Border control and blurred responsibilities at the airport
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Book chapter › Research › peer-review
Documents
- Møhl, Perle (2019) Border control and blurred responsibilites at the airport
Submitted manuscript, 1.02 MB, PDF document
Border Security at Copenhagen Airport is maintained on a daily basis through the activities, intents and perspectives of a multiple and unstable assemblage of public and private actors and technologies. Two opposed types of motivations play the leading roles in this work: on the one hand, securing the national borders against what are defined as intruders and threats and, on the other, a general pursuit of economic advantage and profit. Security plays a part in both, in itself becoming a negotiable commodity.
Based on fieldwork among border police in Copenhagen Airport, the chapter examines two instances of control where the actual processes of decision-making and allocation of responsibilities and authority are blurred. The examples concern, for one, the negotiations for setting an acceptable threshold for facial recognition in an automated border control technology, and, secondly, the discretionary work of individual border guards in the profiling of passengers and the detection of potential threats.
As the chapter shows, the airport is a privileged site for analysing the blurring of security responsibilities, decision-making and ongoing negotiations between different parties, because border security is produced by both public and private actors, and because the economic and the security stakes in this place are so obviously entwined and guide most interactions.
Based on fieldwork among border police in Copenhagen Airport, the chapter examines two instances of control where the actual processes of decision-making and allocation of responsibilities and authority are blurred. The examples concern, for one, the negotiations for setting an acceptable threshold for facial recognition in an automated border control technology, and, secondly, the discretionary work of individual border guards in the profiling of passengers and the detection of potential threats.
As the chapter shows, the airport is a privileged site for analysing the blurring of security responsibilities, decision-making and ongoing negotiations between different parties, because border security is produced by both public and private actors, and because the economic and the security stakes in this place are so obviously entwined and guide most interactions.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Security Blurs : The Politics of Plural Security Provision |
Editors | Tessa Diphoorn, Erella Grassiani |
Number of pages | 18 |
Place of Publication | London |
Publisher | Routledge |
Publication date | 2019 |
Pages | 118-135 |
Chapter | 7 |
ISBN (Print) | 978-0-8153-5676-9 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 978-1-351-12738-7 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2019 |
Series | Routledge Studies in Anthropology |
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- Faculty of Social Sciences - security studies, airport studies, technology, border control, policing, political economy, threshold negotiations, discretion, random checks
Research areas
Links
- https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781351127370
Final published version
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ID: 201236809