“If One is Black, One is Targeted”: ENAR new Report Documents Europe’s Two-Tier Border System
Brussels, Belgium – 12 May 2026
It was an ordinary afternoon on a regional train heading into France. Agnes Lerolle, a civil society volunteer, watched as French border police moved through her carriage — stopping three young Black men for document checks. In the same carriage, a white Swiss family admitted they had left their papers at home. The officer’s response: “No problem.” The Black passengers were expelled from the train. The white passengers continued their journey.
This scene, documented by researchers from the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), is not exceptional. It is, according to a major new report released today, the everyday reality of how Europe’s borders function. “Raceless in Name Only: Whiteness and the Racial Governance of Mobility in the European Union” — the product of eighteen months of field research across 5 European border regions (German-Austrian, German-Czech, Italian-French, Slovenian-Croatian, the Basque border region) and 3 EU countries (France, Greece and Cyprus) — provides the most comprehensive investigation to date of how racial logic determines who moves freely in Europe, and who does not.
The report, a comparative analysis of desk and field research conducted across five European borders and three EU countries between June 2024 and December 2025, argues that European migration governance is fundamentally structured by “whiteness” — a manufactured political identity rooted in colonial hierarchies that determines whose mobility is permitted and protected, and whose is not.
Key findings from the report include:
- A two-tier mobility system: People racialised as white move freely across European borders; people racialised as Black and Brown face systematic profiling, detention, pushbacks, and death. At the Menton Garavan station on the French-Italian border, researchers documented police conducting document checks based on passengers’ skin colour, while white travellers — including those without papers — were waved through. “If one is Black, one is targeted,” one Senegalese man told researchers.
- Stopped at every border: An Iraqi man who holds Croatian citizenship described being stopped every single time he travelled between Croatia and Slovenia by bus. “I feel shame,” he told researchers. “They would take me out at the border, and everybody would have to wait.” Women wearing the hijab reported heightened scrutiny at multiple border points, facing a layered discrimination combining race, religion, and gender.
- Borders that kill: Migrants forced onto dangerous routes by the closing of safe pathways face death in forests, rivers, and mountain passes. The report documents deaths at the Bidasoa River in the Basque region; a woman named Blessing Matthew drowned in the Durance river while being pursued by French gendarmes; seventy people suffocated in an abandoned lorry near the Austrian border. In the first half of 2025, over 240,000 people received deportation orders from EU Member States.
- Europe’s double standard: The contrast between Europe’s welcome of Ukrainian refugees and its treatment of those fleeing equivalent crises from Africa, Asia, and the SWANA region is stark. European officials justified the difference by describing Ukrainians as “intelligent,” “educated,” and “European” — people “not the types of refugees they were used to.”
- Far-right ideology normalised in EU law: The report demonstrates how Great Replacement thinking has been absorbed into mainstream EU migration governance, shaping legislation that frames racialised migration as a security threat to a self-imagined “pristine” white Europe.
- Precarity as a governing tool: From the “80-cent jobs” scheme in Germany to housing exclusion in Greece and Cyprus, irregularised migrants are systematically exposed to exploitation, homelessness, and chronic psychological distress. “I feel like a burden. I can’t think about the future or make any plans,” a Palestinian-Moroccan man living without status in France told researchers.
To address these critical issues, “Raceless in Name Only” offers two sets of recommendations — migration-specific and whole-of-society — including:
- Embedding anti-racism in migration governance: Advocating for anti-racism as a foundational principle across all migration policymaking and practice.
- Rolling back coercive powers: Calling for the withdrawal of the Deportation Regulation and an end to the expansion of Frontex’s mandate.
- Decoupling migration status from essential services: Recommending that access to healthcare, housing, and education be delinked from migration status, with firewalls to prevent data sharing with enforcement bodies.
- Addressing societal-level racism: Proposing mandatory racial impact assessments for all legislation, education that acknowledges European responsibility in colonial history, and sustained funding for civil society organisations.
Curious to know more? Check it out!
About the “Eroding the Rule of Law: Racism and Migration in Europe” project:
This project investigates the impact of European migration policies on racialised populations, documenting instances of profiling and violence across five European border regions and three EU countries. The ENAR booklet “Racial Profiling Practices at EU Internal Borders” (with PICUM, March 2026) documents further case studies.
For more information or to arrange an interview, contact:
Amira Salama, ENAR Communications Officer
Mobile: (+32) 489 02 78 63 – Email: a.salama@enar-eu.org – Web: www.enar-eu.org
Note to editors:
The European Network Against Racism (ENAR aisbl) stands against racism and discrimination and advocates equality and solidarity for all in Europe. We connect local and national anti-racist NGOs throughout Europe and voice the concerns of ethnic and religious minorities
