In the years 2020-2022, in the aftermath of the refugee/migration crisis of 2015/16, a series of (geo)political competitions, interests, and rearrangements such as: Turkish military interventions in Syria and Libya, armed conflict in Syria, violations of sovereign rights in the Eastern Mediterranean, the situation in Afghanistan, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, caused new migration flows, putting pressure on the EU borders. The new developments, combined with the pandemic, urgently raised the (timeless) issue of the connection between borders, migration, and security in the EU. The already known theoretical approaches of "securitization" of migration, "militarization" of borders, which had led - according to critics - to the construction of a "Fortress Europe" during previous crises, were strengthened by newer concepts and practices such as: asymmetric threat, orchestrated attack, hybrid warfare, biopolitical warfare, and most importantly, the instrumentalization of migration flows, which took on new dimensions.

Indeed, the realization of the Turkish threat of "opening the borders" at the Evros River in March 2020 was followed by a series of similar instrumentalizations in the Mediterranean by Turkey and Morocco (Cyprus, Spain), as well as in the European North by Belarus (Lithuania, Poland, Latvia). During the same period, the pandemic, as well as new refugee challenges from Afghanistan, and the Ukrainian refugee crisis, intensified an already tense situation at the EU borders, highlighting the relationship between migration, borders, and security, and the need for the creation of a new national and supranational institutional framework for their management.

In this context, the aim of this work is a critical analysis of the causes, consequences, as well as the national and supranational policies developed for the management of these new aspects of the timeless connection between migration, borders, and security.