Surveillance Design Communities in Europe: A Network Analysis

Abstract

Building on the concept of the ‘surveillance-industrial complex’, I move from the ‘complex’ to the ‘community’, situating a number of organizations within ‘surveillance design communities’ (SDCs). SDCs are networks of linked organizations which engage in researching, developing, producing, and circulating surveillance technologies. Empirically I draw from data on the organizations involved in border surveillance funded by the European Union’s FP7-Security programme. Based on the novel conceptualization of SDCs, coupled with an analysis of new network data, the article demonstrates that important contributions to the design of surveillance are distributed among a small core of central organizations surrounded by communities of actors assembled in overlapping hierarchies. Hence, SDCs are interwoven, multiscalar networks of networks rather than simply a total ‘complex’ or sites for the overlap of the ‘public’ and ‘private’.

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

“…The analysis helps us to understand how public speeches by key actors in the border security industry shape European border security discourses. Compared to existing knowledge, the current analysis provides the first systematic outline of discursive trends in the border security industry, and complements existing work on the structure of the border security industry (Baird 2016). Compared to other literature on the topic, the article is the first to highlight the role that central actors play in shaping topics of discourse within the border security industry and map these actors, their relations, and specific speech topics.…”

“…Alternative data sets, built from Frontex conferences or alternative conferences such as the North American Border Security Expo, could be possible for future work, even when the compilation and analysis of such data sets is time consuming and cumbersome. The consequences of omitting these other conferences is that we may miss specific actors and speech topics, but compared to existing research on EU FP7 projects (Baird 2016), the current data set provides a comparable representation of the key actors and key topics engaged with at security conferences. While other conferences may be larger, it is very difficult to determine whether SMi conferences are more or less representative -there are a number of border security conferences attended by similar actors with similar discussions, but there is no measure of the impact or importance of particular events over others.…”

“…Second, when interpreting the R-squared we should keep in mind that the network variables may be overestimated because of the structure of the data: event co-attendance is related to centrality as centrality scores are calculated based on event coattendance. Third, actors in the industry may belong to similar communities (Baird 2016), implying that actors adopt similar discourses because they use common concepts circulating in the community, rather than adopting discourses because of the power of actors in the community. The results of the MR-QAP regression, however, point to the influence of powerful actors on the adoption of discourses, but more research using community detection methods is needed to address the issue of which discourses are adopted by particular communities.…”

La(s) Industria(s) de la Migración. ¿Un Nuevo Enfoque en el Análisis de la Movilidad Internacional?

“…Por un lado, la que se detiene en el filtrado prefronterizo y la regulación documental del acceso (Sánchez-Barrueco, 2017). Por otro, la que se ha centrado su atención en la infraestructura fronteriza y la vigilancia de los contornos terrestres, aéreos y marítimos (Lemberg-Pedersen, 2013;Baird, 2016). Y, por último, la que se interesa en las infraestructuras de detención e internamiento de inmigrantes ( Flynn, 2017) 13 .…”

Bifurcation of people, bifurcation of law: externalization of migration policy before the EU Court of Justice

“…The reintroduction of internal border controls and the re-fencing of borders since 2015 (European Commission 2017a) suggest that the combined processes of externalization, internalization and reinforcement of border zones themselves can best be understood as forming part of an overarching process of proliferation. 2. denationalization: policies are increasingly implemented through non-state actors (Gammeltoft-Hansen and Sørensen 2012); examples are private enterprises being involved in detention (Bosworth 2014: 46;Baird 2016b), border control (Gammeltoft-Hansen 2012; Lemberg-Pedersen 2012), the development and everyday running of databases on illegal migrants (Andrijasevic 2015;Broeders and Dijstelbloem 2016), in the development and deployment of high-tech systems for the surveillance of land and sea borders (Baird 2016a(Baird , 2017b(Baird , 2017c; migration law being enforced through the obligation to check legal residence for employers, banks, insurance companies, transportation companies, health care providers (Slingenberg 2014). But humanitarian actors are involved as well-think of the UNHCR, the Red Cross and the Jesuit Refugee Service running asylum-seeker reception in the Balkans and elsewhere; non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as MSF engaging in search and rescue in the Mediterranean in a way that is very similar to that of the Italian coast guard and navy (Cuttitta 2014(Cuttitta , 2016; the way in which European states seek to instrumentalize third countries so as to do their border work (Alpes 2015).…”