Theodore Baird

Scrutinising the double disadvantage: knowledge production in the messy field of migrant smuggling

ABSTRACT Human smuggling is a global phenomenon which has been difficult to research. Even though there is a large and growing literature on human smuggling, it lacks a systematic review of the major theoretical and conceptual approaches. Besides the lack of conceptual cohesion, there is fundamental lack of hard evidence to substantiate most aspects of the smuggling process because of methodological challenges. This ‘double disadvantage’ is an important explanation for theoretical as well as conceptual discrepancies in existing smuggling studies. In order to clarify and understand the diversity of theoretical approaches within the field of smuggling this article provides an overview of various readings of the literature. We identify a need to better understand how our knowledge about smuggling is constructed in this messy field. Furthermore, we question why we are producing particular types of knowledge and argue for more critical work in the field of human smuggling.

Interest groups and strategic constructivism: business actors and border security policies in the European Union

ABSTRACT Evidence suggests that business lobbying shapes European Union (EU) border security policies, but there has been no detailed empirical and theoretical work detailing how interest groups exert influence in this domain. Building on strategic constructivist accounts of policy-making, the article argues that EU border security policies have been tailored to the preferences, identities, and frames of business actors through three key processes. Policy preferences are co-constituted by business actors through strategic communication, identities are constructed to gain political legitimacy through strategic legitimation, and social contexts are framed to fit business interests through practices of strategic contextualisation. I use evidence from in-depth interviews with key actors in the field of EU border security policy-making, participant observation at key border security events, and analysis of key policy documents to build the argument.

Knowledge of practice: A multi-sited event ethnography of border security fairs in Europe and North America:

This article takes the reader inside four border security fairs in Europe and North America to examine the knowledge practices of border security professionals. Building on the border security as practice research agenda, the analysis focuses on the production, circulation, and consumption of scarce forms of knowledge. To explore situated knowledge of border security practices, I develop an approach to multi-sited event ethnography to observe and interpret knowledge that may be hard to access at the security fairs. The analysis focuses on mechanisms for disseminating and distributing scarce forms of knowledge, technological materializations of situated knowledge, expressions of transversal knowledge of security problems, how masculinities structure knowledge in gendered ways, and how unease is expressed through imagined futures in order to anticipate emergent solutions to proposed security problems. The article concludes by reflecting on the contradictions at play at fairs and how to address such contradictions through alternative knowledges and practices.

Who speaks for the European border security industry? A network analysis

ABSTRACT This article contributes to the literature on the European border security industry with a network analysis of a new bipartite data set. The network is composed of speakers and their speech topics at a European border security conference taking place from 2008 to 2015. Speakers are linked to conferences by year of attendance and to speech topics to identify key actors and discourses using measures of centrality. A multiple regression quadratic assignment procedure (MR-QAP) is used to explain the continuity of conference speech topics. The centrality analysis reveals a number of “hubs” and the discourse analysis reveals a consistent focus on social control and surveillance over human rights. The MR-QAP regression suggests that shared discourses are driven by organisations which act as key speakers at many events, and whose discourses are prioritised over those of other actors. The article concludes with notes on the critical implications of the findings.

Human smuggling and violence in the east Mediterranean

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to outline a typology of violent acts used against migrants using human smugglers. This paper relates the experiences of violence, coercion, and exploitation to migrants’ experiences of being smuggled across borders. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected using participant observation and semi-structured interviews among undocumented migrants and refugees who used human smugglers to enter Turkey and Greece. Fieldwork was conducted in Athens, Greece and Istanbul, Turkey over spring and summer 2011 and 2012. Findings – This paper presents an adapted typology of violence using four categories of coercive violence: threats and pressure, physical force, deception and fraud, and coercion/advantage taking. Movement with human smugglers may involve the violation of consent and forms of exploitation resembling, but not equating to, human trafficking. Research limitations/implications – The findings are based on a non-probability snowball sample, and are not general...

Non-State Actors and the New Intergovernmentalism

This research note responds to recent debates about new intergovernmentalism and argues that the hypotheses of Bickerton, Hodson and Puetter overlook the roles non-state actors play in the integration process. It intends to open up a debate about private power and the new intergovernmentalism, demonstrating that the concentration of powers of national governments has proceeded alongside the concentration of powers of transnational business interests in Europe. The note draws on the example of the civil security industry and Justice and Home Affairs policies in order to modify the six hypotheses of new intergovernmentalism.

The geopolitics of Turkey's ‘humanitarian diplomacy’ in Somalia: a critique

Turkeys involvement in African countries was revived in 1998 with the adoption of the ‘Africa Action Plan’, inaugurating a shift in foreign policy towards strengthened economic and political relat...

Functional Actorness? Border Security in the EU and Turkey

The European Union (EU) has fortified its external borders using a number of measures including the creation of new institutions and networks such as FRONTEX and EUROSUR. In non-EU countries such as Turkey, border security is being reorganized with EU support and cooperation. By combining the literature on EU actorness and neo-functionalism, I provide a theoretical toolkit to critically unpack these new developments through conceptualizing multiple dimensions of what I call functional actorness. The contribution analyzes how the functional transformation of EU and Turkish border security has produced a number of side effects which are critically appraised.