ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates how Research and Development (R&D) of border security technologies reproduces security understandings by different actors involved in the R&D process. For this, the European Union’s (EU) Framework Programme Horizon 2020 and the border security related R&D calls are analysed in relation to two specific programmes, EUROSUR and ETIAS. With this empirical focus, this chapter seeks to uncover the entanglements between public and private actors and highlight the private security industry’s role in the EU’s security research programmes, which up to this point has not been sufficiently addressed in academic debates. This is reached by an examination of the underlying sociotechnical imaginaries of security research that are constituted from conceptualisations both of public agencies such as Frontex and private interest group, for example, the European Organization of Security or the Protection and Security Advisory Group. Through this research, it is rendered possible to reveal the power of the private security industry to shape security research programmes.
