Since 2014, the number of Global South migrants seeking to come to Europe has significantly risen. Fleeing conflicts, invasions, political persecution, poverty, and natural disasters, millions of people—most of them from Asian and African states—have since then migrated to Europe in search of sanctuary or better life prospects. In response to that, EU institutions alongside European states initiated a concerted process of militarisation of Europe’s borders that has led to an unprecedented escalation of violence against ‘irregular’ migrants. 

In light of that, this dissertation interrogates the colonial and racial nature of Europe’s so-called ‘migrant crisis’, specifically the increasing symbiosis between border and violence in contemporary Europe. It asks ‘What does the escalation of violence at Europe’s borders tell us about the intimacies between borders, colonialism, and race?’ The dissertation makes the original and counterintuitive move of using “settler colonialism” as an analytic to understand border dynamics of violence and security in Europe (the “metropole”). Tracing the historical evolution of border regimes of migration security from white settler colonies to the “metropoles,” it uncovers the central role of borders as (post)colonial tools designed to settle whiteness as the nation-state’s true “native” and final “possessor” across the Global North. 

The monograph also provides the first systematic investigation of the colonial genealogies of contemporary methods of border violence in Europe, connecting such practices to past techniques and rationales of repression and policing deployed at the colonies. In doing so, it re-evaluates Europe’s border violence as not an exception to a post-war liberal order, but rather as recurrences of historical, colonial logics of racialized expropriation, oppression, and (dis)possession within the metropole.

Tarsis Brito (PhD in International Relations, London School of Economics, 2023) is a Postdoctoral Fellow in International Relations at the LSE. He has served as a Co-Editor and Associate Editor at Millennium: Journal of International Studies (vols. 50-51) and as a Coordinator at Doing International Political Sociology PhD Series (2022-23). His fields of interest include — but are not limited to — International Relations Theory; Security Studies; Border and Migration Studies; Race, Colonialism, and Empire in Global Politics. His research has appeared in outlets like International Political Sociology, Review of International Studies, and Security Dialogue.

Chair: Emanuele Massetti (School of International Studies - University of Trento)