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The European refugee crisis has been communicated visually through images such as those of Alan Kurdi lying dead on the beach, by body bags on the harbor front of Lampedusa, by people walking through Europe and by border guards and fences. This article examines the broader visual environment within which EU policy-making took place from October 2013 to October 2015. It identifies 'tragedy' as the key term used by the EU to explain its actions and decisions and points out that discourses of humanitarianism and border control were both in place. The article provides a theoretical account of how humanitarianism and border control might be visualized by news photography. Adopting a multi-method design and analyzing a dataset of more than 1000 photos, the article presents a visual discourse analysis of five generic iconic motifs and a quantitative visual content analysis of shifts and continuity across four moments in time. The article connects these visual analyses to the policies and discourses of the EU holding that the ambiguity of the EU's discourse was mirrored by the wider visual environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article advances a practice approach to differentiated (dis)integration in European security and defence in light of Brexit. We propose that understanding how differentiation in the area of security and defence is given meaning on the ground requires examining the everyday social practices of officials and military professionals. Therefore, we focus on the 'low politics' of security and defence cooperation in Europe. We do so by entering the diplomatic engine room in the EU's Political and Security Committee (PSC). We show how arguments that Brexit will either be the ultimate death blow to the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) or that it will be the catalyst for deeper military cooperation fail to take account of the social dynamics and the historical path of security and military cooperation in Europe. Future research on differentiation should pay particular attention to how such dynamics play out in the everyday social negotiation of meaning among practitioners. This article is part of the 2019 Symposium titled 'Responding to Brexit: Differentiated integration and disintegration in the European Union', which also includes Differentiated Integration and Disintegration in the EU after Brexit: Risks versus Opportunities by Benjamin Leruth, Stefan Gänzle and Jarle Tronda (https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.12957), On the Methodology of Studying Differentiated (Dis)integration: Or How the Potential Outcome Framework Can Contribute to Evaluating the Costs and Benefits of Opting In or Out by Marian Burk and Dirk Leuffen (https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.12958), The End of Exceptionalism and a Strengthening of Coherence? Law and Legal Integration in the EU Post‐Brexit by Paul James Cardwell (https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.12959), and Rethinking Britain's Role in a Differentiated Europe after Brexit: A Comparative Regionalism Perspective by Philomena Murray and Alex Brianson (https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.12961). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]