Elements for a theory of the racial European border

This contribution attempts to outline the contours of a racial European border. Our thesis is that the category of ‘race’ cannot be functionally derived from the border. ‘Race’ should therefore not be understood as something produced at the border or as a result of certain border policies and practices. Nor can ‘Race’ be defined through racism at the border – that is, through the ‘effectiveness’ or brutality of what we actually experience as a politics of closure – or through a racist border that distinguishes between economic migrants and climate or war refugees. Starting from this axiomatics, we propose several analytical elements for a distinctly historical-genealogical understanding of the European border that – in its official pronouncements and institutional forms – obscures its racial genealogy. We thus depart from both liberal and (radical) leftist assumptions according to which ‘Race’ is understood primarily as a ‘critical category of knowledge and analysis’, while anti-racism is pursued chiefly as a politics of anti-discrimination. In our understanding, ‘Race’ is the modality through which racelessness is produced as the contemporary racial EUropean border. From this perspective, we also address the blind spots of critical border studies which we describe as a form of European border colorblindness.