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The (inter)visual politics of border security : Co-constituting gender and race through Frontex’s Risk Analysis
Title / Series / Name
Publication Volume
Publication Issue
Pages
Editors
Keywords
Border security
Frontex
intersectionality
intervisuality
postcolonial feminism
visual politics
Sociology and Political Science
Political Science and International Relations
SDG 5 - Gender Equality
Frontex
intersectionality
intervisuality
postcolonial feminism
visual politics
Sociology and Political Science
Political Science and International Relations
SDG 5 - Gender Equality
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/27587
Abstract
Visuals, including photographs and data visualizations, play a crucial role in the politics of EU border security, both as an internal governance tool (e.g. in surveillance) and as an external means of communication/representation (e.g. in photojournalism). Combining scholarship on photographic representations of migration with literature on surveillance technologies and data visualizations, we argue that these visuals interact to reproduce gendered and racialized meanings of migration and border security. Using a feminist postcolonial lens, we develop an intervisual framework for studying how processes of gendering and racialization render subjects, practices and spaces knowable at the intersection between these visuals. We apply this framework to a case study of Frontex’s Risk Analysis Reports (2010–2021) and demonstrate how it is applicable to other security institutions. The intervisual analysis reveals how the migrant Other and (white) European are visually reproduced through: 1) the (in)visibilization of bodies; 2) the ascription and denial of agency; and 3) the spatialization of borders as ‘frontier imaginings’ that oscillate between fortification and expansionism. The intersectional co-constitution of gender and race, we conclude, is central to the visual politics of Frontex, contributing to problematizing migrants and migration and legitimizing violent border practices.
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Publisher
Place of Publication
Type
Journal article
Date
2023-08-01
Language
ISBN
Identifiers
10.1177/09670106231182314