Abstract
This article is part of the special section titled From the Iron Curtain to the Schengen Area, guest edited by Wolfgang Mueller and Libora Oates-Indruchová.
The cooperation between German and Polish border police from the middle of the 1990s to 2007 is characterized by a striking paradox: border guards on both sides claim their working styles are incompatible with one another while in most cases they cooperate very well. Yet, as this article argues, the border guards employ strategies of boundary-drawing and self-staging that help them cope with the asymmetry they encounter when cooperating with the “other.” German and Polish border guards develop informal strategies of action and communication that rest upon a joint professional culture, leading to mutual trust and solidarity and a congruence of subjective professional honor and official mandate. Yet, this win–win situation runs the risk of emphasizing police-cultural aspects that focus on security while leaving the underlying East–West asymmetry untouched.
Writing about cooperation and solidarity means writing at the same time about rejection and mistrust.
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Introduction
Issues of security, the guarding of borders, and the practices of border guards have increasingly become the subjects of focus for borders scholars in recent decades, 2 particularly with regard to US borders, 3 and the cooperation across European borders. 4 At first glance, state borders appear fixed and non-negotiable. Such a perspective, however, runs the risk of ignoring the dynamics that shape the border regime, and it tends to overlook that guarding a border is not simply an implementation of impersonal norms and regulations. On the contrary, as Walters argues, we are witnessing a transformation of borders and border controls, a “changing texture of borders.” 5 A border regime has been described as “a composite policy negotiated among policy-makers who operate in different policy paradigms that give rise to highly diverging perceptions and policy prescriptions.” 6 Border regimes, like borders in general, do not simply result from policy negotiations but are constantly made and remade, constructed, and reproduced by practices and strategies of the most diverse stakeholders and institutions.
This article seeks to scrutinize one particular case, one “site” within the larger “field” of the European border regime. For a short period from May 2004 until December 2007 crossing the German–Polish border by car, train, or as a pedestrian entailed a hitherto unfamiliar sight: German and Polish border guards stood side by side and jointly controlled travelers and travel documents—the so-called One-Stop-Control. Moreover, the cooperation between the German Bundespolizei (BPOL) and Polish Straż Graniczna (SG) at this point in time already looked back upon a long history, dating back to the GDR and the People’s Republic of Poland, although this history goes largely unnoticed by the general population. In the mid-1990s, after the two countries’ transition to democracy and the German reunification, German and Polish border guards had resumed their cooperation under different auspices. They institutionalized joint patrols along the border and established German–Polish contact points and other forms of cooperation that are still in place today, despite the abolition of border controls following the enlargement of the Schengen area in 2007. This article enters the field at a particularly significant moment: cooperation between German and Polish border guards has never been as intense, close, and virtually tangible as between May 2004 and the dissolution of border controls in December 2007. 7
The cooperation between German and Polish border polices elicited my interest as an anthropologist, because it seemed to be fraught with an obvious paradox: judging from the difficult German–Polish history, the wider East–West asymmetry, and mutual stereotyping and prejudice on both sides of the border, as marked by the River Odra, why do German and Polish border guards seem to work so well together? 8 Why does the cooperation between German and Polish border guards receive outstanding praise from superior officers and is now being translated at the Polish–Ukrainian border? 9 Furthermore, what are the implications for the wider European continent?
In order to address these questions, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork at the German–Polish border between 2004 and 2006. Thanks to the permission of both German and Polish border police headquarters, I was able to conduct participant observation at several control posts, at the “green border,” and a German–Polish training workshop for superior officers and conducted and recorded in-depth interviews with Polish and German border policemen. I interviewed thirteen Polish and ten German border guards in their native languages, among them five women, although this may over-represent the number of women in border police. 10 The research thus is an attempt to “study up” 11 and view German–Polish border guard cooperation from an actor-centered perspective, with a specific focus on the way practices and discourses are intertwined and mutually reinforce each other. The article thus is located within the broader field of the anthropology of the political 12 and specifically within the anthropology of security. 13 As such, the German–Polish border will be treated not as a singular phenomenon, but as one “site” within the larger “field” of European security and institutional cooperation.
This article argues that Polish and German border guards engage in a mutual staging of competing work ethics, theoretically drawing a strict boundary between them. This German–Polish work ethic is performed and narrated on the basis of pre-existing stereotypes, but in interplay with power structures originating from both the respective institutions and the wider social formation. In everyday practice, however, the boundary is often transcended when mutual trust develops, building upon a common world-view, and on common enemies. Drawing upon insights from police studies and criminology, I will refer to the concept of Cop Culture, a system of knowledge and strategy of action that is an effect of and simultaneously produces the police and border guard occupation.
