Grasping Expertise on the Margins of Eurocracy: A Contribution to the Analysis of Legitimation Dynamics within the EU through a Sociology of Expert Mobilizations in Turkey

This article examines transnational expert mobilization within the context of the implementation of European technical assistance programs conducted far from Brussels. It shows the extent to which the Commission’s subcontracting of expertise generates unintended consequences on the knowledge promoted in its external policy. By focusing the analytical lens on the weak field of expertise in border management, the investigation unveils how experts have established themselves as intermediaries for the tools of the Frontex agency in Turkey. These experts have nevertheless had to engage with the authority of the Turkish state to maintain their presence in the “field of intervention” and cultivate the acceptability of their expertise due to the imperative of “partnership” and the emphasis on “adapting to the field” in the domain of technical assistance. Consequently, the legitimacy, strategies and practices of these experts are also constructed through a system of exchange and relationships of collusion and collision with the security forces of the Turkish state. Thus, the chain-like delegation of European public policies prompts us to study how fields related to Eurocracy, distant from Brussels, exert effects on the (de)stabilization, weakening, or strengthening of the dominant actors and institutions of the EU.