governments introduce restrictive migration measures. In these contexts, safety functions as a rhetorical device that presents responsibility-shifting as protection. The further protection obligations move away from Europe, the more important it becomes to frame those arrangements as humanitarian, reasonable, and legitimate. The language of safety makes this possible.
Who defines safety, (and who deserves it)? Assessments of safety as political decisions
Safe-country policies are not new. What is changing is the politics surrounding them. As asylum has become a highly politicised policy field, assessments of safety have increasingly become political decisions rather than primarily technical ones.
This shift raises important questions about authority and expertise. Safety assessments have traditionally relied on country-of-origin information, legal analysis, and expert evaluation. Yet political actors are increasingly asserting their own authority to determine which countries are safe and which are not. As a result, safety becomes not simply a description of conditions in a particular place, but a political judgement shaped by broader policy objectives.
A first step towards understanding the politics of safety, therefore, is to ask who gets to define it. Equally important is the question of who is considered deserving of protection. Decisions about safety do not affect all groups equally. They shape whose protection claims are taken seriously, whose vulnerabilities are recognised, and whose access to asylum is restricted. The politics of safety is therefore also a politics of inclusion and exclusion.
Where is safety provided? Redrawing the boundaries of responsibility
Perhaps the most significant transformation concerns geography. Protection was traditionally understood as something provided within the territory of a state willing and able to uphold refugee rights. Increasingly, however, protection is imagined elsewhere: in transit countries, neighbouring regions, offshore processing sites, and other states designated as safe partners.
From this perspective, designating a country as safe does more than describe a place. It helps create a geography of protection and redraw the boundaries of responsibility. Safety becomes a mechanism through which obligations can be relocated beyond European territory.
Recent reforms illustrate this trend. Under the new pact, asylum seekers may be transferred to non-EU countries even where they have little or no connection to them. The significance of this development lies not only in the countries involved but also in the expanding role that safety plays in legitimising increasingly distant forms of responsibility-sharing and responsibility-shifting.
The concept itself appears remarkably elastic. The question is no longer simply whether a particular country satisfies established safety criteria. Rather, safety is increasingly being adapted to support new arrangements through which protection responsibilities can be moved elsewhere.
The politics of safety – justifying policies of deterrence, containment, and externalisation
Safety is beginning to resemble other influential concepts in contemporary migration governance. It retains a powerful normative appeal even as its practical meaning changes across different policy contexts. Its political effectiveness stems in part from this flexibility.
Today, safety continues to evoke humanitarian protection and refugee rights. At the same time, it is increasingly mobilised to justify policies centred on deterrence, containment, and externalisation. The concept retains its moral force even as its substantive content becomes more expansive and contested.
The designation of safety does not simply describe the world. It helps create a world in which responsibility for refugee protection can be relocated while continuing to appear humanitarian, rational, and necessary. For this reason, the politics of safety deserves as much attention as the places to which the label itself is applied.
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