Governing through pressure: colonial legacies and European integration in counter-terrorism policy

This article examines how counter-terrorism has become a permanent governmental rationality across European countries through a comparative analysis of France and Portugal. Drawing on securitisation theory, governmentality studies and postcolonial critique, we develop the framework of postcolonial governmentality, which reveals how colonial techniques persist within contemporary security governance. France operates through civilisational securitisation, constructing terrorism as an existential threat to Republican identity, while Portugal employs technocratic securitisation, adopting counter-terrorism measures via bureaucratic compliance and European alignment. Despite different pathways, both reproduce racialised governance targeting postcolonial migrant communities. We identify three structural mechanisms driving convergence: (1) colonial legacies that provide institutional templates and epistemic hierarchies; (2) transnational professional networks that establish epistemic dependency; and (3) governing through pressure, a process of anticipatory governance driven by EU integration and reputational management rather than threat exposure. These mechanisms contribute to securitisation by diffusion, where counter-terrorism logics proliferate through institutional mimicry and professional circulation, rather than in response to an immediate crisis. This diffusion embeds colonial hierarchies within liberal security regimes, reconfiguring sovereignty, legality and citizenship.