The Centre for Europan Policy Studies (CEPS) is organising the launch of the book Security and Migration in the 21st Century, by Professor Elspeth Guild, published by Polity Press. The event falls within the scope of CHALLENGE (The Changing Landscape of European Liberty and Security) and ENACT (Enacting European Citizenship), two research projects funded by the Sixth and the Seventh Research Framework Programme of the European Commission’s DG Research respectively.
 
The book challenges the ‘state-centric’ migration research. The author observes that as security studies were transformed by the end of bipolarity, resulting in the development of the very fruitful critical security studies, so too migration studies need to encompass a critical focus, taking as the point of departure the individual and examining the consequences of state actions from this perspective. Guild calls for a reappraisal of the state-centric approach of a security continuum in which the allocation of political priority takes place around perceived consensus of security threats and then attaches the label of threat or risk of threat to aspects of migration and foreigners.
 
The panel is designed to examine some of these issues and their validity.