Abyssal lines in borders, race, and knowledge

Abstract

In 2015, the significant rise in refugees and migrants arriving on European territory from one year to another consolidated the foundation for what is commonly referred to as the ‘European Refugee Crisis’. Through a critical analysis of the EU-Turkey Joint Action Plan (EUTJAP) of 2015, among the first and most comprehensive responses to the situation, this chapter questions and reflects upon whose problems the policy addresses, and which problems it disregards in that very same framing. By applying the Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ theory of Abyssal Thinking, we argue that Modern Western thinking continues to uphold a system of epistemic racism, which provides the coloniser with the monopoly on defining knowledge and truth, while at the same time working towards silencing and invisibilising countering perspectives. This chapter aims bring forward alternative understandings of the policy by addressing how colonial/racial lines are still imbricated in knowledge and law; how policy is produced from within modern Western thinking; how borders function as a marker of race, and finally; the contradiction of the humanitarian narrative and discourse in the EUTJAP. To actively counter the sociology of absences that is produced by the modern/colonial world order, we must work towards post-abyssal thinking. By theorising from the border with critical border thinking, we can significantly impact this shift in the production of knowledges that can empower and liberate the epistemically oppressed.