Airport security contradictions: Interorganizational entanglements and changing work practices

Institutional scenario

Airport security is arranged as a cascade of rule(r)s. On the top of the mountain, there is the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO, founded in 1944 in Chicago, now located in Montreal), with its 195 member countries which regard ICAO Regulations as recommendations. There are also several international conventions, each a sort of ‘reaction’ to some hijacking or other attack (cf. Pascoe, 2001; Lyon, 2003; Putz, 2012). Descending one level downstream, within what has been called ‘Fortress Europe’, a fundamental role is played by the Schengen Agreement (26 March 1995). The European Civil Aviation (ECA) adapted ICAO recommendations, and added the ‘One Stop Security’ protocol (see EC 300/2008, EU 185/2010).

One step further down, we find national authorities. In the Italian context, the National Authority for Civil Aviation (ENAC, founded in 2009) is responsible for coordinating and monitoring the application of European regulations, and for editing, applying and updating the National Programme of Security (PNS). Inter-ministerial Decree 85/99 brings us another level downstream, with the mandate given to airport management with respect to some security measures. That is why each airport director is responsible for editing, applying and updating an Airport Ordinance in which the application of the PNS is stated, and some domain-specific measures are added. Airports are subject to inspection by ENAC officials twice a year.

Decree 85/99 also contains implementation norms for Art. 5, Decree 9/1992, which states that some ‘control services’ can be delegated from police officers to security guards (Guardie Particolari Giurate) in the airport domain. Airport security guards are employees of private security firms, and yet serve as ‘public officers’ at the airport. To do so, they must attend a course, which is then ‘refreshed’, as they say, once a year, and pass a test (both oral and practical), for which they must ‘re-qualify’ every three years. None of this appears to influence their employment position and wage, since they are considered ‘non specialized workmen’ although ‘public officers’ when on duty. To further complicate the picture, specific tasks (e.g. checking airport supplies) and roles (e.g. supervisor) require specific training, certification and consequent authorization to carry out the task or to enact the role.

The issue nowadays at stake is authority segmentation (cf. also Klauser, 2009). It is true that ‘air transportation security is a matter for international institutions, which ensure that procedures are normalized beyond national borders’ (Jobard and Linhardt, 2008: 80; cf. also Wallis, 1998), but it is also true that private policing and, more importantly, ‘plural policing’ (McCahill, 2008) are expanding phenomena, and show specific interorganizational dynamics, marked by public/private dialectics. From a methodological viewpoint, this calls for an analysis able to reach the situated level at which normalized procedures are (diversely) enacted in everyday local practices, and the threads constituting the entanglement are visible to, and ‘pickable’ by, the researcher.

Operational scenario

With their array of technological instruments, security lines are dense socio-technical microcosms within the whole airport sociomaterial system, and mark a fundamental boundary. Tools and artifacts, whose presence is mandatory and use regulated, include (several kinds of) boarding pass scanners, x-ray machines, metal and explosives detectors. Guards at the checkpoint work in groups of four at each line, or they operate two lines in seven (the so-called ‘experimental’); a further guard stays ‘outside’, as they say, and checks boarding passes one by one with a portable scanner.

At each line, three guards alternate every 20 minutes in different tasks. This is called ‘the round’, and its timing is given by law, since it stems from the rule according to which x-ray screeners cannot carry out the task for more than 20 minutes. The rule rationale rests on a widespread conception of attention dynamics derived from cognitive studies, and on the belief about screening being the most important procedure at the checkpoint. The three tasks, which can be regarded as situated roles, are:

unpacking at the beginning of the line, that is, instructing passengers to extract LAGs (Liquids, Aerosols and Gels), electronic devices, etc. – I call this role G@b, guard at the beginning/belt;

The fourth guard in each line (or the seventh in two for the ‘experimental’) is the supervisor: s/he is responsible for the line(s), and basically acts as a G@a though not taking part in the round. The presence of two guards who may attend arch-related procedures is relevant also with respect to the same-gender rule in force for patting. Such a rule affects the distribution of the guards in the rounds, the daily assignment of the supervisor role, the way in which breaks are managed, and the situated coordination of activities within and beyond each line. ¹

What is security?

This translates, first, in security vs. mobility, detection vs. flow. In the words of a guard:

‘They tell you: “There’s the line, go on!” What does it mean go on??!’, Leonard rhetorically asks me. Pressure for avoiding line formation, he explains, starts from airport management and descends towards private security management, shift-chiefs and supervisors, until screening guards. [Fieldnotes, 15 May 2013]

This also calls into question issues of discretion, autonomy and expertise.

