Description
This paper seeks to map the process by which violent border policies emerge in response to perceived climate threats, through a detailed case study of Frontex and its public-facing security documents.
Drawing on a range of scholarly explanations – from Malm’s (2021) evocation of an explicit, consciously ethnonationalist/ethnocapitalist ‘fossil fascism’, to the Transnational Institute’s focus on more immediate profit motives, and ‘the business of building … the global climate wall’ (2019, 2021) – I focus on the development of border militarisation at Frontex. By tracing the development of Frontex’s ‘security outlook’ – as captured by its ‘Annual Risk Analysis’ documents, as well as its more recent ‘Strategic Risk Analysis’ publications – I argue that there is neither an overt programme of xenophobia, nor simple profit-seeking opportunism. Rather, they reflect a ‘garbage-can model’ (Cohen et al, 1972) of organisational development – a gradual (or in some cases, strikingly rapid) accretion of disparate policy priorities that ratchet towards increasingly militarised policies, as climate is attached to existing perceived threats and vulnerabilities.
In doing so, I seek to illustrate how xenophobic and militarised policies have – and likely will continue to – come about in response to perceived climate threats.
