Bordering Outside the State

Abstract

In this chapter, I locate the outsourcing of border control to private actors into larger debates about modern nation-state formation and state sovereignty. I aim at bringing into focus an empirically grounded analysis of the reasons that have lead to the adoption of private-public cooperation to implement EU visa policy and the effects of that choice. I build on the street-level implementation perspective to shed light on the actual practices of “bordering outside the state” – the filtering work of borders that state/for-profit organizations achieve by putting EU visa policy into practice. The ethnography in original fieldwork settings coupled with the strategy of researching the European, national and local levels of policy-making bring insights into their interconnection and the ways in which those levels exercise mutual influence.