Olive describes the job as subject to much pressure […] and endowed with very little autonomy. ‘Personal initiative, and the consequent use the guard may make of her/his experience, competence and expertise, are discouraged […] When I’m at the arch I look at faces: maybe the alarm doesn’t sound, but the passenger has a preoccupied, weird attitude that alerts me, for instance if I think one has something hidden in a shoe, then I send him back to take shoes off […] even if the alarm hasn’t sounded – yet in the management’s opinion I shouldn’t.’ She says that the same goes for the patting procedure: ‘Abel [company middle manager] wants us to pat in only one and the same way. He wants little soldiers, only the procedure counts. […] This is certainly not the way one can work well!’ [Fieldnotes, 4 May 2013]

Who is the passenger?

As the following excerpt shows, this holds not only in terms of threat detection, but also of passenger assistance – two sides of the same coin: the protection of passengers, or the security guard’s job. Until further proof, are passengers customers to satisfy, citizens to protect, or potential threats? What constitutes such a proof? Who has the authority to make that call?

If there’s a [medicine over 100 ml. and not requiring prescription], and I see there’s an old lady, then the question is: Do you let her pass with it or do you act ‘rigidly’? So, maybe you let her bring it after asking some questions, having understood if and why she deems it important to carry the medicine with her, and maybe you also make her taste it. There, in making such decisions, the emotional aspect becomes heavier, precisely in taking such judgement calls. And maybe there are colleagues who slavishly follow rules, but I prefer to judge case by case, because, I mean, I definitely have to manage this emotional aspect of… humanity. Maybe the passenger is going to a funeral, maybe she has never flown out, she is scared… [Lucretia, 10 July 2014]

Alongside avoiding line formation while following procedures, guards are instructed to be polite – which is different from thoughtful, for instance – in front of basically any kind of behaviour by the passenger, and/or to call the police if the latter is ‘unruly’ and they are not able to have her/him undergo controls. Indeed, the contradiction between flow and detection comes in plain sight in the presence of travellers who are unwilling to be checked, protest, and variously insult guards. Most ‘unruly’ behaviours, that are wide-ranging (Bassetti et al., 2015: 438–9), can be regarded as practices of resistance on the part of the passengers. Given the managerial mandate not to engage in discussions, least of all fights, with travellers, no matter their impoliteness or rudeness, guards feel exposed and unprotected (‘We are nobody, so we must suffer in silence’, Fieldnotes, 16 July 2013). This is also why, despite the greater responsibility (and the TIP-related risk, cf. further), the role of G@m, which rarely entails interacting with passengers, is almost unanimously preferred. ³ From the guards’ viewpoint, management puts customers(‘ satisfaction) before employees(‘ dignity) – as occurs in large service corporations – and does not take seriously but superficially travellers’ well-being. In accounting for this, the fact that at stake here is a public concern, such as security intended as travellers’ protection, is crucial and systematically opposed to the private concern about profit that characterizes the company in which they are employed – and this marks a difference with respect to service corporations.

There are two issues to underline in terms of intra- and inter-organizational dynamics respectively. First, the security company middle manager, Abel – who mostly controls employees to appear unimpeachable in front of the senior manager and, by his mediation or directly, airport management – ‘allies’ on this specific matter with the other employees. This is due to his daily presence (although during office hours) at the checkpoint: looking at security lines from the huge window of his office, or standing behind guards at the lines, he witnesses uncomfortable interactions ⁴ with passengers, and sometimes has to participate himself. The issue is that of closeness vs. distance from the concrete theatre of work activities, co-presence vs. absence in/from face-to-face interaction with passengers and both the cognitive and emotion(al) work (Hochschild, 1983; Bolton, 2005) it entails.

Abel says that ‘the airport hears passengers’ complaints only’. Therefore, ‘guards pass as rude’ and receive contestation letters by company management. He adds he is glad I am here to witness what actually happens. [… He] informs me that the police and custom told him they would not write any report on what happened earlier with the unruly passenger, but he is not thrilled, because the passenger would certainly institute a complaint, so that the airport and company managements would learn about the episode anyway. [Fieldnotes, 16 July 2013]

Who is the guard?

What is established by law is that guards must perform security checks under police supervision. Police officers, in other words, should control guards’ compliance with procedures. However, officers’ knowledge of the latter is generally limited, at least as compared to that of the guards. As one policeman told me:

It’s not that one can stay here for six hours with one’s eyes kept peeled. ⁵ It’s impossible to observe everything. So, we simply remain in the vicinity and, when guards call for us, we judge case by case. [Fieldnotes, 9 May 2013]

The presence of ‘unruly’ passengers, once again, highlights the contradiction. As a shift-chief told me: ‘What a security guard should do when confronted with an unruly passenger? He [or she] asks for the police to intervene’ ⁶ [Fieldnotes, 22 April 2013]. That is, guards stop behaving as mediators of the law and leave that role and responsibility to those whom the law grants higher authority. This is an individually enacted but collectively legitimated and recounted practice of resistance with respect to the ‘politeness obligation’ guards must fulfil.

