Gender, race, and crisis-driven institutional growth: discourses of ‘migration crisis’ and the expansion of Frontex

Migration movements at the EU external borders are increasingly<br/>understood and governed through a logic of crisis that draws on<br/>gendered and racialised stereotypes of migrants and colonial Self-<br/>‘Other’ representations. These narratives of ‘migration crisis’ not<br/>only shape public discourse, but also inform institutional<br/>processes within the EU border security architecture, particularly<br/>the growth of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency<br/>(Frontex). Bringing critical border and migration studies in<br/>conversation with feminist postcolonial scholarship on crisis, we<br/>argue that gendering and racialisation underpin Frontex’s ‘crisis<br/>labelling’ that gives way to institutional claims for extended<br/>resources and competences. In an analysis of Frontex’s Annual<br/>Risk Analysis Reports (2010–2020), we identify four themes<br/>through which Frontex engages in crisis labelling on the basis of<br/>gendered and racialised stereotypes, dualisms, and postcolonial<br/>(self-)representations: migration as threat; the unknownness of<br/>migrants; the hierarchical creation of (non-)European spaces; and<br/>humanitarian concerns over vulnerable migrants. Through these<br/>themes, gender and race not only made migration intelligible as<br/>crisis but importantly justified demands for Frontex’s extension.<br/>These findings reveal how gender and race inform the<br/>institutional politics of defining and governing migration in ways<br/>that reproduce intersectional power relations and (post-)colonial<br/>legacies.