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We argue that national security is a public good and its production can be analyzed in a strategic context. We first present the context of the border between Canada and the United States. Next, we discuss the options of status quo and adoption of a common security perimeter relative to sovereignty and security. We show that efficient border policies could require cooperation among countries but motivating such collaboration may be difficult since joint border security policies may involve a prisoners’ dilemma problem. On the other hand, we show that the likelihood of joint increased security will be higher if there are country-specific benefits for a country improving security at its border. If this is the case, we demonstrate it is possible to reach optimal security using independent border policies.

Border security is a crucial part of the country’s broader homeland security efforts. It is a multifaceted and complex issue which attempts to accomplish two seemingly contradictory objectives – the prevention of people and goods from entering the country, while at the same time, facilitating lawful travel and trade. Although it is primarily a federal responsibility, securing the border crosses over multiple homeland security domains, as well jurisdictions. In recent years, numerous strategies and structures have been implemented to foster a whole-of-government approach to border security. This chapter presents border security in the larger context of homeland security. It examines the strategies and coordinating structures developed to create a secured border and an overview of the interaction of law enforcement agencies at the various jurisdictional levels. Although these structures create a robust network of mutually supportive agencies to effectuate border security, a major strategic challenge to securing the nation’s borders still persists.

Border environments differ as foci for conflict discourse. While classic realist theories are used to account for mechanisms of securitized borders, socially oriented theories are often invoked to characterize relaxed borders. This distinguishing pattern regarding securitization reflects a deeply rooted focus on idealized borders, based on implicit expectations that relaxed borders are a viable option and goal for all. This orientation is prone to mistaken assumptions regarding local, national and regional interests and ultimately threatens delicately balanced states of stability. This paper aims to question this somewhat simplified categorization and posit that securitized borders are longstanding realities which warrant more complex theoretical conceptualization.

The analysis is based on documentary study and qualitative field research, mapping and evaluating Israel–Jordan cross-border interactions conducted during 2006-2014. Local civilian interactions were studied using three tools: interviews, non-participant observations and a sector-based analysis of original and secondary sources. In the course of research, many tours and observations of the border region were conducted, and key actors in Israel and Jordan were interviewed: entrepreneurs, local residents, local and national government officials, security personnel and representatives of non-governmental organizations involved in the administration and funding of normalization-promoting initiatives.

In light of internal and external security threats which challenge states and border regions in conflict environments and in normalized settings, there is increasing value in recognizing multi-level power relations (“bringing the state back in”) that design, inhibit and ultimately control the inevitability, circumstance and social–political effectivity of any cross-border interaction. Cross-border cooperation (CBC), which evolves gradually, monitored by the border regime and reflecting actual levels of inter-state political dialogue, is a slower yet safer option and a more realistic expectation for CBC, especially in regions of minimal communication between cross-border neighbors. In the backdrop of the Middle East turmoil, Israel and Jordan mark 20 years of peaceful relations, enjoying stability based on shared political and security interests, yet displaying no apparent tendency toward increased cross-border interaction. Given the stark differences in regimes and ongoing regional unrest, this securitized border fulfills local and regional needs and is far from a temporary “second-best” reality.

The analysis is based on original fieldwork and documentary study, mapping and evaluating Israel–Jordan cross-border interactions conducted during 2006-2014.

The European Union has pursued two contradictory policies over the last decade in response to the challenges of globalization. On the one hand, the EU has loosened borders to facilitate trade and make the EU more competitive globally. On the other hand, the EU has tightened borders to enhance its security, fearing the negative consequences of a globalized world. In this paper, I examine the effects of implementation of the EU's Schengen border regime, a set of rules governing external border control, on the post-communist countries and the difficulties that Schengen has posed for the governments in the region. I also discuss the EU's emerging European Neighborhood Policy (ENP), designed to address many of the concerns voiced by the Central and East European (CEE) officials regarding Schengen. An important element of ENP is to work across the EU external border to facilitate economic relations and develop joint institutions with non-members to create new cooperative borderlands.

Two images are frequently invoked with regard to the evolution of the EU. Certain scholars portray the organization as moving toward a new, post-modern, post-Westphalian entity comprising an increasingly borderless Europe. Other scholars view European integration as a process by which the EU is increasingly taking on the trappings and functions of the state to build a “Fortress Europe.” The discussion of Schengen and the eastern enlargement suggests a more complex reality than either of these two images in which borders are constantly shifting and whose functions are changing in response to the different challenges posed by globalization and internal developments. The EU's external borders will continue to change, both in terms of where they are located and how important these will be. Europe's ENP, with its emphasis on cross-border cooperation, is changing borders into borderlands, zones of cooperation and collaboration across a line on a map. Governance and the shaping of policy are increasingly taking place at multiple sites and with different kinds of actors, further transforming the importance of borders. Perhaps, a new vision of European integration is needed to capture the evolution of the EU.

