Migration movements at the EU external borders are increasingly
understood and governed through a logic of crisis that draws on
gendered and racialised stereotypes of migrants and colonial Self-
‘Other’ representations. These narratives of ‘migration crisis’ not
only shape public discourse, but also inform institutional
processes within the EU border security architecture, particularly
the growth of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency
(Frontex). Bringing critical border and migration studies in
conversation with feminist postcolonial scholarship on crisis, we
argue that gendering and racialisation underpin Frontex’s ‘crisis
labelling’ that gives way to institutional claims for extended
resources and competences. In an analysis of Frontex’s Annual
Risk Analysis Reports (2010–2020), we identify four themes
through which Frontex engages in crisis labelling on the basis of
gendered and racialised stereotypes, dualisms, and postcolonial
(self-)representations: migration as threat; the unknownness of
migrants; the hierarchical creation of (non-)European spaces; and
humanitarian concerns over vulnerable migrants. Through these
themes, gender and race not only made migration intelligible as
crisis but importantly justified demands for Frontex’s extension.
These findings reveal how gender and race inform the
institutional politics of defining and governing migration in ways
that reproduce intersectional power relations and (post-)colonial
legacies.