The coloniality of European border securitisation: An analysis of pushbacks at Europe's external borders

This research project aims to understand how the emergence of border pushback practices reshapes the broader landscape of European border security. By looking at the language used in European asylum and immigration policies and how this is interpreted by the practitioners enacting them, it aims to uncover the implicit knowledge

which underpins the decision to push a group of asylum seekers out of European territory. To do this, it uses two frameworks: securitisation and coloniality. Securitisation looks at how migration has been increasingly reified as a threat to Europe, and the processes through which this happens. Coloniality considers the social legacies of

colonialism within three spheres: knowledge production, systems of hierarchy, and the hierarchisation of different cultures. Combining these frameworks, the research draws conclusions about how colonial legacies inform decisionmaking at the border, the types of knowledge enacted in decision-making at the border and the extent to which this

adheres to policy, and the overall impact of border pushbacks on European border practice and discourse.