Epistemic Borderwork:Violent Pushbacks, Refugees, and the Politics of Knowledge at the EU Border

Abstract

Borders are sites of epistemic struggle. Focusing on the illegal tactic of the “pushback,” which is routinely deployed by state authorities to forcefully expel asylum seekers from European Union territory without due process, this article explores the uneven politics of knowledge that helps to support or unsettle this clandestine border violence. Drawing on long-term qualitative research on the Croatia–Bosnia border, including interviews with pushback survivors and activists, as well as a database of border violence reports, we explore the competing truth claims and epistemologies that help to conceal, or counter, the pushback regime. Informed by postcolonial perspectives and contributing to political geographies of violence, we argue that “epistemic violence” (Spivak 1988) is a central feature of contemporary borders. We propose that epistemic borderwork is regularly used by state authorities to silence unwanted voices, undermine insurgent perspectives, and stifle the capacity of refugees to draw attention to their own mistreatment. In opposition to this injustice, activists are documenting, mapping, and archiving pushback survivor testimony to construct a counternarrative of refusal, which subverts the harmful knowledge claims of state authorities. In doing so, refugees and activists create epistemic friction, which helps to resist the ontological violence of borders, and “pushes back” against the pushback regime.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2022.2077167
Divisions: College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities
College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Politics, History and International Relations
College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Aston Centre for Europe
Aston University (General)
Additional Information: © 2022 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
Uncontrolled Keywords: asylum seekers,borders,epistemic violence,pushbacks,refugees,Geography, Planning and Development,Earth-Surface Processes
Publication ISSN: 2469-4460
Last Modified: 09 Dec 2024 08:48
Date Deposited: 01 Aug 2022 10:03
Full Text Link: https://notting ... t-the-eu-border
Related URLs: http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
https://www.tan ... 52.2022.2077167 (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2023
Published Online Date: 2022-07-21
Accepted Date: 2022-03-14
Authors: Davies, Thom
Isakjee, Arshad
Obradovic-Wochnik, Jelena (ORCID Profile 0000-0003-0850-2737)

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