The first section provides a brief overview on the institutional and organizational differences that exist between both organizations. The next section analyses attitudes and preferences which Polish and German border guards use to legitimize their respective and adversary work ethics, defined broadly as values of work, while explicitly acknowledging the interplay of practice and narration. Subsequently, the third section argues that practice, and the communication of practical action, is a way to overcome mental boundaries. The opposition of imagined national work ethics is overcome if both sides share a professional Cop Culture, and if they are able to communicate their commonalities on the backstage of the “canteen” in a figurative sense. In conclusion, the article illustrates how the analysis of negotiations of difference and friction along borders allows for a better understanding of building mutual trust at the intersection of East and West, and it looks at future implications for the European project.
Institutional and Organizational Differences
This section delineates the contextual factors that shaped the cooperation between German and Polish border guards between 2004 and 2007 and subsequently introduces the structural differences between both organizations. It shall be argued that these disparities, although they are not subject to the individual border guard’s influence, considerably affect the relationship and contribute to the development of a mutually constructed work ethic. The cooperation between German and Polish border guards is framed by three factors, each of which exerts an impact on the interaction of both the border guard organizations and their respective stakeholders:
First, international cooperation in security matters touches upon very sensitive issues since it grants an insight into the state’s most crucial domain: sovereignty. While it might already be difficult for two organizations in the same national context to cooperate because of different institutionalization processes and lines of action, an additional international dimension makes it much more complicated. State agencies are eager to gather and protect information; this relates to the “belief that data represents a form of knowledge that increases a state’s power. Thus authorities that hold data are anxious to retain control over that data.” 14 Both sides must have good reasons to engage in cooperation, and these reasons must go beyond purely technical requirements. 15
Second, international cooperation always entails a cultural dimension that revolves around issues of identity and alterity. Germany and Poland look back upon and share a long and, particularly for Poland, unfortunate relationship. German–Polish history is fraught with symbolic meaning that affects the current relationship on the political level, but also on the micro level of interactions in the borderlands. Accordingly, the German–Polish border region has been described as a “low trust environment.” 16 These relations are reflected in stereotypes and prejudices with an equally long history.
Third, the cooperation of German and Polish border guards on an organizational level is also determined by an imbalance in power on the national and European level. Individual border guards are not in a position to renegotiate this asymmetry. The cooperation is shaped by the fact that Poland, as a new EU member state, was assigned the role of a “junior partner” in the enlargement process and had to comply to EU conditionality in a way that reminds some observers of neo-colonial practices. 17 This last point in particular needs to be elaborated in more detail. The cooperation is informed by asymmetry and dependency, as Germany and/or the members of the Schengen area set almost all important impulses, financial means, and directives. The SG command level had to implement various actions that deeply changed work routines and adjusted them according to demands for efficiency that were politically motivated. Any interaction between German and Polish border guards was informed by this asymmetry at least implicitly.
Changes affected almost all domains of work: structural, legal, technical, procedural, and sociocultural. Generally, standardizing European security measures and regulations exerts homogenization effects within organizational fields which at the same time influence organizational practices at the level of everyday practices. Both the EU and Schengen enlargements required the SG to adapt to standards set by the EU-15. Polish equipment and facilities have been financed largely by the European Union, particularly within the PHARE program. Exercises, staff exchanges, and other vocational trainings took place regularly under west-European and, less frequently, US auspices.
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Different countries gave support in different ways:
Germany has tended to invest more money in equipment than in training, whereas France has provided almost all CEECs [Central and East European Countries] with police training, but has put less emphasis on equipment, and the United Kingdom has provided a variety of police training programmes to all CEECs since 1990.
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Also the structure of the Polish border police had to change to conform to EU and Schengen demands. 20 The SG is no longer part of the military, but had to be transformed into a police organization. In effect, conscripts are no longer allowed to work in the SG.
The SG has to prove its efficiency and capability to control “European style” through a performance of efficiency, for example, by way of publishing statistics, amounts of arrests, and the amount of persons, cars, and trucks processed per day. The SG uses a variety of measures to achieve these aims, such as the 100 percent control or strict disciplinary measures which will be discussed in more detail below. New regulations for border guarding and control modalities, as detailed in the Schengen Agreement and, from 2006 on, in the Schengen Border Code, required the border guards to learn new procedures and legal matters. Miscommunication and misunderstanding on the superior level, however, often lead to confusions among the rank-and-file. A Polish border guard recounts that the Germans often wonder,
Why we suddenly do something differently. Well, what can I say? Because we just got an order. Because before we apparently had done it without any legal basis. It’s not that something new has been introduced, but that until now somebody misunderstood the regulations, and we did it wrong.
His colleague tells me that some of the Germans tend to take such confusion as proof for the general EU-immaturity of Polish border guards:
What the Germans say? Well, they get upset! “How could you enter the EU?” Literally, they said: “How could you join the EU if you are not even prepared for it?” I understand them, they are right, but this is not my personal fault. I did not make the regulations, and he vents his anger on me! One German told a colleague: “And you? You are in the EU, and how do you behave? Either you are in the EU, or you are not in the EU, so behave as if you were in the EU!” And I have heard things like that already many times. I guess, it’s not only about the Straż Graniczna, but about the accession more generally.
