EU border research supporting repressive migration policies

The University of Reading is one of the top universities to receive research and innovation funding from the EU’s Framework Programmes and a range of other EU instruments to support the building of Europe’s border regime.

A new report from the Transnational Institute, “Border Labs,” highlights how universities are deeply involved in Europe’s repressive border and migration policies in multiple ways.

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Three UK universities were in the top 20 recipients of EU funding for border security and control research: the University of Reading, Queen Mary University of London, and Sheffield Hallam University. From 2002 to May 2025, over 200 universities, higher-education institutions, and academies participated in 110 EU Framework Programme projects related to border security and control, receiving a total of over €100 million in EU funding.

Although UK universities were temporarily excluded from EU funding following Brexit, a new agreement has allowed them to fully participate again from 2024 onwards.

From biometrics and surveillance to AI, lie detection, drones, and other unmanned systems, the report documents universities working across a wide range of border-control technologies.

AI and pseudoscience

The report points out that there is investment in technologies that are not merely repressive. Some are straight-up stupid and are done through opaque ways, like spin-off companies.

These spin-off start-ups are built on university research. The same academics who did the research often run them.

Manchester Metropolitan University was a recipient of EU funding for iBorderCtrl, a Horizon 2020 project that ran from 2016 to 2019.

Silent Talker was a Manchester Metropolitan University spin-off that claimed its AI could detect lies. Its creators claimed it could detect deception by analysing facial micro-expressions.

The company is now dissolved, and accusations of pseudoscience have followed it.

Working with arms companies

The report also shows how deeply universities are embedded with the arms industry.

Italian defence giant Leonardo is the most frequent corporate partner of universities in EU-funded border security projects. It has collaborated repeatedly with Finland’s Laurea University of Applied Sciences and the Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza. These partnerships span projects on maritime surveillance, hybrid threats, and customs interoperability.

In the UK, BAE Systems has a longstanding relationship with the University of Southampton. The report gives an example of how the border-industrial-academic complex works.

BAE funds research through the university’s Centre for Research in Active Control. That partnership helped produce ClanTect, a university spin-off that sold heartbeat detectors to Frontex and the UK Border Force.

The report describes Frontex as “a central node in the EU’s securitised border regime.” Frontex is the European Border and Coast Guard Agency.

EU and the Saudi connection

The report also brings out a connection between European universities and Saudi Arabia.

Frontex has a longstanding cooperation with the Naif Arab University for Security Sciences, or NAUSS. The institution is based in Riyadh and linked to the Saudi royal family. Its governing council includes senior officials from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, and Jordan.

The report says

Training of security forces in Arab countries is an important part of the university’s programme, which is where Frontex has stepped in. Institutional contacts date back to at least 2020, at a time when Saudi Arabia was playing an active role in the Yemen War.

Canary reported this week on Saudi Arabia’s record.

The Western-backed Gulf theocracy is one of the biggest recipients of UK arms exports.

African trade unions have accused it of widespread violations against migrant workers: forced labour, wage theft, physical and sexual abuse, and systemic racism. Workers have been locked in homes, forced to work 18 to 20 hours a day, denied wages, healthcare and rest.

Saudi Arabia is now trying to dismiss a formal complaint at the International Labour Organisation.

Netanyahuisation of EU universities

Michele Lancione, who wrote the foreword, argues that Europe is seeing a Netanyahuisation.

That means universities are not simply being controlled by far-right governments.

They are being reshaped to serve the military-border-industrial complex, just as Israeli universities have been reshaped to serve occupation and genocide.

In Israel, universities have become servile to the military occupation of Palestine. No Israeli institution has spoken out against the genocide in Gaza.

Europe is heading the same way, the report warns.

Featured image via the Canary