Policing the Borders Within: Globalizations, State Power, and Magic Presented by: Ms. Aliverti Date: Thursday 25th November 2021 The Book's Thesis - Poole and Das 2004, 17 • 'The question, where are the borders of the state? is fraught with uncertainty and risk, for border- making practices run within the political and social territory rather than outside it'. Researching Hostile Borders - Institutional ethnography of Immigration Compliance and Enforcement (ICE) teams. - Access provisional, subject to constant negotiation and to sudden, unspoken withdrawal - Straddling the politicized arena of immigration enforcement as a 'foreigner': between suspicion and discomfort - The quest to understand and experience 'estranged' social worlds Deciphering Crime Amid Global Disorder - It's like something out of Oliver Twist, something Victorian. And, first you don't know who they are, you don't know what they're doing, and they look dodgy and they're very suspicious and they're not forthcoming so you treat them as a suspect' (Police Constable Ben). - Crime as mysterious, undecipherable and unstoppable. Demands Unorthodox Policing - Comaroff and Comaroff 2017, 123 • In the absence of a reflexive sense of discernable order, of shared truths and the technical means of producing them, crime appears to become unreadable, mysterious, explosive. And appears to demand creative forms of policing, as much inspirational as technical, as much abductive as deductive'. 'We Do Things Different for Different Nationalities': Hazardous and Unpredictable Power - Obviously it is pushed on that it is about that person, it is not the offence: don't look at the offence, look at the person first so make sure that that person is fit for detention' (Immigration Officer [IO] Wayne). - 'If we can only fit one hundred [in the flight] and it's already full, we wouldn't bother about trying to detain more' (IO Sam) - 'We deal with predominantly Indian cases. So, at the moment, we're having issues with the Indian government... [those issues have] stopped our removals... So being that [Indian citizens are] our staple diet as it were, that causes us massive issues very, very quickly and then we have to change the business to look at other nationalities' (Immigration Inspector Craig). Making the State Personal: Disempowerment and Agency - 'Only Indians can do this job... We speak the language, and we know how their heads work. It is the same if you go to the Argentinean Embassy... I know how to treat Indians, you have to be nice. The English go and ask things. They won't give this information to an English person. They don't get anything' (IO Vinay). The Shades of Grey of Immigration Enforcement: On Law and Regulation - 'Each nationality presents us with a unique problem', IO Joe reasons, yet the police 'just see everything in terms of black and white and "well he's an immigration offender, is he here illegally? Get rid of him" It's just like that, that simple. Everything seems to be cut and dried with the police [...] they know what is going to happen from A to B'. For immigration, in contrast, such neat divide rarely exists, their work often presents them with a palette of options and shades of grey. 'Every single job is different' Joe continues, 'You can't say one person is going to be removed and another is not'. The Magic of Immigration - What many frontline staff call the 'the magic of immigration' relates to its instrumental efficacy to maintain social order. - The allusion to magic is intuitively apt to capture the field where contemporary policing takes place as the state seeks to re-spatialize its authority, and the practices that emerge as a means to adapt and retain some control or agency. - As a structuring block in the immigration enforcement architecture, race gives rise to its vicissitudes, malleability, randomness and unpredictability, as well as its infinite possibilities and versatility. - They bring to the fore the rational and magical dimensions of state power. In turn, they reveal its fragility and instability.