Reframing Border Security through Frontex Focusing on Identity Dynamics and Inclusivity in Southeast Europe

Doi: https://doi.org/10.58603/BSTO4690

Rezumat: This article reframes border security in southeast Europe by placing Frontex, identity dynamics and inclusivity at the centre of analysis. While dominant policy and institutional discourses continue to treat border security primarily as a technical and geopolitical matter of effectiveness and deterrence, the study argues that such a framing is analytically insufficient. Drawing on critical border studies, securitisation theory and scholarship on differential inclusion, the article develops an integrated theoretical framework that treats Frontex’s operational practices, processes of identity formation and struggles over inclusivity as mutually constitutive. Empirically, it examines two key operational theatres, the Greek - Aegean border and the Western Balkans route, through a qualitative, interpretive analysis of official documents, secondary literature and civil society reports. The findings show that Frontex actively participates in the production of security knowledge and the categorisation of mobile subjects, contributes to racialised and gendered othering processes, and shapes the conditions of differential inclusion at the EU’s external and externalised borders. Identity negotiations take distinct forms in Greece and in the Western Balkans. Inclusivity remains structurally constrained by operational pressures, blurred accountability and limited access to protection. The article concludes that a more comprehensive understanding of European border governance requires treating questions of belonging and rights as constitutive rather than residual dimensions of border security, with implications for both theory and policy.