The refugee issue, and especially migration across the Mediterranean Sea, dominates Swedish and European policy debates as never before. Approximately one million people arrived at Europe's southern shores in 2015, and at least 3,700 migrants lost their lives. The need for a better understanding of the situation at Europe’s borders, and of European countries' handling of refugee and border issues, is greater than ever. The aim of this report is to analyse how the EU and its member states have conducted border policy since the Schengen agreement abolished internal borders in the 1990s.The study analyses the "fight against illegal im­migration" (in this report, "irregular migration"), which since the 1990s has unfolded at and beyond the external borders. It provides answers to the questions of how, why, and with what consequences certain types of mig­ration increasingly have come to be treated as a security and border problem.