Discounting the displaced: examining Hungary’s denial of human security for migrants, asylum seekers and refugees

Focusing on the themes of securitization, advocacy and exclusion, this chapter examines how militarized border control and population management systematically silences migrants, asylum seekers and refugees within Hungary’s migration-security nexus. This nexus is underpinned by powerful Orientalist narratives of threat, culminating in both symbolic and material violence against those seeking asylum. Evidence from field-based research illustrates the ways in which Hungary’s practices of securitization and biopolitical control operate as de facto restrictions on the right to asylum. The chapter also illuminates the liberal paradox of intervention, whereby the humanitarian work of NGOs and CSOs operates alongside the punitive border control apparatus of the Hungarian state. Thus, the efficacy of intervention is negated, laying bare the incongruity between state security and human welfare needs. Ultimately, the chapter bears witness to the hostility and denial of human security that greeted migrants, asylum seekers and refugees as they sought asylum in Europe.