ABSTRACT
Airports offer a tangible representation of the juxtaposition between stringent security for some and enhanced mobility for others. This chapter focuses exclusively on how passengers experience security checks at the airport, in which terms they understand their participation to the screening process and whether they think that such procedures are actually to do with security or not. It details the themes that emerged in the course of the interviews with passengers, using quotations to show how a tension exists in how passengers understand security checks. The chapter then critically examines the findings, to try to understand how security procedures have become normalized over time, yet are problematized on two different levels; individually, in terms of the discomfort and anxiety they raise in passengers, collectively, because of their opacity and perceived arbitrariness. Finally, the chapter discusses the results in light of the security/mobility nexus that currently defines politics of screening at the airport.