Thus, cooperation between police and border police does not only follow purely functional demands, but reflects the attitude of the respective nation-states, actors, and institutions involved with regard to their self-image and the perception of and by others: “border security represents an empirical manifestation of a state’s adaptation to its external environment.” 21
Obviously, border guard cooperation is not based on the deliberate cooperation of individuals. Furthermore, unlike the “knowledge workers” 22 at Europol or Interpol, neither Germans nor Poles are particularly trained for this cross-border experience. It is the respective border guard bureaucracies that define the cooperation and the conditions under which contact and understanding take place. “Understanding” not only refers to verbal communication but also to an understanding across social, institutional, organizational, and work-ethical boundaries.
I will elaborate on the specificities of BPOL and SG in the light of two perspectives: first, as institutions, and second, as bureaucracies. Generally, every organization as an institution has its own traditions and lines of action. Institutionalization in a wider sense can be described as a process of routines and habits, culture, that is both reciprocal and generates expectations. These organizations in turn both shape, and are shaped by the actors’ habitualized actions and their interpretation of the social world. Institutions are path-dependent; that is, their history to a large degree determines their future performance and their course of action. Furthermore, the guiding lines of action and regulations inside an organization can also be contradictory and competing.
As bureaucracies, both agencies meet the criteria of bureaucratic organizations as defined by Weber and their tasks and objectives vary only marginally. 23 Yet, a formal perspective on bureaucracy is not sufficient to understand the dynamics within and between these organizations. Anthropological studies on bureaucracies seek to explore the logic of bureaucratic action from a praxeological perspective that takes into account the complexities of everyday lives and the agency not only of actors, but also of materialities. They add a perspective on non-formal processes, on actors, on subversions, on bureaucracies as “constitutive sites as well as an expression of social formation.” 24 Bureaucratic action in this view is not necessarily neutral, efficient, and rational, but bureaucracies operate in diverse and often arbitrary ways that create a specific “bureaucratic indifference” 25 towards their clients which also characterizes border guards. Border guards are “street-level bureaucrats” 26 at the interface of the state and the citizen. As such, they are supposed “to work sine ira et studio, ‘without anger and fondness,’ . . . an ethos that figures bureaucracy, like ‘science,’ as a gaze from nowhere and everywhere at once.” 27 Interestingly, and contrary to this ideal image of the bureaucrat, the Polish-German cooperation is highly invested with emotions, even though Poles and Germans meet primarily as representatives of their respective nation-states, and then as individuals.
Written and Unwritten Rules
Police and border guard agencies are subject to a tightly knit formal organizational structure and a normative system of rules. 28 Laws and political regulations exert external pressure on the organization, and internal structures guide action inside the organization. While BPOL and SG at first glance do the same work and are subject to similar legislations, that does not render them identical. At the organizational, structural, and socio-cultural levels, they differ significantly.
For example, differences in duties cause variations in procedures, routines, and chains of command, leading to different organizational knowledge with regard to why and when what has to be done and how. It is not only written regulations that can cause confusion. But differing expectations with regard to nonwritten procedures also can be a source of misunderstanding when they refer to the unspoken “dos and don’ts” and to differing convictions as to which procedures should lead to which result. If this result fails to be achieved, or if it comes about in a different way than initially expected, then uncertainty, irritation, and anger can result. German and Polish border guards do not get emotionally involved because they personally believe in the eternal validity and superiority of their bureaucracy’s regulations. Different rules and regulations as well as different styles of working are significant because their negotiation is a proxy for the fragile relationship between Germany and Poland, between the senior and junior partner, the old and new EU member.
Military vs. Police
While the BPOL was transformed into a police organization as early as 1976, the SG, although no longer part of the military, still has a military structure. A military hierarchy entails a military approach to work and routines. The different police and military legacies also involve differing legal competences. In comparison, BPOL officers have much discretion with regard to the interpretation of directives, and they can take decisions autonomously within this framework. Polish border guards, on the other hand, are much more limited in this respect due to the “old military style,” as one German border guard put it.
Officers on both sides are aware of the different directives, guidelines, and procedures, but they tend to ignore this difference in their everyday work. Both are conscious of the fact that the others’ actions which they themselves might deem unnecessarily time-consuming or completely senseless, often result from the other organization’s directives, which the individual border guard is not able to alter. Nevertheless, the influence of the institutions’ legacies on everyday working practice reinforces pre-existing stereotypes about the Germans and the Poles.
Discipline and Respect
How discipline is enforced and respect enacted is a striking example of the way organizational legacies affect the perception of Self and Other. German border guards claim obedience and dependency to be integral components of a “Polish culture,” which they view as incompatible with a “European” style. Yet, the asymmetry is rooted in different practices of punishment, rather than in the “national culture.” Misbehavior often leads to disciplinary measures. Policing, as Waddington puts it, is indeed “a ‘punishment-centred bureaucracy’ in which officers are rarely praised for good practice, often because it is invisible to the organization, but face draconian penalties if they are deemed to have behaved improperly.” 29 In this respect, considerable differences exist between BPOL and SG.
