Abstract
AbstractThis paper examines how racial violence underpins the European Union’s border regime. Drawing on two case studies, in northern France and the Balkans, we explore how border violence manifests in divergent ways: from the direct physical violence which is routine in Croatia, to more subtle forms of violence evident in the governance of migrants and refugees living informally in Calais, closer to Europe’s geopolitical centre. The use of violence against people on the move sits uncomfortably with the liberal, post‐racial self‐image of the European Union. Drawing upon the work of postcolonial scholars and theories of violence, we argue that the various violent technologies used by EU states against migrants embodies the inherent logics of liberal governance, whilst also reproducing liberalism’s tendency to overlook its racial limitations. By interrogating how and why border violence manifests we draw critical attention to the racialised ideologies within which it is predicated. This paper characterises the EU border regime as a form of “liberal violence” that seeks to elide both its violent nature and its racial underpinnings.
Highlights
I have a question for you: If the European Union stands for liberty and equality and all that, how can it be taken from us? They say they do so much humanitarian work, but they don’t want even 2000 people from this camp? And they beat us, aggressively. (Interview with Afghan victim of Croatian police violence, July 2019, Bihac, BosniaHerzegovina)
Rather than accepting this hegemonic understanding of liberal bordering practices, we argue that the technologies of concealment and displacement evidenced within these case studies amount to a form of “liberal violence”, marked by the obscuring of violent governance and the racial logics underpinning it
This paper looks at the two aforementioned case studies of border violence used to securitise EU borders and suggests that such acts of violence differ in manifestation, they
Summary
Rather than accepting this hegemonic understanding of liberal bordering practices, we argue that the technologies of concealment and displacement evidenced within these case studies amount to a form of “liberal violence”, marked by the obscuring of violent governance and the racial logics underpinning it. Drawing on long-term research in Calais and the Balkans, we will show how “liberal violence” is a dominant form of EU border governance, which operates through racialised logics and is sustained through the concealment, displacement and denial of racial violence.
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