Dr Victor Iwuoha

European Externalization Policies and Biometric ID Cooperation in West Africa

Hypothesizing that recent recalibration of European external border security measures in Africa via the biometric ID system is detrimental to both African migrants and European security objectives, this project interrogates effects of these measures, including the biometric ID cooperative scheme, in West Africa. Pursuing fieldwork in the borderlands of Kantchari (Burkina Faso/Niger) and Sèmè-Krakè (Benin/Nigeria), the project will explore consequences of these measures, and associated local practices, from both security and ethical perspectives.

Utilizing the conceptual framework of the Welsh School of Security Studies will allow the project to demonstrate that security and ethics are not necessarily competing: they can reinforce each other, positively and negatively. Addressing a gap in global scholarship on the topic of European border externalization, which is overwhelmingly Western, the project will produce locally sensitive, African contribution to these debates, broadly aiming to stimulate multi-relational conversation on migration decoloniality and expand the global migration policy space.