The coloniality of European border securitisation: An analysis of pushbacks at Europe's external borders

This research project aims to understand how the
emergence of border pushback practices reshapes the
broader landscape of European border security. By looking
at the language used in European asylum and immigration
policies and how this is interpreted by the practitioners
enacting them, it aims to uncover the implicit knowledge
which underpins the decision to push a group of asylum
seekers out of European territory. To do this, it uses two
frameworks: securitisation and coloniality. Securitisation
looks at how migration has been increasingly reified as a
threat to Europe, and the processes through which this
happens. Coloniality considers the social legacies of
colonialism within three spheres: knowledge production,
systems of hierarchy, and the hierarchisation of different
cultures. Combining these frameworks, the research draws
conclusions about how colonial legacies inform decisionmaking at the border, the types of knowledge enacted in
decision-making at the border and the extent to which this
adheres to policy, and the overall impact of border
pushbacks on European border practice and discourse.