[She] walks him to the closest police office […] On her way back, she says to me and another guard: ‘I’m not taking responsibility. My job ends here’, and she gazes at the row of re-packing tables behind us. [Fieldnotes, 21 December 2013]

Guards are also concerned with officers’ ‘case by case’ judgements and decision-making. In fact, to avoid complaints, policemen as well are instructed to behave in a way to satisfy passengers:

‘in most cases, they decide in favour of the passenger. And thus they deprive our work of dignity and professionalism’, Rose tells me. [Fieldnotes, 15 May 2013]

As a result of what has been described above, guards distance themselves and their identities from the managerial way to organize (and control) their work, and from the threat such a way poses on their work and occupational identity (e.g. in terms of lack of autonomy). Most guards do consider themselves as such; they identify with their work and occupational community, although not with the organizations they work for (security company) and within (airport). They are not detached from their occupational role (and this marks a difference with large service corporation employees), nor from security regulations, which they sometimes criticize but basically respect and appreciate as their work’s legitimation; they rather distance themselves from the local application of such regulations, as imposed by the interorganizational entanglement of managerial and institutional entities. What matters to them is not the value/s of the organization but the value/s of the work itself, the work they get done. And it is, in the end, occupational identity that they defend – and collectively reinforce – when engaging in displays of distance among fellow colleagues such as gossiping about management. It is occupational identity and its moral order that they (re)produce when engaging in ethical subversion, such as acting on a suspicion although contravening local procedural rules (Olive), or contravening regulations for actually fulfilling what one regards as her true duty (Lucretia). It is occupational identity, finally, that they defend when engaging in more ‘caffeinated’ (cf. Contu, 2008) forms of resistance such as those enacted with respect to the techno-organizational change that we are about to see. As Bloom and White recently theorized, ‘performances of subversion’ accompanied by their moral justification provide ‘a means for navigating the (often) hopeless task of fulfilling the duties of a responsible organizational subject in practice’ (2016: 6).

TIP ordinary order

TIP exposes guards to artificial but realistic x-ray images during routine baggage screening. Images (TIPs) randomly appear on the monitors, positioned within passengers’ belongings as if part of them. The screener should recognize the image as such – a projection not equipped with an actual material referent – and push a specific button on the keyboard within the next 15 seconds. When s/he succeeds, a green-backgrounded message pops up, stating the TIP has been detected, and identifying the projected object category (e.g. ‘knife-4’); simultaneously, a red rectangle appears around its image (Figure 1). Failed detections cause the same outcome, except that the message is red-backgrounded and states that TIP has not been detected (Figure 2). Finally, when guards press the button in absence of a TIP, a yellow-backgrounded message appears, stating there was no projected image (Figure 3) – this is what guards call ‘non-TIP’. OPEN IN VIEWER

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Figure 2.

Undetected TIP instance.

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Figure 3.

Non-TIP instance.

TIP has the following purposes (cf. also Cutler and Paddock, 2009):

attention enhancement: maintaining and periodically recalling guards’ attention by (i) the awareness of the presence of the TIP technology itself and (ii) the sudden appearance of dangerous – thus alarming – objects;

This is the institutional logic behind TIP and its regulated use. Yet there are other logics at stake.

First, organizational logics. Detection percentages are the basis for several measures that have virtually nothing to do with the above mentioned ‘further training’ prescribed by EU regulations. TIP detection performances, for instance, affect the ‘re-qualifier’ test that guards must take every three years and that is held locally by police and ENAC representatives, at the presence of the security company local manager. Moreover, as we shall see, monthly detection percentages can be the object of sanctions by the employer.

Second, there are the both individual and collective practical logics of the guards who cope everyday with TIP as an element of the working order. When detecting a TIP, guards detect a particular representational object among the others. They do so by recognizing a known image, stored in a sort of mental folder, or by individuating certain qualities either of the image, such as a slightly different luminosity of the pixels on the borders (although this is perceivable on some monitors and not others), or of the projected object, such as its incongruity with respect to the surrounding context constituted by other screened objects in the baggage/tray and/or the aspect of the passenger to whom it supposedly belongs. ¹⁰ It is a monothetic (Husserl, 1913) act of perception and judgement that the expert guard performs thanks to a know-how s/he has by then fully embodied.

