This project offers a pioneering investigation of the everyday politics of secrecy in the work of two central European border bureaucracies: Frontex and the European Commission. Against systematic denials from public authorities, investigative journalists and migrant solidarity activists have been documenting the complicity of European Union (EU) institutions in the escalating brutalities at Europe’s borders, transforming EU ‘migration management’ into one of today’s most politically contentious policy domains. Yet, the everyday workings of EU border bureaucracies that lie at the centre of efforts to deter, contain, criminalise, and expel ‘undesirable’ migrant populations remain shrouded by opacity.

This project deploys ‘Freedom of Information’ (FOI) mechanisms as a unique methodological and analytical vantage point for interrogating this regime of opacity. First, through analysis of a vast corpus of hitherto confidential documents generated by these bureaucracies as they script and enact bordering policies, the project will reveal how traces of violence are simultaneously inscribed in yet obscured through mundane bureaucratic practices and deeply engrained technocratic imaginaries of controlling mobility. Second, combined with interviews with senior EU bureaucrats, investigative journalists, and transparency activists, it will scrutinise how a transparency mechanism designed to hold EU institutions accountable vis-à-vis citizens is transformed into an instrument of obfuscation, and dissect how secrecy surrounding routine border violence is practiced, sustained, and (un)done at the level of the everyday.

Capitalising on my long-standing collaboration with leading investigative journalists, the project makes a vital contribution not only to understanding but, in pursuit of ISRF goals, challenging the regime of opacity that sustains Europe’s increasingly hostile border regime. Interdisciplinary in its research design, methodologically innovative, and committed to the ethos of public sociology, it will generate two academic articles, lay the foundations for a monograph, and engage influential policy stakeholders and wider publics through an interactive digital media platform - BORDERS|(UN)REDACTED.