Weaponized migration at the Finland-Russia border:Towards a more securitised EU migration and asylum policy for defence?
Introduction
Russia's attitude and activities to assert influence in the changing world order are perceived as a security threat to its neighbours, and the military aggression against Ukraine confirmed exactly this, radically changing the geopolitical landscape in Europe. Countries such as Finland have long maintained a “good neighbour” policy not to provoke Russia but now have shifted towards obtaining security guarantees by joining NATO. Seeing its enlargement as an existential threat, Russia is retaliating by exploiting the vulnerabilities of the liberal democracies in Europe, waging hybrid warfare aimed at weakening them through non-conventional attacks for its influence operations.
Finland has experienced a large influx of asylum seekers since August 2023 and has accused Russia of facilitating irregular migration by channelling the flows towards the border. Finnish authorities see this as an attack in supposed retaliation to its accession to NATO, and they have responded by closing its eastern borders with Russia until further notice.
Migration, one of the significant aspects of globalisation, has been increasingly securitised in the EU because of the many perceived threats linked to irregular migration. Russia has found usefulness in irregular migration, which is intensifying worldwide, as a non-conventional means to achieve its coercion objectives against small states. This hybrid attack against Finland and its outcomes could reflect a new development in securitising migration where hybrid warfare and irregular migration have intertwined, framing it for reinforcing European security and its defence.
Security-migration nexus and Coercive Engineered Migration (CEM)
Poverty, violence, and climate change are factors that push people to migrate in search of better living conditions and security. The UNHCR estimated 110 million forcibly displaced people worldwide by the end of June 2023. Because of the lack of resources to enter other countries legally, many risk their lives to achieve their goals by attempting to enter irregularly, often resorting to smugglers and travelling through dangerous routes.
It is challenging to distinguish between the diversity of migrant profiles inside irregular migration, which includes refugees, asylum seekers, and economic migrants, mostly travelling undocumented, who do not qualify as one of the previous. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has referred to this as mixed migration flows, and it poses serious challenges to a state's ability to regulate the situation of irregular migrants in its territory and to uphold human rights.
With the increased risks linked to global threats, especially terrorism, since 9/11, migration has been framed as a security, socioeconomic, identity, and political issue in the West. European right-wing movements have gained momentum by pushing the narrative of large-scale irregular migration as a national security threat, deepening the cultural and religious grievances between the local population and foreigners from the Global South.
Europe is one of the leading destinations for irregular migrants, and Frontex, the main EU agency for border control, has estimated that 355,300 people entered the EU irregularly in 2023, the majority through the Mediterranean and West African (towards Spain’s Canary Islands) routes and roughly 5,352 through the Eastern Land Border. Advocating for exceptional action to protect what is perceived at risk, such as state sovereignty, has led to the securitisation of the EU’s migration and asylum policy.
Although not new, some state actors have taken notice of the disruptive potential of mass migration and seen the opportunity to use irregular migrants as an effective means of political violence. Political scientist Dr Kelly M. Greenhill coined Coercive Engineered Migration (CEM) to refer to a foreign policy strategy that manipulates migration flows to obtain concessions from a targeted state.
There are real-world scenarios that exploit humanitarian crises as leverage, capitalising on the values upheld by liberal democracies. For instance, countries like Turkey, Morocco, and Belarus have released migrants to the EU borders, demanding increased funding for migration management or as a political response.
The link between irregular migration and the deterioration of Finnish-Russian relations
Throughout its history, Finland has been and continues to be a fundamental geopolitical factor for Russia's security as it serves as a buffer zone with the West. The territories east of the Baltic Sea were of great importance to Russia for the control of trade routes since the reign of Ivan IV (the Terrible), and to ensure the security of Saint Petersburg, which became the capital of the Russian Empire under Peter the Great, the Gulf of Finland also had to be controlled.
Despite the cultural familiarity in Finnish-Russian relations through most of the existence of the Grand Duchy of Finland, an autonomous state in the Russian Empire, and the Finlandization strategy during the Cold War, Finland is significantly wary of Russia's behaviour based on its experience as a neighbour in a geopolitical strategic region. Sovereignty and identity self-preservation are matters of national security that drive Finland's foreign policy and military preparedness in anticipation of Russian aggression.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Finland's foreign policy regained its freedom and shifted towards approaching the West. Still concerned for its security, Finland worked actively with both sides to adapt its Cold War neutrality policy to military non-alignment, focusing on retaining stability in its relations with Russia by signing the Treaty on the Foundations of Mutual Relations in 1992 and rejecting NATO membership but joining its Partnership for Peace programme in 1994 and the EU in 1995.
