Despite the long history of human mobility and the embeddedness of contemporary migrations in global flows of people, goods, information, and capital, they are often represented – particularly within political and media discourse – as exceptional and crisis-driven. The thesis examines how postcolonial theory, combined with the concept of racism, explains such views on migration. Grounded in a conceptual-historical analysis of key contributions at the intersection of postcolonial theory and Foucauldian power analysis, the study employs a methodological framework combining historical-sociological interpretation with critical reflection. The thesis assumes that contemporary European societies are structured around social hierarchies grounded in racism, deeply embedded in social structures and manifested in migration policies. The analysis shows that racism and its logic of exclusion, rooted in antiquity and consolidated in colonialism, persist as a constant of the European imaginary, inscribed into contemporary institutions, discourses, and mechanisms of power. Today, racism no longer manifests through biological categories but through cultural differences and neoliberal logics of utility. Migration policies, as an institutionalized forms of this logic and an expression of necropolitical rationality, determine who is entitled to life and security, and who remains excluded. Consequently, Europe is built less on universal values such as freedom, equality, and solidarity, and increasingly on defensive practices, fear of the Other, and the accentuation of difference.
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