ABSTRACT
This chapter will discuss the emergence of a specific group of powerful agents on the transnational scale, those who decide and frame what is called security, insecurity and fate in Western societies through the exchange of information in policing matters. They consist of a specific guild of professionals dealing with “internal security” and consider themselves experts in domains that the general public does not know about (and does not need to know about) for its own safety. This guild of professionals of (in)security management is a bureaucratic nobility or strata which has extended within and beyond Western societies, by its informal and institutional networking, and which is both public and private (Bigo 2011a). 1 They challenge de facto the authority of the national professionals of politics, even if formally they seem to be dependent on them. They shape the debates at stake concerning priorities of struggles against insecurity in a global world, described as being permanently on the verge of a forthcoming chaos, of a possible Armageddon (nuclear, viral or economic …), and requiring emergency measures. Similar to the Middle Age guilds, which were clusters of different crafts and professions, these professionals of (in)security have internal hierarchies (powerful and powerless agents and inner struggles which are sometimes ferocious) but they have, nevertheless, a sense of being part of a social universe, which differentiates the experts from the profanes (Isin 2002). Their transnational character is masked by the fact that they present themselves as the spokespersons of the national state in its most “regalian” activity, providing peace and security, assuring law and order. But this transnational character exists nevertheless and becomes visible through the exchange of information these professionals have in common, and through the specific enunciation of security problems they share, as well as the professional trajectories they follow, which sometimes merge and create a sense of being part of the same social universe. At their core, research will find networks regrouping intelligence services, policemen specialised in anti-terrorism and organised crime, border guards specialised in surveillance and controls concerning travellers and military specialised in low intensity conficts and anti-subversive activities (Amicelle et al. 2004; Bigo 2008), as well as private actors coming from the police security surveillance service complex. The scope of this guild is transnational but never global, despite the pretence of the actors. One can consider three entangled networks, whose collaboration is contingent upon the activities they have in common and their proximity to reason of state and historical links: a first, is an institutionalised European Union, which has set up its own institutions on policing and border controls, a second concerns US–UK “specific” relations on policing and intelligence matters, which often involve a wide “Anglo-Western” area, including Australia and New Zealand, and a third network is built on specific transatlantic relations between NATO countries and is mainly about defence and humanitarian military interventions. The three networks are not “concentric circles”, harmoniously dispatched geographically and functionally; they intermingle and struggle on overlapping subjects.
