Description
This paper explores the gendered effects of European security assistance in North Africa on immigrant men as they make their way to Europe. Within the European Union, male immigrants are frequently securitized in political discourse and media narratives and are often portrayed as potential threats to public order and state security. Consequently, they are subjected to a range of security measures, some of them violent and repressive in nature. While security assistance is designed to train and equip partner security forces, ostensibly to reduce human rights violations, its implementation frequently results in the opposite. As such, this paper asks: how can we explain the violent practices of security assistance beneficiaries toward immigrant men?
Grounded in feminist epistemology, this paper addresses two major gaps in the security assistance literature: first, its gender-blind approach to security assistance programming and second, the limited attention to the everyday impacts of such programs on vulnerable populations. Working from the case of the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for stability and addressing the root causes of irregular migration and displaced persons in Africa (EUTF), this paper reintroduces securitization theory to the analysis of security programs such as security assistance and foregrounds masculinities as a key analytical lens for understanding violence. It draws on interviews with program designers, security personnel, trainers and immigrants who transited through Morocco, Tunisia and Libya on their way to Europe. Finally, this paper argues that security assistance programs contribute to the securitization of immigrant masculinities – constructing migrant men as inherently threatening and thereby justifying exceptional, and often violent, measures against them.
