TY - JOUR

T1 - Gender, race, and crisis-driven institutional growth

T2 - discourses of ‘migration crisis’ and the expansion of Frontex

AU - Sachseder, Julia

AU - Stachowitsch, Saskia

AU - Binder, Clemens

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - Migration movements at the EU external borders are increasinglyunderstood and governed through a logic of crisis that draws ongendered and racialised stereotypes of migrants and colonial Self-‘Other’ representations. These narratives of ‘migration crisis’ notonly shape public discourse, but also inform institutionalprocesses within the EU border security architecture, particularlythe growth of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency(Frontex). Bringing critical border and migration studies inconversation with feminist postcolonial scholarship on crisis, weargue that gendering and racialisation underpin Frontex’s ‘crisislabelling’ that gives way to institutional claims for extendedresources and competences. In an analysis of Frontex’s AnnualRisk Analysis Reports (2010–2020), we identify four themesthrough which Frontex engages in crisis labelling on the basis ofgendered and racialised stereotypes, dualisms, and postcolonial(self-)representations: migration as threat; the unknownness ofmigrants; the hierarchical creation of (non-)European spaces; andhumanitarian concerns over vulnerable migrants. Through thesethemes, gender and race not only made migration intelligible ascrisis but importantly justified demands for Frontex’s extension.These findings reveal how gender and race inform theinstitutional politics of defining and governing migration in waysthat reproduce intersectional power relations and (post-)coloniallegacies.

AB - Migration movements at the EU external borders are increasinglyunderstood and governed through a logic of crisis that draws ongendered and racialised stereotypes of migrants and colonial Self-‘Other’ representations. These narratives of ‘migration crisis’ notonly shape public discourse, but also inform institutionalprocesses within the EU border security architecture, particularlythe growth of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency(Frontex). Bringing critical border and migration studies inconversation with feminist postcolonial scholarship on crisis, weargue that gendering and racialisation underpin Frontex’s ‘crisislabelling’ that gives way to institutional claims for extendedresources and competences. In an analysis of Frontex’s AnnualRisk Analysis Reports (2010–2020), we identify four themesthrough which Frontex engages in crisis labelling on the basis ofgendered and racialised stereotypes, dualisms, and postcolonial(self-)representations: migration as threat; the unknownness ofmigrants; the hierarchical creation of (non-)European spaces; andhumanitarian concerns over vulnerable migrants. Through thesethemes, gender and race not only made migration intelligible ascrisis but importantly justified demands for Frontex’s extension.These findings reveal how gender and race inform theinstitutional politics of defining and governing migration in waysthat reproduce intersectional power relations and (post-)coloniallegacies.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - Migration crisis

KW - gender

KW - race

KW - Frontex

KW - border security

U2 - 10.1080/1369183X.2022.2092461

DO - 10.1080/1369183X.2022.2092461

M3 - Journal article

VL - 48

SP - 670

EP - 4693

JO - Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

JF - Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

SN - 1369-183X

IS - 19

ER -