scholarly journals Shaping migration at the border: the entangled rationalities of border control practices

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christin Achermann
Keyword(s):  
Social Reality ◽  
Structuration Theory ◽  
Cost Calculation ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Border Control ◽  
Organisational Theory ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Street Level ◽  
Everyday Work ◽  
Street Level Bureaucracy

AbstractThis 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.

Revisiting Lipsky: Front-Line Work in UK Local Governance

2011 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 978-995 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Durose
Keyword(s):  
Local Governance ◽  
Front Line ◽  
Street Level ◽  
Interpretive Analysis ◽  
Everyday Work ◽  
Front Line Workers ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Line Work ◽  
Traditional Structures ◽  
Street Level Bureaucracy

Lipsky's work on ‘street-level bureaucracy’ drew attention to the significant contribution to policy making made by front-line workers. This article revisits Lipsky's seminal analysis to explore whether contemporary front-line work in local governance presents a challenge to the ‘street-level bureaucrat’ characterisation. Since Lipsky's analysis, local government has been the subject of extensive reforms which have eroded traditional structures. In order to make local governance work, front-line workers need to be entrepreneurial to innovate and work the emergent spaces of local governance. This research uses an interpretive analysis to explore how front-line workers understand and relate their everyday work through storytelling. Front-line workers articulate a series of strategies which they employ to enable them to build relationships with the community. The article concludes that the emergent spaces at the periphery of local governance require front-line work that is less like ‘street-level bureaucracy’ and more like ‘civic entrepreneurship’.

The Art of Improvisation and Street-Level Bureaucracy

Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 68
Author(s):  
Lauren Bock Mullins
Keyword(s):  
Bureaucratic Discretion ◽  
Street Level ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
New Framework ◽  
Street Level Bureaucracy

This article explores the similarities and differences between the art of improvisation and street-level bureaucracy. By offering a new framework that points out the similarities between bureaucratic discretion and improvisation, we see how street-level bureaucracy has artistic elements, which can be helpful in expanding our understanding of this phenomenon.

scholarly journals Dimensions of Discretion: Specifying the Object of Street-Level Bureaucracy Research

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2-2013) ◽  
pp. 425-440
Author(s):  
Peter Hupe
Keyword(s):  
Public Policies ◽  
The State ◽  
Street Level ◽  
Street Level Bureaucracy

At the street level of the state public policies get their final form and substance. This being so, discretion is a key concept. The goal of this article is to specify discretion as a research object in the study of street-level bureaucracy. Therefore the theoretical views on discretion prevalent in juridical and other disciplines are explored. Discretion appears to be a multi-faceted concept. This finding has consequences for the analysis of discretion in the explanation of what happens in street-level bureaucracies.

scholarly journals Wilful entanglements: Extractive industries and the co-production of sovereignty in Mozambique

Ethnography ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 537-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Schubert
Keyword(s):  
Mineral Resources ◽  
The State ◽  
Extractive Industries ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Private Industry ◽  
Extractive Industry ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Separate Spheres ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Industry Sector

This article looks at how actors commonly associated with the separate spheres of the state, private industry, and civil society, are engaging in wilful entanglements to improve the Mozambican state’s capacities in managing the country’s nascent extractive industry sector. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in and around the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy, the article suggests that these entanglements renegotiate and co-produce ideas and practices of the state. Historicising and ethnographically unpacking these interactions invites us to rethink one-dimensional accounts of a hollowing out of bounded, nation-state sovereignty under the influence of globalised capitalism.

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