Policing Migration: Described and Observed Cooperation Experiences of Police and Border Guards’ in the Baltic Sea Area
Policing Migration: Described and Observed Cooperation Experiences of Police and Border Guards’ in the Baltic Sea Area Authors: Yakhlef, Sophia; Basic, Goran & Åkerström, Malin This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published in the Journal of Applied Security Research online [January 12, 2017], available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19361610.2017.1228422 To cite this article: Yakhlef, Sophia; Basic, Goran & Åkerström, Malin (2017) Policing Migration: Described and Observed Cooperation Experiences of Police and Border Guards in the Baltic Sea Area, Journal of Applied Security Research, 12:1, 117-140, DOI: 10.1080/19361610.2017.1228422. Abstract: “Collaboration” is generally portrayed as being beneficial to intelligence and operational police work, even if previous collaborative research shows that conflicts are common between authorities who are supposed to cooperate. The present study focuses on how officers collaborate in their day-to-day management of border guarding, taking into consideration the different social and cultural backgrounds of the project participants. To these ends, this qualitative study is based on empirical material gathered from interviews, and field observation sessions with officers working at the Baltic Sea border agencies. The findings suggest that, although collaboration is burdened with bureaucratic difficulties, there is a common understanding of purpose among the project participants. These border officers’ common declared their objective is to fight criminality and create a safer Europe. However, the participants possessing different organizational and cultural backgrounds have to adapt to adopt a common language (in officers’ terms EU-English), common schemes of categorizing (inside-outside distinctions), and develop a sense of trust and identity.
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