The SG deals with misbehavior with a heavy hand. Here, disciplinary practices seem to be both a military legacy and a reaction to the restructuring in the course of adaptation to the Schengen system. High apprehension rates, statistics, and success stories are given priority, putting the border guards under pressure. A common Polish disciplinary measure is to cut the border guard’s bonus, the so-called dodatek. This dodatek can amount to up to one fourth of the overall salary. Already the threat to cut the dodatek is a disciplinary measure in itself.
German border guards on the other hand often boast of their flat hierarchy. Polish border guards view this as being often all talk, with some even becoming annoyed at the Germans gloating about their alleged freedoms:
They spout such a load of hot air like: “My superior can say what he likes, but he can’t do anything to me!” That is just not true! The Germans do not make their own decisions! They are not as independent as they always pretend to be. And how can you speak about having total independence in this profession anyway? It is just not an independent profession! We are not painters, we are border guards!
Organizational differences with regard to the regulation of discipline and duties that technically cannot be influenced by individual actors nevertheless play an important role in forming the self-image of Polish and German border guards and their respective staging of work attitudes.
Technical and Financial Means
Finally, different shifts and working hours hinder the development of a stable group and thus of mutual trust between Germans and Poles. Likewise, the financial situation of German and Polish border guards differs significantly, fostering the impression that the Poles work longer for less money. The border police organizations themselves are subject to very different financial conditions. Computers and software, office supplies, but also mundane objects such as coffee machines tend to be of higher quantity and/or quality on the German side. A German border guard explains:
That is, perhaps, something the Pole does not like so much, that he always has to ask the German—to take an example—“May I use that?” Or one says for instance: “Go ahead and copy a page for yourself.” He can do that because the copier belongs to us, or something like that. And so the Pole’s insecurity will already be there. Among us there is nothing similar because in the end, we need nothing from the Pole. After all, we have everything, really. We don’t have to go to the Pole and ask him if he could do this or do that. We don’t need to.
Polish patrols are restricted by a kilometer limit, while, according to the report of a German border guard, the BPOL are allowed to drive around as much as they like. The Poles regularly patrol on foot, joint foot patrols failed due to German border guards’ reluctance (“German officials don’t walk!”). In effect, technical and financial imbalances that are not subject to the border guards’ individual influence can determine an asymmetrical relationship on a personal level.
The Mutual Construction of Work Ethic
Border guards consider themselves part of a (national) collective identity, their imagined community. 30 Therefore, they do not only share feelings of belonging with people they will never meet face-to-face, but they believe they share certain cultural traits, values, and ideas about and with their in-group and not with the “significant Other.” Stereotypes about the Other are representations that draw on traditional images and narratives and serve to distinguish the out-group from the in-group. Such categorizations often let the in-group appear better, morally superior, and more progressive, thereby drawing a strict line that separates it from an allegedly “inferior” out-group. Stereotypes are explanatory tools to make sense of unfamiliar and incomprehensible behavior: they allow normalizing the Other’s actions on the basis of one’s own cultural knowledge. Furthermore, “individual stereotyping discourses on the ethnic Other are equipped with a number of ‘disclaimers’ or ‘mitigating devices.’” 31
German and Polish mutual prejudices are important components of the construction and offensive presentation of respective work ethics. Work ethic is an abstract concept which, from a praxeological perspective, includes much more than attitudes related to work-related aspects. 32 In her study on post-socialist Romania, Monica Heintz defines work ethic “as principles of conduct in work [that] develops out of the need to explain values, practices or attitudes linked to work [and it] incorporates the influence of work practices on work values and the negotiation between different categories of people over the values and practice of work.” 33 German and Polish work ethics adapt to cultural stereotypes and use them as a basis. They also transcend cultural stereotyping, as the specific situation at work in the respective border guard organizations is their frame of reference. Polish and German work ethics develop in relation. Also, the moral judgments that are linked to the rhetoric of work ethic have to be understood within this relation, pertaining to an imagined standard set by the EU and imaginations of Westernness and Eastness more generally.
Polish and German border guards’ work ethics are developed along three cleavages: (1) European versus post-socialist; (2) individualist versus collective; (3) correct and dutiful versus improvising and imaginative. These cleavages fit neatly into the mutual stereotypes of Poles and Germans in the wider society and are clearly informed by them. 34 Furthermore, both German and Polish border guards subscribe to the existence and relevance of these cleavages. Both sides, however, differ in their interpretation of what these work ethics mean in their everyday work.
European vs. Post-socialist
German border guards encourage their Polish colleagues to leave behind their military past, to jettison outdated (in the eyes of the Germans) patterns of action and present themselves not only legally as members of the European Union but also in terms of behavior and ideology. When I asked, what Polish border guards could learn from their German colleagues, two German officers replied:
They should loosen up a bit; they should realize that we are all in the EU now together. We are, you could say, one country, United Europe. If you think of it like that, I think it all boils down to this one principle, and this is what they should internalize.
