Abstract
This article analyses how border guards as members of a state organisation shape the movement of non-nationals into the territory of a nation state. Based on ethnographic fieldwork on the Swiss Border Guard (SBG), it explores the rationalities—understood as stabilised ways of reasoning and acting—that characterise practices within this state organisation. Combining organisational and structuration theory with a street-level bureaucracy perspective allows for a differentiated analysis of the various facets of border guards’ everyday work. Four rationalities of border-control practices are identified and compared: security, humanitarian, cost-calculation, and pragmatic rationality. I argue that, by considering both the specific goals and imperatives of border control and the characteristics of street-level bureaucrats acting within a state organisation, these entangled logics explain the complex and incoherent social reality of border control. More generally, the results contribute to organisational theory by pointing to the importance of taking into account that multiple entangled rationalities structure the practices of an organisation’s members.
Highlights
Nation states require that non-citizens meet specific criteria if they are to be allowed entry to their territory
This article has analysed border-control practices and identified the rationalities that shape how the border is controlled and how decisions to grant or refuse entry to Switzerland come about
The article analysed how structural components, such as legal ‘rules’ and human and organisational resources, constrain and enable individualactions and co-constitute the organisation. It simultaneously detailed how the legal and organisational conditions regarding border control become socially relevant by being put into practice by border guards—a person only becomes an ‘unauthorised border-crosser’ once categorised as such by a state agent
Summary
Nation states require that non-citizens meet specific criteria if they are to be allowed entry to their territory. Going beyond an analysis of policies and laws, this article looks at how border guards control border-crossers and the border itself via concrete, everyday practices (see Côté-Boucher et al 2014; Lipsky 2010; Loftus 2015; Pallister-Wilkins 2015; Valdez et al 2017). Its focus is how border guards, as street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky 2010) acting within a state organisation (the Swiss Border Guard [SBG]), put into practice its rules and mission and co-constitute the organisation (Edelman and Suchman 1997; Ortmann et al 2000). Organisations mediate a broader political and legal context and the everyday practices of those working in their name (Brodkin 2016). Structuration theory (Giddens 1984) helps connect street-level bureaucrat and organisational
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