Global mobility remains one of the most pressing challenges of our times. Countries in the north are turning to major ‘sending’ countries in the south to secure their cooperation in controlling their borders and in repatriation processes. By explicitly linking migration to global security threats and weak governance, these migration control initiatives are justified by development goals and sometimes financed by official development assistance (ODA). By connecting criminology with international development scholarship, this chapter seeks to advance our understanding of the novel intersections between criminal justice, security and development to govern mass migration. Focusing on UK policies and the analysis of specific programmes, it interrogates what does the sustainable development goal (10.7) of facilitating ‘orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration’ concretely entail? And to what extent does the language of ‘managed migration’ legitimise restrictive border controls policies and even conflict with other global development goals?

As political interfaces, national borders are subject to extensive surveillance and policing within the interstate system. But what happens when the state's gatekeepers emerge from within the social body? How do such instances impact scholarly understandings of governance and surveillance? This chapter investigates these questions empirically, analyzing the Minuteman Project, a grassroots vigilante movement dedicated to directly policing the nation's borders. Situating the movement within the existing literature on “governmentality” and “community policing”, I analyze its history, ideology, practices and interactions with authorities, arguing that, despite their status as non-state actors, its members appropriate, enforce and extend many of the principles of governance and statecraft; whether, surveillance, policing, security or territoriality. Like community policing, the Minutemen highlight the pervasive and decentralized nature of government, social control and surveillance. In occupying and monitoring the border, the group serves as the state's “eyes and ears” without impinging upon its juridical or coercive capacities. However, in contrast to community policing, the Minutemen are not an instance of the state or police engaging or reaching down into the public, but represent a distinct segment of the public reaching up and aligning itself with the “arms” of the state.

The past decade, with its unprecedented surge in financial activity and financial crises, has been one of increased awareness on the part of both regulatory authorities and market participants of the potential of payment systems for propagating and amplifying financial shocks, especially in a cross‐border context. This has led the European Commission to propose, on 30th May 1996, a Directive aimed at reducing systemic risk. (This has been the subject of an earlier contribution by the same author, pub‐lished in Vol 5, No 1 of the Journal.) In the meanwhile, the European Parliament has delivered its opinion and the Council has adopted a common position. This paper examines the contents of this common position.

This paper aims to examine the primary fundamental rights concerns related to biometrics and their use in automated border controls (ABCs), as well as how these issues converge in the European Commission’s Smart Borders proposal.

This paper draws on extensive background research and qualitative in-depth interviews conducted in 2013 for the European Union (EU) FP-7 project “FastPass – A harmonized, modular reference system for all European automatic border crossing points”.

The Smart Borders proposal not only compounds the individual concerns related to the use of biometrics in border controls and automatisation thereof, but also has serious issues of its own, premier among which is the imposition of a two-tier border control system.

The paper is a catalyst for open debate on the fundamental questions of how we got to this point and where do we want to go. It questions the process by which the increased use of IT in border controls has become the norm and policy trend in Europe, and discusses where the limits could be drawn from a fundamental rights perspective. In particular, it warns against the institutionalisation of a two-tier border control system among third-country nationals.

Little attention is given to the fundamental rights concerns raised for EU and non-EU citizens as related to biometrics and their use in ABCs, and how these issues are reproduced in the Smart Borders proposal. The paper fills this gap by taking a bottom-up approach: examining the implications of individual elements of the proposal to see their impact on the broader policy.

This paper aims to examine the many unusual roles played by the Italian Guardia di Finanza (GdF), and how that unique blend of missions sometimes overlaps as much with conceptions of domestic security as it does with the policing of financial crimes.

This paper analyzes the agency's historical organization and evolution, legal authorities and changing missions. It uses publicly available government documents and secondary analysis.

This organization, for historical reasons, was an early version of a hybrid agency that conducted both crime control and national protective missions – policing economic crime, patrolling borders and coasts and attempting to regulate the flows of goods and people into and out of the Italian state.

This analysis uses data collected from annual reports of the Guardia di Finanza, as well as journalistic reporting and scholarly analysis, to assess the changing agency, but it does not use internal sources or direct observation, which could inform future related analyses.

GdF’s unique set of undertakings is particularly relevant as the comparative policing and financial crime literatures grow, and particularly as they continue to overlap with the broader comparative security literature.

Policing, and police reform, has been very high profile in recent years, and will continue to be. The unusual structure of Italian policing, and the GdF in particular, have insights that could inform other nations police and policing.

This analysis is designed to describe an unusual case – of financial policing, of policing in general, and of domestic security policy – and illustrating how those issues overlap and relate. National police agencies often have missions that evolve over time, and this is a case study in such evolution.