We are once again very excited to another interdisciplinary seminar, this time hosted in Oslo. This seminar will explore border control practices — from the mountains and forests along the Swedish–Norwegian border, through the intra-Schengen apparatus to maritime border control along the Norwegian coast.
Three presentations offer empirically grounded perspectives on local practices, showing how borders are produced through the interaction of landscape, technology, legislation, human relations, and organizational practices. Contextual aspects are leading to a diversity in how surveillance is carried out, and how policing and border control identify and respond to security challenges, potential crime and migrants’ rights.
A panel discussion will follow the presentations, focusing on street-level decision-making, digital technology, accountability, leadership, training and resource needs, and possibilities for change from within systems of border governance.
Contributors
- Bengt Andersen, research professor, Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet)
- Ingrid Christensen, professor of pedagogy (Integrated Border Management), Norwegian Police University College
- Helene Gundhus, professor of criminology, University of Oslo
- Lars Andreas Lindstøl, Assistant chief of police, Norwegian Police University College
- Elena Raviola, Torsten and Wanja Söderberg Professor in Design Management, University of Gothenburg
- Bertil Rolandsson, professor of sociology, University of Gothenburg University of Gothenburg
- Maartje Van der Woude, professor of law and society, Leiden University
Program
Click on the presentation titles or scroll down to read abstracts.
Introduction — Bengt Andersen, Helene Gundhus and Elena Raviola
Attempts at border control in the Swedish Norwegian wilderness — Bengt Andersen and Bertil Rolandsson (20 min)
Watchfulness and uncertainties: Mapping competence, cooperation and practice in Norwegian maritime border control. Preliminary findings. — Ingrid Christensen and Lars Andreas Lindstøl (25 min)
Discretion and intra-Schengen border control — Maartje Van der Woude (30 min)
Break (15 min)
Panel — moderated by Helene Gundhus (40 min)
- Elena Raviola
- Bengt Andersen
- Bertil Rolandsson
- Maartje Van der Woude
- Ingrid Christensen
- Lars Andreas Lindstøl
Reception and mingling — Nils Christie Corner, 8th floor
The seminar is open to everyone, but we ask participants to register in advance. Please sign up no later than 13 April.
You can sign up here.
Abstracts
Attempts at border control in the Swedish Norwegian wilderness
Bengt Andersen and Bertil Rolandsson
We examine how border control takes shape in the Swedish–Norwegian borderland, a sparsely populated and geographically demanding area characterised by forests, mountains, and a large number of informal border crossings. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews with police officers, customs officials, and local actors, as well as document analysis, our study explores how borders operate not only as territorial lines but as administrative, social, and material practices.
A key empirical point of departure is the story of Svenn, a local business owner whose work machinery becomes subject to extensive EU regulation despite both Norway and Sweden being part of the Schengen Area. This case illustrates how borders can have tangible effects through classification, paperwork, and stamps, even where the physical border appears invisible.
The study shows that border control in this region is largely improvised. Limited resources, long distances, and challenging terrain make systematic control impossible. Instead, police and customs authorities develop a form of bricolage in which digital technologies such as ANPR cameras and drones are combined with local networks, informal information exchange, and experience-based assessments. We argue that border control in the Nordic north is not absent, but fragmented, situated, and continuously negotiated at the intersection of nature, technology, and human relations.
Discretion and intra-Schengen border control
Maartje Van der Woude
This talk draws on my book, The Mobility Control Apparatus, to examine how mobility is governed within the Schengen Area, not through the absence of borders, but through their continuous reconfiguration. Focusing on intra-Schengen borderlands, the talk unpacks how European and national legal frameworks, organizational practices, and street-level decision-making together form a dynamic apparatus of mobility control.
Central to the talk is the role of discretion: how it is granted, shaped, and exercised across multiple levels of governance, and how it enables states to reconcile the promise of free movement with persistent logics of security, suspicion, and exclusion.
Drawing on long-term socio-legal and ethnographic research with border enforcement agencies, it will be shown how discretion functions as the connective tissue of the apparatus, allowing it to adapt, endure, and respond to political crises while simultaneously reproducing unequal mobility rights.
By approaching borders as lived, legal, and organizational spaces rather than fixed lines, the talk offers critical insight into contemporary forms of crimmigration control and raises broader questions about accountability, responsibility, and the possibilities for change from within systems of border governance.
Book: The Mobility Control Apparatus: Getting to the Core of Crimmigration in the Schengen Area
Watchfulness and uncertainties: Mapping competence, cooperation and practice in Norwegian maritime border control. Preliminary findings.
Ingrid Christensen and Lars Andreas Lindstøl
This study, Mapping Competence and Training in Maritime Border Control, examines how the Norwegian police carry out and understand their tasks at the maritime external border. Conducted across all 11 maritime border districts along the Norwegian coast, the study includes interviews with two operational officers and two operational leaders in each district (altogether 41 semi-structured interviews, conducted in 2025). Financed by the Norwegian Police Directorate, the study provides a bottom-up, phenomenological perspective, aiming at exploring how Maritime border control constitutes a paradoxical space: simultaneously highly regulated through Schengen law, meeting with operational watchfulness, disparities, and uncertainties.
The preliminary findings show large variations in how border control and border surveillance are defined, prioritised, and practised. Officers describe inconsistent training, unclear legal guidance on key operational questions, and significant differences in organisation, staffing, and leadership across districts. These inconsistencies can shape how risks are identified, how surveillance is carried out, and how the police respond to emerging security challenges, including hybrid threats.
The study offers an overview of current practice and raises fundamental questions about what the professional fields of border control and border surveillance should encompass. The results might support decision-making on the development of competence, training, education, and leadership in the police.
Practical matters
The seminar is open to everyone, but we ask participants to register in advance. Please sign up no later than 13 April.
You can sign up here.