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.