Conclusion

Abstract

The Conclusion reflects on the key contributions of the book, revisiting some of the concepts and arguments presented in the Introduction. The section concludes by posing a number of questions on the implications of the findings presented for the academic field of policing and, more importantly, for social justice and democratic governance. I argue that migration policing is a privileged entry point to understanding the relationship between policing and society in a globalized, postcolonial world. The policing of immigration subverts—or rather unveils—the veneer of legality in the work of maintaining order. By foregrounding the non-rational, magic-like operation of state power, the book intended to unsettle rigid received epistemologies to theorizing policing in northern state bureaucracies. Ultimately, the morally and politically contested domain where front-line officers operate, the fragility, contingency, and provisionality of their authority, the fortuitous, capricious, and arbitrary nature of their decisions, the futility of the violence and harms they exert and the pains they endure, reveal also a frail, impotent, and inchoate state seeking to assert itself amid a fluid, murky, interconnected, and polarized world. The impetus to reassert the national by enforcing a bordered order reveals the exclusionary foundations of social democratic institutions and poses serious questions about the viability of these institutions and the modern nation-state to foster social justice. Equally, this juncture is an opportunity to think anew our political and economic institutions, take stock of global interdependence and its implications for livelihoods, and foster new forms of human conviviality.