Risky Borders. Gender and Race in Border Security

From risk analysis to security operations and back. Understanding the production of gendered and racialized insecurities at the EU external borders The EU currently faces enormous challenges at the external borders and the sometimes alarming consequences for vulnerable groups of migrants, such as women and minors, are increasingly being addressed by academic scholarship, policy makers, and security institutions. Research has so far focused on the implementation phase of security operations, investigating the gender-specific and racialized effects of various enforcement measures, surveillance, management, and search & rescue practices. This project however argues that a comprehensive analysis of current border security arrangements needs to include all phases of security operations and particularly pay attention to risk analysis as central to the planning and conduct of security operations in increasingly risk- and knowledge-based security institutions. To address these timely issues, our project conducts cutting- edge research on border security operations in the Mediterranean Sea under the umbrella of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) and embedded within a wider network of other actors, such as member states border policing units and other EU agencies. Risk analysis is the basis for policy-making and resource allocation regarding border, migration, and security issues in the EU and informs when and where Frontex becomes active and how operations are conducted in terms of deployment of resources, material, technologies, routines, personnel, rationale, and justifications. Security operations then feed back into risk analysis through evaluation processes. A reciprocal cycle between risk analysis and operational security practices is thus established that is key for understanding how gendered and racialized conceptualizations of (in)security are created and locked into security operations. As a consequence, it becomes increasingly difficult to think and do border security otherwise. Against this backdrop, we trace gendered and racialized conceptualizations of (in)security from risk analysis to implementation and assess what the effects are on women and vulnerable migrants. With attention to the manifold actors and rationalities involved, the project draws on a qualitative mixed methods approach combining frame and visual analysis with mapping and interview methods. The theoretical and methodological framework developed will also be applicable to other state and non- state security actors and regimes in order to assess the wide-ranging effects of knowledge-based security practices on the trajectories of social inequalities in the security field.

The research project "Risky Borders" examined the role of knowledge add meaning-making practices in the context of Europe's external borders. At its core was the question of how security knowledge production-particularly within the framework of risk analysis conducted by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex)-contributes to the (re)production or transformations of gendered and racialized inequalities, insecurities, and hierarchies. The project is grounded in feminist and postcolonial security studies as well as critical EU studies. Methodologically, it developed a qualitative-interpretive research design that combined critical discourse analysis, frame analysis and (inter)visual analysis of e.g. risk analyses, situational reports, vulnerability assessments, and operational guidelines. The project pursued the following key objectives: 1. To analyze the role of risk analysis as a central knowledge and meaning-making practice in EU border security 2. To examine gendered and racialized constructions in Frontex and EU security documents and their implications 3. To contribute to feminist and postcolonial debates on violence, security, and European (border) security The findings show that Frontex risk analysis embeds gendered and racialized assumptions in their definitions of "risk" and "threat," and classifies migrants within a hierarchical order of perceived worthiness of protection. These categories are not neutral; rather, they reflect culturally embedded notions of gender, race, and class, and feed into security-political decision-making processes concerning border protection, control, and the allocation of resources. In this way, risk analysis does not merely describe threats but actively produces insecurities-through the selective focus on certain groups, the externalization of responsibility to third countries, or a security logic that primarily understands migration as a risk. Risk analysis thus functions as a powerful meaning-making practice that legitimizes institutional practices by developing problem definitions, attributions of responsibility, and political urgency. This contributes to the expansion of Frontex's competences and to the normalization of a militarized border regime, which risks exacerbating the situation of migrants, people from the Global South, and women in precarious circumstances. The project resulted in numerous internationally visible publications and makes an important contribution to the further development of feminist and postcolonial security studies as well as to the critical analysis of European security. Overall, "Risky Borders" demonstrates that the construction of Europe as a security actor is deeply embedded in hierarchical power relations, and that feminist and postcolonial perspectives are essential for making inequalities visible and for developing more just security practices.