ABSTRACT
Why do border officers insist that the introduction of the firearm is the most important change they have witnessed in their career? This chapter inquires into how Canadian frontline officers have come to rely on the gun to challenge their social demotion in border control resulting from automation, the multiplication of security actors at the border and the intensification of bordering at a distance. Relying on conceptual tools provided by masculinities studies, the chapter follows the recent history of this contestation, particularly its careful execution of a gendered border politics through which officers came to idealize the land border as a tougher last line of defence. This chapter relies on officers’ gendered narratives regarding the alleged shift from a supposed feminized past of customs to a more muscular present-day bordering. Further, as illustrated by the successful campaign waged by the officers’ union to obtain firearms for its members, it also appraises the role played by conservative labour politics in making border policy. As a result of this inquiry into what Connell calls a “project of masculinity,” this chapter calls into question three assumptions held by researchers of bordering practices: first, bordering and security arrangements are gender neutral; second, low-tech devices should be associated with the past of security rather than with tools serving present political ends; and, third, the politics of security is primarily played by technocrats and politicians, at the expense of collectively organized security workers.
