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Fortress Europe and the European Union’s Smart Borders Package : Biopolitical Control, Securitization, and Exclusion
Kolsteeg, M.K. (2025) Fortress Europe and the European Union’s Smart Borders Package : Biopolitical Control, Securitization, and Exclusion.
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| Abstract: | Regulating migration has become an increasingly crucial policy concern for the European Union (EU). This thesis investigates how the metaphor of Fortress Europe (FE) is constructed through the EU Smart Borders Package (SBP). It poses the assumption that the narrative surrounding the EU SBP contributes to the symbolic construction of Fortress Europe by framing borders as sites of securitization, technological control, and exclusion. The research question central to this thesis is: “How is the metaphor of Fortress Europe constructed through the EU Smart Borders Package narrative?” . This study performs a qualitative content analysis of five document types – EU documents, academic articles, NGO reports, media articles, and book chapters – utilizing ATLAS.ti. Drawing on Foucault’s Theory of Biopolitics and extended theories, Agamben’s Homo Sacer and Mbembe’s Necropolitics, this research finds that the EU SBP transforms FE from a territorial concept into an invisible, algorithmic system of surveillance and exclusion. Framed by the EU as efficient and protective, critical actors such as NGOs, scholars, and the media critique the SBP as biopolitical – and necropolitical – tools that reinforce systematic inequality and marginalization. The metaphor of FE is both confirmed and contested by institutions, turning the SBP into a site of symbolic and political controversy regarding the meaning and legitimacy of borders. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 88 social and public administration |
| Programme: | Management Society and Technology BSc (56654) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/107819 |
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