Liberal violence and the racial borders of the European Union

Abstract

This 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 vio-lence which is routine in Croatia, to more subtle forms of violence evident in the gover-nance 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 lib-eral, post-racial self-image of the European Union. Drawing upon the work of postcolo-nial 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 interro-gating how and why border violence manifests we draw critical attention to the racia-lised 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.