He should protect his country—as I already said, it’s still a different country—he should protect his country from criminals, just like we do, that is, to catch them at the border, but in the sense that he takes care who he stops, and that he doesn’t, even if there is an order from above, retain everybody, no matter if it’s a grandma, grandpa, but—
Well, they should become more independent. They should say: I am a policeman, and I have been here for this amount of time, and I can decide for myself who to retain. Well, something like that.
German border guards perform the role of a self-dependent and autonomously working police officer, having internalized not only the EU border control regulations but also his or her own role as a “European” and a “European border guard.” This self-staging is a rhetorical device that serves to distance oneself from the Polish “Cold War Warriors,” as a German border guard says:
Some of my [Polish] colleagues haven’t really picked up on the whole EU thing. There’s still a bit of a mentality like the East–West conflict and the Cold War—everything has to be controlled. They don’t see us as a public service like we actually should be.
The notion of the “public service” functions as a boundary marker to distinguish the old-fashioned Poles from the modern Germans. Emphasizing border guarding as a public service is a means of staging of the Self as it remains purely on a discursive level and is not expressed in practical action. The BPOL official police culture in fact promotes the idea of border guards being service-oriented, but most of them in practice not only object to the concept, but constantly circumvent or subvert it. Rather, police officers tend to emphasize their police authority when in contact with their clientele. Such an attitude is an integral part of the policeman’s profession, for “the authority of the state is also his personal authority, and is, of necessity, a matter of some concern to him. To deny or raise doubt about his legitimacy is to shake the very ground upon which his self-image and corresponding views are built.” 35
The staging of hemispherical Eastern and Western ideal types reflects popular representations of the Eastern “laggards” that mirror images of “progressive” Western Europeans. 36
Individualist vs. Collective
The Polish officers formulate a similar cleavage, yet they do not buy into the cultural “Eastness,” or backwardness, that the Germans ascribe to them. Instead, they interpret their post-socialist legacy as a virtue. Many Polish officers contend that the stereotypical German border guard is egoistic and individualized in a negative way; he or she preferably acts for his or her own benefit and does not care for group solidarity. While the Germans accuse the Poles of not being willing or able to work independently, the Poles return the compliment. A Polish border guard complains:
If some Hans Meier has a task to do, he tries to attract as much attention to it as possible in order to make a good impression on the boss. He doesn’t care if his colleague thereby appears in a bad light in the eyes of the boss; he does it only for himself. Over here that’s different, we’d much rather work as a group. For me that’s important, that’s the most important thing for me, that my colleague is doing well, because the boss may change tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. And with this colleague I’ll work more often and for a longer time. We always care for the collective, not for our own interests. And Germans look after their own interests a lot more.
In this quote, two national cultures are invoked, two related collective and individual work ethics are confronted, and they are described as being incompatible. The Polish esprit de corps is that of an organization that is structured along military lines. This legacy fuses with the post-socialist heritage of a society that has been under foreign domination for over a century. In effect, the staging of the Self in Poland traditionally emphasizes the collective. The fundamental dichotomy of Us and Them, power holders and society, is constitutive for the community which in turn is expressed in mistrust towards any form of authority. 37 The “collective” is not necessarily a legacy that is valued per se, but it is a discursive practice and a performance that directly relates to the German performance of progress, superiority, and individualism. Images of the Other, however, are not static. Actors tend to resort to generalized images and use them for individual purposes in specific situations where they deem them appropriate. 38
Correct and Dutiful vs. Improvising and Imaginative
Both German and Polish border guards claim that the other side does not act, think, and work independently. Each side, however, has something different in mind. German border guards infer they have lots of room for maneuver that is legally guaranteed and allows them to take decisions independently of a superior officer. The Poles do not see why legal advantages should result in a “better” work ethic, as a Polish border guard says: “Maybe the competences a single border guard in Germany enjoys are more than in Poland, that could well be the case. But I’m not convinced that they fully make use of their competences.” Polish border guards take up the German critique and turn it around: they develop strategies that reverse their obvious inferiority in terms of technical equipment, staff shortages and social insecurity into an advantage in terms of work ethic. Their self-staging thus builds upon the German critique and makes a virtue out of necessity. It is a question of personal dignity that many Polish border guards think that they perform better work due to worse conditions.
Poles often describe German border guards as principled and orderly; such qualities can facilitate work, but do not necessarily have to appear likeable. The Polish border guards prefer the auto-stereotype of the spontaneous, often gruff, but amiable doer. The lone, but likeable fighter, who achieves the best possible results with little equipment in unfavorable conditions, is a popular rhetorical figure among Polish border guards, as one of them explains:
Please don’t get me wrong: here we have regulations, there they have regulations. They observe regulations, and we observe regulations. But sometimes we are much more independent when it comes to taking decisions. They don’t take decisions as spontaneously as we do, they still have to obtain the permission of a superior. . . . Perhaps the freedom of action for the individual border guard is greater in Germany, but when we are talking about direct action—let me give an example: a criminal. Went to the other side of the border. We inform them that he’s over, and that he is hiding himself in a building. Then the [BPOL] comes, ten, twenty people surround the building, and no-one goes in. They wait until he comes out. Here in Poland two border guards come and drag him out if he doesn’t want to come out by himself.
