The 2015/2016 migrant crisis has exposed the inefficacy of the European Union’s political institutions. Combined with the Greek financial crisis and the exit of the United Kingdom from the Union, this turn of events indicated a move towards a (not yet consensual) “new Europe”. Within this transition, the negative populist and racist motives, whose victims are mostly the migrants, have been building up. The governmental agencies, with support from the media, but also with the backing of so-called “expert opinions”, have been treating migrants in a very specific manner, which this article tackles from the standpoint of post-colonial epistemologies. These epistemologies reveal an instrumental and manipulative attitude towards the populations in distress, the logic of borders and the building of abysses between the cultures, the strengthening of racist hierarchies, but also the abandonment of the foundations of the Enlightenment by social sciences and the replacement of these foundations with technocratic regulations. The article presents the epistemology of the South and militant research as possible means of surpassing the objectification of migrants and the inclusion of their voices into the process of building the future of a different Europe.
