‘The region’ between care and control: How Dutch policy actors discursively legitimate regional ‘reception and protection’

In recent years, policies aiming to strengthen 'protection and reception' in the 'regions of origin' have become popular among European governments. Scholars have questioned the bundling of humanitarian, developmental, managerial and controlling objectives in such policies, as well as the position of NGOs in externalization practices. This article presents a multi-stakeholder discourse analysis, unfolding how Dutch NGO and state actors discursively legitimate their involvement in 'regional protection.' This article shows how 'the region' is used as discursive device to box, fix, and container migrants. Our analysis reveals that a combination of migration management and human rights-oriented discourses enables inclusion by exclusion. It enables being inclusive for those in need of care, while being exclusive for those in need of control. These findings shed light on the co-constitutive character of care and control discourses and how they discursively align.