State-Crafted Dominant Fictions: How Bad Documents, Gut Feelings, and Selective Intelligence Shape Border Control in Europe

Abstract

This article details how knowledge is produced, circulated, and acted upon by migration control officials working in different sites of the European border regime. Drawing on research into the politics of knowledge in border and migration control, along with studies of street-level bureaucracy, we trace the knowledge mobilised to craft state fictions that form the basis of border bureaucrats' decision-making. Empirically, the article builds on research carried out in three different projects that all explore how borders are enacted across Europe and beyond. It details how knowledge is produced at the rear and frontline of border and migration control, and traces how ‘bad documents’, gut feelings, and informal administrative practices informed by racialized and class-based suspicions are mobilised for decision-making. Sources matter less in such state-crafted dominant fictions, which instead obtain their legitimacy through bureaucratic circulation and inscription and make them ‘true enough’ for officials to act upon.