Departheid in the Post-Soviet Space? The Shifting Geopolitics and Racialisation of Migration Governance in Lithuania

This paper analyses the intersection of geopolitics and racialisation in EUrope's migration governance by zooming in on the specific case of Lithuania. Since 2021, Lithuania has seen the arrival of migrants from Africa and the Middle East along with Belarusian citizens fleeing the Lukashenko regime and Ukrainian citizens escaping Russia's war in Ukraine. While these mobilities have occurred in parallel, they have evoked a strict categorical hierarchy in the Lithuanian government's discourse and policy response. By bringing Barak Kalir's (2019; Conflict and Society 5:19–40) concept of Departheid into conversation with a growing body of work on race, coloniality, and double hegemony in Eastern Europe, this paper proposes an understanding of Lithuania's migration governance through the intersection of race and geopolitics. As Lithuania wrestles between Western and Russian influences, its ambition of belonging to the “European space” is marked by geopolitical manoeuvres meant to distance Lithuania from the “authoritarian East” and reverberations of coloniality that delineate the expanding horizons of European power. Thus, we argue that the Lithuanian government's response to migration should be understood as a form of Departheid that is distinct to East European countries in the post-Soviet space.