Policing assemblages and the vulnerable border

This article examines the development of networked modes of policing along what has been described as a particularly vulnerable part of the UK border – namely, the Welsh coastline. Through the introduction of a novel policing initiative, ‘Coastal Surveillance Wales’, the enforcement apparatus aims to bring together numerous state agencies, an array of service providers and responsibilised members of civil society. While finding resonance with claims that the hierarchical, state-dominated provision of policing has been uprooted by a move toward a more polycentric, networked mode of governance (Shearing & Wood, 2003; Brodeur, 2010), it is suggested that the emerging security network along the Welsh coastline serves to enhance the policing and surveillance functions of the state. By co-ordinating otherwise disparate institutions, the policing initiative aspires to incorporate a range of agents and agencies in the crime control complex. In sketching a map of this policing arrangement, the article raises the question of how localised security arrangements can be imagined.