Border security as practice: An agenda for research

Abstract

The ambition of this special issue is to contribute to contemporary scholarly analyses of border security by bringing more focus onto a specific field of inquiry: the practices of the plurality of power-brokers involved in the securing of borders. Border security is addressed from the angle of the everyday practices of those who are appointed to carry it out; considering border security as practice is essential for shedding light on contemporary problematizations of security. Underscoring the methodological specificity of fieldwork research, we call for a better grounding of scholarship within the specific agencies intervening in bordering spaces in order to provide detailed analyses of the contextualized practices of security actors.

(Cr)immigrant framing in border areas: decision-making processes of Dutch border police officers

“…This raises questions about what kind of people and situations arouse their suspicion and how they employ their discretion. Various authors have therefore recently stressed the need for empirical studies of street-level bureaucrats involved in border policing (Cote-Boucher et al 2014;Loftus 2015).…”

Smart and secure borders through automated border control systems in the EU? The views of political stakeholders in the Member States

“…327-329). Hence our contribution is driven less by theory and more by methodology (see Côté-Boucher et al 2014), prioritising the empirical evidence in the subjective views of political stakeholders.…”

Op de grens van het vreemdelingentoezicht: discretionaire beslissingen binnen het Mobiel Toezicht Veiligheid

“…Verschillende auteurs zien vooral de beslissingen van street level officers (Lipsky, 1980) -en in het bijzonder de mogelijkheid om mensen te stoppen voor een controle -als de belangrijkste factor in het crimmigratieproces (Motomura, 2011;Pratt, 2010;Stumpf, 2006). Er is recentelijk dan ook meermaals benadrukt dat er een sterke behoefte is aan empirisch onderzoek naar de dagelijkse praktijk van agenten die opereren als grens-of vreemdelingenpolitie (Cote-Boucher, Infantino & Salter, 2014;Loftus, 2015) Loftus (2015) raadt daarbij aan om te putten uit de rijke literatuur op het gebied van reguliere politieambtenaren en na te gaan in hoeverre de centrale bevindingen daarvan ook van toepassing zijn op grenspolitieagenten.…”