Shaping migration at the border: the entangled rationalities of border control practices
This 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.
Bureaucracies Under Judicial Control? Relational Discretion in the Implementation of Immigration Detention in Swiss Cantons
Based on interviews with bureaucrats and judges in several Swiss cantons, this article analyzes how bureaucrats decide to order immigration detention and how the judicial review shapes their decisions. The authors argue that discretionary decision-making regarding immigration detention is structured by the web of relationships in which decision-makers are embedded and affected by the practices of other street-level actors. The varying cantonal configurations result in heterogenous bureaucratic practices that affect the profiles and numbers of persons being detained. In particular, differences in judges’ interpretation of legal principles, as well as in their expectations, strongly affect bureaucratic decisions.