For Finland, the war in Ukraine further strained any ties with Russia, severing completely its bilateral cooperation in many areas. It became the turning point for its foreign policy to take a pragmatic approach to the current geopolitical situation, which has influenced the country's decision, with public support, to finally apply for NATO membership. Finland became its 31st member on 4 April 2023, followed by Sweden on 7 March 2024.
From a Russian perspective, Finland and Sweden's accession to the US-led NATO materialised its fears of NATO enlargement, reinforcing its existential threat narrative through the loss of its geopolitical buffer in Northern Europe. As a member of the EU and NATO, an attack on Finland would equate to attacking them, activating their respective mutual defence clauses. However, these apply to armed aggression, while hybrid attacks would be susceptible to multiple interpretations.
Retaliating with weapons is presently a far too risky action for Russia. Masked as a humanitarian crisis, a CEM attack doesn't surpass the threshold of an armed attack to trigger Article 51 of the UN Charter for the right to self-defence and risk escalation into war. It only needs to inflame the internal grievances around migration enough to force the adversary’s leadership to yield to pressure and limit its capacity to act.
Securitisation in the Finnish 2023 parliamentary and 2024 presidential elections
Both the issue of migration and the potential threat of war in Europe because of Russian activities have made security one of the critical topics in Finnish public debate. While condemnation of Russia's aggression was unanimous in Finnish politics and prevalent in public opinion, immigration was a polarising issue that, in the last decade, has given impetus to the support of far-right parties' anti-immigration discourse.
Despite guiding Finland's accession to NATO, former PM Sanna Marin and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) lost to the right-wing National Coalition Party (NCP) and the second-place anti-immigration Finns Party in the 2023 parliamentary elections. Petteri Orpo (NCP) became prime minister and formed a new government with cabinet members from the Finns Party, the Swedish People's Party of Finland, and the Christian Democrats. Nonetheless, immigration, the environment, and EU policy are the greatest hurdles to integrity in Finland's most right-wing government since WWII.
Finland's security and foreign policy leadership now falls on the newly elected president Alexander Stubb, former PM and the NCP's candidate who won the presidential elections in February 2024. Together with the Finnish government, he will focus on developing strong ties with the EU and NATO for foreign affairs, security, and defence cooperation to achieve deterrence and increase its defence capabilities.
The Finnish Government has already raised in several reports its security concerns over irregular migration and the weaponization of migration by state actors “as a form of hybrid influence activity” exercised with the aid of “third-party actors, such as extremists or organised criminal gangs, for their influencing activities”. In these same reports, it has recognised the need to develop response measures in significantly challenging situations, such as CEM attacks, in which it must balance safeguarding its security with complying with international protection for refugees.
For this matter, Finland is reforming its Emergency Powers Act to adapt it to hybrid threats, and, recently, the Ministry of the Interior has been working on a new legislative project that seeks to build these response measures and reinforce its border security against further attempts by Russia or any other foreign actors to undermine its national security through CEM.
Finland's case and border reinforcement for the EU's security
CEM must be a highly relevant security concern at the EU level. As an EU member, security concerning migration involves the EU as it is an area of shared competence. Considering the situation at its southern border, the weaponization of migration will increase pressure on its resources and efforts to tackle irregular migration. It will certainly reinforce the threat perception of immigration, increasing stigmatisation towards foreigners, and push towards a more securitised migration policy in Europe, creating more contradictions with the EU’s values and reliance on foreign workers.
If the goal is to deter irregular migration, short-term solutions involve closing entry points, fencing the EU’s external border, as well as developing more aggressive border management policies and tools. This is the case at the eastern border, where the Baltic States and Poland have been fencing their borders with Russia and Belarus. Finland is doing the same with its 1,340km border with Russia, the EU's longest external border, raising its case to promote initiatives in the EU and cooperation with other European countries to combat CEM.
However, this won't be a definitive solution to Europe's irregular migration problem. A tougher migration and asylum policy will increase the vulnerability of irregular migrants. To solve this problem, the EU will need to act at the root of the cause which means stabilising its neighbouring regions by increasing cooperation for peace and development. This approach can drive the EU's CSDP and reinforce its role as a geopolitical actor and global security provider.