Border Frictions

Border frictions offers an important, understudied perspective on bordering practices and border control: the perspective of individual border control agents and the organizational structures they are operating within. By drawing on impressive and unique ethnographic fieldwork on the US-Canada border, Côté-Boucher shows the messiness and complexity of border work and therewith shines light on the challenges those who are tasked with this work are facing. It is at the border where socio-political, legal, organizational and individual goals, priorities and beliefs can clash hard. These clashes, and the ways in with individual agents deal with them are addressed in Border Frictions. In making sense of all this, the author looks at border control and bordering practices through, amongst others, a critical race and a critical feminist lens. The combination of unique fieldwork, a critical theoretical analysis and the focus on street-level border control agents and the various environments they are—often simultaneously—operating within makes Border Frictions a much needed and valuable addition to the every growing body of literature on borders and border criminologies.

Maartje van der Woude, Professor of Law & Society, Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance & Society, Leiden Law School, the Netherlands

This book by Karine Côté-Boucher is an essential read for anyone who considers that an investigation into human practices in context is the best antidote against exaggerations coming from those who adopt the radical hypothesis of a data revolution in security matters, be it to praise smart borders or to deplore the inexorability of data surveillance by algorithms. Her book is an absolute pleasure to read because of the attention she gives to the voices and practical work of border guards as well as her capacity to give a nuanced picture of this complex human tapestry. However, this empathy does not turn into an acceptance of actors’ inner systems of justification. She explains how the transformation of borderwork is not driven by smart borders nor by integrated data management with the aim of simplifying life, but by a competition of positions inside a field amongst security professionals endowed with distinct professional socializations. What is crucial therefore is not technology as such, but these professionals’ social use of the fraught integration of data in border management. The policing at a distance enabled by such deployment of data coincides with the reinforcement of dynamics of masculinization in bordering, as well as with the tensions created by unions and intergenerational conflicts within border agencies. All these elements lead to complex interactions between data management logics, officers’ experience of data-led bordering and preoccupations for more rigid law enforcement practices. This "tour de force" presents a political anthropology of this professional milieu in Canada and will certainly inspire other researchers around the world to follow her rigorous path to a better analysis of the "investment" of sovereignty, technology and freedom into border mobilities.

Didier Bigo, Professor of International Political Sociology at Sciences-Po Paris-CERI, France