TY - CHAP

T1 - Border control and blurred responsibilities at the airport

AU - Møhl, Perle

PY - 2019

Y1 - 2019

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - security studies

KW - airport studies

KW - technology

KW - border control

KW - policing

KW - political economy

KW - threshold negotiations

KW - discretion

KW - random checks

U2 - 10.4324/9781351127387

DO - 10.4324/9781351127387

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 978-0-8153-5676-9

T3 - Routledge Studies in Anthropology

SP - 118

EP - 135

BT - Security Blurs

A2 - Diphoorn, Tessa

A2 - Grassiani, Erella

PB - Routledge

CY - London

ER -