Of “old” and “new” ways: Generations, border control and the temporality of security

Abstract

Whether it insists on the significance of anticipation or interrogates the centrality of pre-crime to security practice, current scholarship misses how security professionals make sense of their work’s temporality. Borrowing its theoretical tools from the sociology of generations and evaluation, this article focuses on how Canadian border officers rely on generational categorizations to negotiate change in their work. It proposes exploring the coexistence of competing temporalities in border control through the notion of generational borderwork. Produced by different paths of professional socialization and embedded in tensions over social status in ports of entry, generational borderwork makes more explicit the security field’s logic of aging, the internal dissensions over policing methods and the decisions these differences sustain. Whether it concerns nostalgia for economic protectionism or disagreements over the respective value of intelligence, technologies and interview skills, the contested nature of time in border control invites investigation into officers’ transforming policing sensibilities.

Spy, track and archive: The temporality of visibility in Eurosur and Jora

“…In this case, the temporality of visibility that is played out is not related to a specific intervention but, rather, forms the basis and the archive of the states’ knowledge about migrant logistics of crossing. These multiple layers of sight do actually also reveal an irreducible heterogeneity of temporalities upon which different modes of intervention are structured (Côté-Boucher, 2017). I suggest that it would be misleading to encapsulate these multiple temporalities of visibility into a main and dominant one: in fact, it is precisely the intertwining of an archival function with a future-oriented one that opens up spaces of governmentality and strengthens states’ preparedness for potential uncertainties.…”

“…First, it points to the central role played by the archiving of migratory events in generating future-oriented spaces of governmentality. The production of ‘historical patterns’ of migratory events and the data-storage activity are used not for predicting or calculating forthcoming threats but, rather, for acting out potential and not fully definable migration risk scenarios (Côté-Boucher, 2017). Second, the article shows that it is not a question of a ‘tipping point’ that could be triggered by the arrival of migrants (Aradau and Van Munster, 2011) but, rather, of the crafting of spaces of migration governmentality for managing ‘migration crisis’ by diverting, troubling and to some extent anticipating migration routes.…”

Policing-Mobilities in the Border-Stripe

“…Balzacq et al 2010;Schwell 2008) or Latour's actor-network theory (Bigo 2014). Since empirical research with border practitioners is only emerging, likewise are grounded theoretical considerations (Aas and Gundhus 2015;Côté-Boucher 2018;Bigo 2014b).…”

Secure in our Masculinities: A Phenomenological Investigation of Private Security Work in Ottawa

“…Scholars have investigated masculinities and masculine dominance among construction workers (Ness, 2012;Paap, 2006), firefighters (Ainsworth, 2014;Braedley, 2015;Eriksen et al, 2016;Reid et al, 2018), police (Chan, 2011;LeBeuf, 1997;O'Neill, 2016;Silvestri, 2017), and border security officers (Côté-Boucher, 2018. They have noted that there are multiple types of masculinities in these different fields of work.…”

“…Furthermore, it is dominated by a specific type of masculinity, by whiteness, authoritarianism, and aggression. It shares this emphasis on masculinities with other fields of work such as construction work (Ness, 2012;Paap, 2006), firefighting (Ainsworth, 2014;Braedley, 2015;Eriksen et al, 2016;Reid et al, 2018), police (Chan, 2011;LeBeuf, 1997;O'Neill, 2016;Silvestri, 2017) and border security forces (Côté-Boucher, 2018. Despite this, the private security industry attracts a diverse group of people including many women, racialized folks, recent immigrants and retirees.…”