Constructing Legitimacy in EU Migration Policy: The Public Communication of Commissioners for Home Affairs, 2015-2025

Abstract

This thesis examines how European Commissioners for Home Affairs communicate about contested elements of EU migration policy and what this reveals about the construction of legitimacy in the European Union. Drawing on Theo van Leeuwen's typology of legitimation and focusing on Dimitris Avramopoulos, Ylva Johansson, and Magnus Brunner, it analyses public communication from 2015 to 2025 across three policy domains: the management of irregular arrivals, the externalisation of migration control, and responsibility-sharing under the Dublin system. The thesis adopts a qualitative, interpretive, and longitudinal research design to find that Commissioners legitimate EU migration policy through a broader logic of constrained agency. They present EU action less as political choice than as a compelled response to legal obligations, humanitarian duties, or systemic pressures. This allows Commissioners to portray the EU as both morally responsible and institutionally constrained. The thesis contributes to scholarship on EU migration, legitimacy, and executive communication by showing how Commissioners legitimate contested policies not only through the moral reframing of control, but also through boundary-making, omission, and responsibility displacement.