A European narrative of border externalisation: the European trust fund for Africa story

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines European narratives regarding border externalisation within the context of the European Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF). It seeks to understand how the EU shapes its discourse on African migration, recommends solutions, and evaluates outcomes. As the latest and most comprehensive instrument for externalising migration management, the EUTF offers abundant source material to comprehensively analyse the EU institutional narrative since the 2015 Valletta Summit. Furthermore, with its official conclusion, it presents a unique opportunity to track the complete evolution of EU policy narratives on border security, treating the EUTF as a story with a beginning, middle, and end. This paper relies on publicly accessible documents produced before, during, and after its implementation to uncover the underlying story shaping EU border externalisation. It aims to contribute to research on policy narratives related to migration and security, shedding light on the role of knowledge production in shaping border security policies. Moreover, it contributes to studies on policy narratives by proposing to couple Narrative Policy Framework approaches that look at the structure (setting, characters, plot, moral), with interpretative and critical approaches that focus on the content by uncovering the ideas, values, and assumptions on which such narratives are based.