The Polish border guard is not like “Rambo”, but dutiful, goal-orientated, and creative. While the Germans characterize the Poles as lacking independence and believing in authority, the Poles explain the same patterns of action as resulting from their limited sphere of action and insufficient means, both in terms of technology and personnel. German obedience, on the other hand, they say, cannot be explained in this way: on the contrary, it is rooted, firstly, in the German mentality (“order must prevail!”), and secondly it is based on the idea that the Germans can sit back and relax because of their better working conditions and only do the minimum that is required of them:
The Germans work differently, the Pole works differently. The German works, let’s put it this way, when he has a specific “Aufgabe” [task, says it in German], and when he is ordered to do this and that, then he does it. Exactly as he should. And the Pole inquires, he checks, he works in a completely different way, right? But if the German is of the opinion that he doesn’t have to do something, then he does as much as he has to do.
Polish border guards claim that the German attitude impedes efficiency. Moreover, they say, it proves that the proclaimed independence of German border guards is simply a result of employee-friendly assignments and regulations and does not originate from a general commitment to the job. German and Polish self-images appear to be constructed and performed in juxtaposition and thus virtually complement each other by way of mutual exclusion and negation.
Performing “Good” Work
This section introduces in closer detail one specific control measure, the so-called 100 percent border controls, that is, the checking of every single traveler, in complete disregard of his or her potential as a threat. Not only did I frequently encounter the 100 percent control as the “classical” example of friction at the border. The 100 percent control is an outstanding example of how social forces that exist in the wider field of European security exert an impact on the local cooperation. With Poland’s accession to the EU in 2004 the border guards were no longer obliged to check each and every border crosser in the computer system. On the contrary: now they are able to use their “expert eye” more effectively. From time to time, however, the superiors, predominantly on the Polish side, order 100 percent border controls to be carried out, in order to, as Polish border guards report, increase apprehension rates and prepare for the Schengen evaluation. Generally, apprehension rates say little about the actual amount of crime, but like any crime statistic they rather divert the attention from crime and direct it at police success. 39 For the SG, “statistics” is the magic word that paves their way into the Schengen zone. The different contexts in which the border guard organizations are operating thus lead to differing ways of staging “efficiency.” While Poland primarily longs for the raw figures, the Germans direct their 100 percent border controls towards their own, presumably insecure, population: We are vigilant; we are taking care of you!
Border guards from both sides acknowledge that 100 percent border controls lead to traffic jams and that the effort bears no relation to the resulting number of apprehensions. A German official drastically explains his aversion:
After this attack in the USA [9/11] we were told to conduct a full check. We should check everybody, EVERYBODY, no matter who, children, babies; we had to check through everything! But I thought to myself: They can kiss my ass! What do 80-year-old grandmas have to do with anything, I see them walk through here every day to get onions from the market [on the Polish side], and I know them, so why should I suddenly have to check their papers, complete nonsense! This grandma says to herself: Have you gone completely nuts? And I think, this is the policeman’s expert eye. I don’t care what they say up there. I can see for myself, and when I know the people who cross the border here every day, then I don’t have to check their papers today, just because an airplane crashed into something!
It is needless to mention that he and his colleagues take Polish 100 percent border controls as yet another proof for Polish obedience. 100 percent controls aptly illustrate how the self-images of German and Polish border guards are diametrically opposed. They allow the Germans to feel European, individualistic, and superior towards the Poles. The Poles share their view on the uselessness of the 100 percent control, but they also know that not abiding by the rules could entail severe consequences for themselves and their colleagues.
The ideal image of the German border guard’s self-perception is based on the image of an individualistic “knowledge worker” who, combining the “police eye” with modern technology, seeks to minimize the work load while maintaining high standards of efficiency. Polish border guards on the other hand make a virtue out of necessity and, staging themselves as smart “manual laborers,” compensate the lack of equipment, staff, and discretion with creativity, commitment, and improvisation skills.
The act of controlling is a performance of the nation-state’s power and authority. Similarly, the display and comparison of competing control and work cultures on the “stage” of German–Polish cooperation is a choreography, where “all actors try to maximize the positive impression they make on others, and both experience and socialization provide them with a repertoire of devices to manage the appearance.” 40 Polish and German performances of work ethic are effects of an institutional and social context within which the border guards operate. Their rhetoric of performing their work is a way for the Polish border guards to reclaim agency in a bureaucratic system that maps them as inferior. With no real room for discretion, such rhetoric allows at least for a symbolic solution. In effect, it is not only different styles of working that are negotiated on the German–Polish border, but these negotiations are proxies for the East–West asymmetry and the paternalistic relationship that exists on a European scale.
