Policing Borders through Cooperation in the Baltic Sea Area

This study focuses on the collaboration project Turnstone that is partly funded by the EU. The project is a joint collaboration among border organizations in Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Sweden, aiming at preventing trans-boundary criminality. The abolition of EU internal borders and the implementation of the Schengen regime have entailed intensified efforts of controlling European borders and border crossings. Borders previously guarded by passport controls must now be monitored through border officers relying on international cooperation. The present study focuses on how officers collaborate in their day-to-day management of border guarding, taking into consideration the different social and cultural backgrounds of the project participants. To these ends, this qualitative study is based on empirical material gathered from interviews with, and field observation sessions of officers working at the Baltic Sea border agencies. The preliminary findings suggest that, although collaboration is burdened with bureaucratic difficulties, there is a common understanding of purpose among the project participants. These border officers’ common declared objective is to fight criminality and create a safer Europe. However, the participants, possessing different organizational and cultural backgrounds, have to adapt to and adopt a common language (in officers’ terms EU-English), common schemes of categorizing (inside-outside distinctions), and develop a sense of trust and identity. Collaboration, it is claimed by the informants, is best achieved through getting involved in everyday practices, working side by side, and spending free time together, rather than through following bureaucratic rules and regulations