Borders, circulation and sport mega-event security : the example of Euro 2008 in Switzerland and Austria

The paper draws upon empirical insights provided by a two-year research project relating to security governance at the European Football Championships 2008 in Switzerland and Austria (Euro 2008). The objective is to study the role and modalities of border and access control in the context of sport mega-event security on various national and urban scales. This investigation seeks to demonstrate that security and surveillance at sport mega-events are shaped, fundamentally, by efforts towards the increased flexibility, variability and mobility (in both space and time) of carefully orchestrated access, passage and border controls. At stake in this “mobile border assemblage” are a large variety of phenomena, places and scales: from classic border controls at the national boundaries to a wide range of inter- and intra-urban enclosures and passage points (Graham, 2010) aimed at monitoring, restricting, filtering and also managing and facilitating different forms and modalities of circulation (of people and objects). This paper explores the reasons, logics and characteristics of this phenomenon. <br> Following Michel Foucaultʼs conceptual distinction between (apparatuses of) “discipline” and “security” (Foucault, 2009), the paper also aims to bring to the fore a number of more fundamental insights into the spatialities of contemporary security and surveillance. Two key issues stand out: firstly, the complex challenges associated with the necessary balancing and reconciliation of the core requirements of mobility and surveillance in contemporary security governance, and secondly, the multi-scalar, public-private interests and forms of expertise associated with this phenomenon.