In the “Canteen”
The previous section analyzed the attitudes and preferences that divide German and Polish border guards and encourage them to oppose one another. Yet, the question remains as to why in most cases they nevertheless cooperate very well and even perceive the cooperation to be of personal benefit. Why do talk and actions differ significantly? In this section, I will argue that a joint work ethic develops between German and Polish border guards via their occupational culture, the “Cop Culture.” Robert Reiner, one of the leading scholars in this field, draws on Skolnick’s idea of a policeman’s “working personality,” which he sees as shaped by “two principal variables, danger and authority, which should be interpreted in the light of a ‘constant’ pressure to appear efficient.” 41 Reiner interprets Cop Culture as a strategy and pattern of action, as a reaction to the field where police officers operate and where they develop their habitus: “Cop culture has developed as a patterned set of understandings that help officers cope with and adjust to the pressures and tensions confronting the police.” 42 The features of Cop Culture, according to Reiner, inter alia include the need to have a mission and the longing for action, paired with widespread cynicism and pessimism. Police officers feel isolated from wider society, which fosters specific group solidarity. They tend towards conservative values, and they embrace machismo and sexism. Finally, their work and world view are often informed by racial prejudices and also pragmatism. All of these features are “functional for the survival of police officers in an occupation considered to be dangerous, unpredictable, and alienating.” 43
The concept of Cop Culture was developed from research on police officers, that is, the men on the beat. I argue that it can nevertheless be successfully applied to German and Polish border guards as well. Notwithstanding their military legacies, both BPOL and SG consider themselves as “police forces” because of their fields of activities, their professional culture, and last, but not least, their self-perception as police organizations. Furthermore, this article attempts to advance the concept of Cop Culture insofar as its features are not treated as pre-existing objective elements of a puzzle but that they have to be filled with meaning intersubjectively by the actors themselves. Police officers share the belief of sharing certain cultural patterns and values. An anthropological reading of Cop Culture thus clearly takes an actor-centered perspective, emphasizing the linkage between discourse, performance, and practices.
There is in fact a remarkable discrepancy between the way border guards describe their cooperation and how they actually work together on a day-to-day basis. The same border guard who talks in a deprecatory manner about the other border police often excellently cooperates with them. How does this fit together? It is vital to not simply focus on what border guards say, but to distinguish it from what they actually do. Just as Bigo reminds us not to restrict ourselves to the dominant narratives of the police and consider their own legitimations as given, 44 the concept of Cop Culture is a meaningful discursive practice which can differ considerably from the strategies of action that are actually employed.
Waddington has coined the notion of “Canteen Culture,” and he argues that the behavior of policemen when not in contact with their clientele, the things they say to each other, does not at all have to be congruent with their actions when in contact with the public. In his view, a specific attitude, such as sexist comments, should not automatically be interpreted as a distinctive feature of police subculture. He argues that the “canteen chatter” should be scrutinized not with regard to its influence on police action, but it should be made the subject itself: “if talk does not inform practice why do police officers invest so much effort in talking about their work? If policing is mundane and boring, why do police officers expend so much time trying to convince each other and themselves that it is action-packed?” 45 Waddington asks: what is the purpose of police subculture? “I suggest that it is simple and straightforward: it is a rhetoric that gives meaning to experience and sustains occupational self-esteem.” 46
Accordingly, the work ethic described above is not a set of values that guide action, although talk and action can obviously coincide. It is a discursive strategy that the border guards use to cope with the challenges and contradictions of the police profession, while at the same time preserving occupational self-esteem. Cop Culture is thus a tool-kit “used in the production of a sense of order, and the constant ‘telling’ of the culture accomplishes for the officers a ‘factual’ or ‘objective’ existence of this culture.” 47 Thus, when border guards loudly gossip about the opposite side, praise their own efficiency and rebuke the others’ working method, but shortly after stand together with those very colleagues and unite to fight cross-border crime, then the discrepancy can be explained if we consider it a performance. It is a staging of how border guarding should be from the point of view of the border guards, even though the reality might actually look completely different. The stories they tell are not detailed descriptions of the social world surrounding them, but “carefully crafted poetic pieces.” 48 The “canteen” in the figurative sense is a place where self-glorification can take place: “because the canteen is a ‘backstage’ area it does not mean that officers are not staging performances. . . . Here officers retail versions of events that affirm their worldview: the canteen is the ‘repair shop’ of policing and jokes, banter and anecdotes the tools.” 49
Naturally, police and border guards seek the company of colleagues who share the same experiences and their way of viewing the (border guard) world. Thus, when searching for commonalities which allow for an understanding via Cop Culture, we should not rely on a list of commonly accepted features of policing. Such features may exist theoretically, but whether they actually exert an impact on the practice of cooperation depends on various criteria, such as the practical importance of different organizational legacies or auto-stereotypes and hetero-stereotypes. Whether the border guards are able to overcome mental and organizational borders largely depends on whether they share a Canteen Culture. It depends whether they are capable of reassuring each other of a common professional system of knowledge, culture, and hence mutual trust.
