"It's to Protect the Country!": The Everyday Performance of Border Security in Sweden

Abstract: In response to the humanitarian crisis of 2015, Sweden introduced ‘temporary’ bordercontrols. The increasingly permanent controls warrant critical assessment and raise urgentquestions: How is border security exercised in practice? What is the relationship betweenintent and practices on the ground? Which logics drive the border control? This studyexplores these questions through in-depth interviews with border guards andethnographic field observations conducted at Hyllie station. Applying Foucault’s conceptof biopolitics and Walters’ image of the border-as-firewall, the study critically probes thepractices of border security and the logics that underpin it. The study argues that theSwedish border control acts as a (biopolitical) firewall. Yet, this conceptual frameworkalone cannot account for the multiple logics, rationalities, and objectives that intersectand drive the project of border control. The analysis suggests that biopolitics framessecurity as a rather monolithic, omnipotent performance of overarching state objectives.In reality, the exercise of border control is assembled ad hoc, constrained by the limits ofavailable resources of the Swedish police and mediated by the agency of individual borderguards. Finally, the study reflects on the exclusionary logic embedded in the practices ofborder control and stakes out paths for future research.