Cobarrubias, S., Cuttitta, P., Casas-Cortés, M., Lemberg-Pedersen, M., El Qadim, N., İşleyen, B., Fine, S., Giusa, C., & Heller, C. (2023). Interventions on the concept of externalisation in migration and border studies. Political Geography, 105

Sebastian Cobarrubias and Paolo Cuttitta

About twenty years have passed since initial research on migration-related border externalisation began to be published (Andreas, 2003; Lahav & Guiraudon, 2000; Zolberg, 2003). Externalisation is the process through which states directly or indirectly operate activities related to border control outside their sovereign territories, namely in other countries or on the high seas. Practices of externalisation illustrate that the state itself is a dynamic and multi-scalar process “spread both

Maribel Casas-Cortés, Sebastian Cobarrubias and Martin Lemberg-Pedersen

Research on cases of externalisation policies undertaken by EU member states has produced much insightful work on the distinct legal and spatial configurations of extraterritorial border management (Lahav & Guiraudon, 2000; Samers, 2004), and its implications for development policies (Boswell, 2003), international relations (Lavenex, 1999) and migration management as a whole (Geiger & Pécoud, 2010). This research has contributed to tracing the distinct bordering assemblages created through

Nora El Qadim and Beste İşleyen

The concept of externalisation has been used extensively in the context of critical examinations of the migration policies of European and other Western countries. In the last ten years however, the concept has been increasingly criticised. This contribution focuses on EU externalisation, building on the authors’ research (El Qadim, 2017, 2018; İşleyen, 2018, 2022, 2023), to show that one of the limits of the concept has been its Eurocentrism.

A proliferation of studies has taken the perspective

Paolo Cuttitta, Shoshana Fine, Caterina Giusa and Charles Heller

Externalisation is an intrinsically state-centric concept insofar as it is based on the idea of state territoriality, postulating neatly bounded spaces of exclusive sovereignty within fixed border lines. With externalisation, states expand their migration and border control activities beyond their territorial boundaries, so that such activities can be carried out within other countries’ sovereign territory. Yet, since “borderwork is no longer the exclusive preserve of the nation-state” (

Paolo Cuttitta, Charles Heller and Martin Lemberg-Pedersen

The concept of externalisation rests on assumptions of interiority and exteriority. Based on these, ‘internal’ actors (states, or supra-state formations such as the EU) carry out certain activities outside their territories or delegate the relevant tasks to ‘external’ actors. Scholars have long highlighted the elusiveness of the inside/outside dichotomy (Bigo, 2001; Walker, 1993). Here, we seek to trouble and rethink this divide with regard to research pertaining to European externalisation of