Both communicative and performative practices form the basis for a linkage via Cop Culture. Features of Cop Culture may be listed and enumerated separately in any border guard organization, but their mere presence does not automatically provide for mutual understanding. A common basis results from reciprocal communication by way of discursive and performative acts that foster the development of mutual trust. This allows for a negotiation of differing forms of knowledge, facilitating what Bigo called a joint “police mentality.” 50
To perceive of border guard cooperation as “doing border police” also helps explain why the gap often cannot be bridged. In such cases, the actors obviously also share features of a Cop Culture, yet for various reasons they are not willing to communicate them with the other side and believe other features and loyalties to be more important, such as national identity and Othering. In many cases I observed, it depended on the situation of the individual border guard and the mood within his or her unit as to whether he or she was willing to cooperate—and whether the belief in a joint Cop Culture can be transformed into mutual understanding: it remains to be seen in the “canteen” whether the border guard from the other side of the river is also a “colleague.”
Therefore, Cop and Canteen Culture are decisive in the cooperation between German and Polish border guards which both superiors and officers would consider successful. Existing power asymmetries between East and West are disguised when the cooperative element is strengthened, and the “civilization” and integration of the “insecure Other,” that is, Poland, is achieved far more easily than by use of open control mechanisms and Othering.
Conclusion: Trust and the Borders of Europe
Mutual trust among German and Polish border guards is not simply a nice side effect that makes work more agreeable and sociable. The development of a joint work ethic among border guards, if only implicit, is an integral, albeit probably unintended, part of shaping the European borders and thus of great importance to the way Europe perceives itself. The borders of the EU, both internal and external, are a reflection and yardstick of the amount of trust between different actors. This question of trust affects all levels of international and bilateral cooperation.
Through the development of mutual trust, neither pre-existing structural and organizational asymmetries nor cultural differences and subjective stereotypes that are ethnically and nationally framed can be fully overcome, but they are pushed to the background. Both sides, Poles and Germans, draw upon the idea of a common Cop and Canteen Culture. Nevertheless, asymmetries persist, as observed in the practices and statements of both German and Polish border guards. Yet, the trust that is generated on the basis of a joint work ethic helps to develop a win–win situation, where both partners reach their aims without resolving these fundamental oppositions. This becomes possible because both partners pursue different aims by cooperating: while Germany seeks to impede the influx of crime with Polish help, Poland on the other hand strives to get full membership and fully implement the Schengen agreement—which it achieved in December 2007. It is important to note that in most cases border guards do not cooperate well because their respective superior officers instructed them to do so, but because they developed informal strategies of action that are based on Cop and Canteen Culture. Their idea of “good work” does not necessarily have to coincide with that of their superiors. Nevertheless, the German and Polish border guards’ cooperation yields exactly what the superiors had hoped for: guarding the German–Polish border is ideally (in the eyes of the superiors) no longer motivated solely by national motives but in developing a joint work ethic, and a “common enemy,” a joint security and identity space is also created to which both sides can relate unanimously. The border function as a symbolic reaffirmation of the traditional political boundaries of an imagined community is no longer solely restricted to the nation-state but extends to the member states of the European Union. 51 The national border guard no longer protects his or her nation-state but, together with the colleagues on the other side of the border, jointly protects the EU. Geopolitical changes, however, are also reflected in the way these actors on the border conceptualize their self-image and draw the boundaries between Self and Other—particularly when their identification with the occupational role moves from the national to the European level.
It is this emphasis on a European security identity that overshadows the cooperation across the German–Polish border. Freedom and security become unbalanced if border controls rely on a Cop Culture that is first and foremost defined by elements such as mistrust and suspicion to any form of deviance. The cooperation between German and Polish border guards cannot provide a sufficient control of police-cultural behavior and attitudes, since a linkage via Cop Culture tends to increase a generalized exclusion of Others from a European “Gated Community.” 52 Although the cooperation between German and Polish border guards may originate from different motives and aims on both sides as it is shaped by fundamental asymmetries, by aligning Cop Culture with the idea of an “Area of Freedom, Security, and Justice,” the German–Polish border guard cooperation internalizes, creates, and also reproduces an imagined European security community in its discourses and everyday practices. This development is not restricted to the German–Polish border, but as a role model it will most likely set standards for future forms of cooperation across Europe—and also for ways to civilize and encompass future “junior partners.”
Asymmetries that seem to have been resolved on the legal and political level do not cease to exist on the level of practical action and discourse. Paternalism and asymmetry are inherent to the Schengen and EU accession processes, and also to the European Neighborhood Policy. Europeanization in the realm of security cooperation is not simply a technical procedure, but an asymmetrical relationship that is deeply marked by mistrust regarding the capabilities and reliability of the new members. It is largely up to the actors on the ground to break that pattern in their everyday practice.