Jasper detects a TIP. I ask him what it is and he replies ‘Bah, a little bo::x (0.6) Uh, know what? Maybe the one to refill the lighter!’ [Fieldnotes, 18 May 2013]

TIP new order

In Autumn 2013, a ‘TIP new order’ was established. On the one hand, the quality of the TIP library changed. The library is composed of 6000 TIPs and is substituted every six months by the company responsible for the x-ray equipment, another subcontractor of the airport. Given also the embeddedness of TIP-related practices within the considered working order, the features of the library of fictitious images – difficulty (e.g. position in the screen, luminosity), represented object category, number of images, etc. – are of utmost relevance (cf. e.g., Hofer and Schwaninger, 2005; Cutler and Paddock, 2009; Steiner-Koller et al., 2009), yet most decisions are taken without interorganizational coordination. The library update of September 2013 marked an important twist: whereas images were previously representing mostly dangerous items (guns, bomb parts, etc.), they came to represent also many prohibited items (e.g. nail files, LAGs over 100 ml.) and even to-be-screened-separately ones (e.g. LAGs under 100 ml.) – and baggage is full of these two kinds of objects. This seems at odds with the cognitive-attentional logic behind TIP, and is regarded as a threat to good security work.

Because you’re searching for ‘Ah, no no no, wait: there are the Mentos [candies] here, it might be a TIP’, then you push. But then you forget the knife! [Isabel, 30 October 2014]

On the other hand, the security company began a sanctioning policy for poor TIP-detection performances: guards with a monthly percentage under 80% received a ‘contestation letter’ and were sanctioned with unpaid extra working hours and/or wage curtailment (counterbalanced by a 50€ fuel voucher for the first three in the detection ranking). This was obviously taken badly by employees, for instance, as nothing but ‘a strategy for assuring the possibility to fire personnel without consequences if needed, given the critical economic situation’ (Fieldnotes, 23 December 2013).

The new order represents a truly techno-organizational change, resulting from the intertwinement of technological variation and organizational policy modification, with the two being originally independent and decided by two different organizations – it happened at the nexus of an interorganizational entanglement. Such a change heavily impacted on guards, who engaged in various forms of resistance. First, many employees started girding for individual legitimacy challenges by keeping track of their own un/detections and/or by taking pictures of debatable TIP instances.

10.45 – Leon ‘misses’ a TIP. It was a Swiss card, which, as Leon and Dorian comment, is not even prohibited and yet is among TIPs. Leon also takes a picture of the screen with his smartphone, to contest the contestation letter he will receive, he says. [Fieldnotes, 28 October 2013]

Second, operators mobilized for collective legitimacy challenges. They organized and participated in meetings, union and not, and they brought the issue in front of the Work Inspectorate – a move that eventually led to the company dropping the sanctioning policy and adopting an informational one (letters now inform guards of detection percentage under 80% and the consequent need for two extra hours of training at the simulator).

Third, guards question the detection rates calculation method, since it is irrespective of the time – which can vary considerably – the guard actually spent at screening during the month. This was already an issue before, and its relevance increased dramatically with the new order. Operators started making a public affair of the TIP-related contestation letters they received. Given that they do not collectively support the calculation method, and TIPs’ new quality especially, there is no need to feel embarrassed or ashamed if a poor detection rate becomes publicly known – and showing the letter equates displaying such a belief, in a ritual in which the colleagues participate too.

Fidel receives the third TIP-related contestation letter of the month. He shows it to Eve and other colleagues when he has just finished his shift and is going to leave. Also Eugene has just finished his shift; he has a letter as well, the second of the month, he says. [Fieldnotes, 28 October 2013]

Finally, and most crucially, guards started to challenge the change legitimacy in practice by enacting a new TIP-related practice that I call pushing to be s(ec)ure, which subverts TIPs’ underlying rationale of attention enhancement – although for guards the new library already produces such an outcome – and increases waiting-line formation – although this is not the intended outcome of an oppositional practice (Ackroyd and Thompson, 2015) but the side effect of a regarded-as-necessary work practice. It consists of pushing the TIP button, thus stopping the belt, for nearly each container that passes under x-rays (except trays with shoes or a laptop, basically). This helps in avoiding sanctions (to be sure), and mitigates the threat the new library poses for security work (to be secure) in that, by pushing ‘in any case’ (p. 32), the newly increased TIP-related cognitive load which engenders the risk ‘to forget the knife’ (p. 27) decreases. Attention is thereby diverted and vigilance hijacked, but to a lesser extent than it would be without enacting, as systematic adjustment (Zimmerman, 1970), pushing to be s(ec)ure. In short, there are now good practical reasons for not adhering to ‘best practice’ (Bloom and White, 2016: 13; cf. also Garfinkel, 1967: 186–207) with respect to TIP detection.

The result of the new practice, most of the time, is obviously a non-TIP. Whereas with the previous regime a high non-TIP rate was regarded as a sign of insecurity and professional immaturity by both peers and superiors, it is now considered the outcome of a legitimate practice – another change in the local occupational culture and in the organizational one as well. Indeed, pushing to be s(ec)ure is accepted practice even to the middle manager, Abel, who answers for guards’ performances in front of his superiors, airport managers, and aviation authorities. Abel’s endorsement is primarily tacit (not reprehending nor sanctioning the practice) but at times has been made explicit, both to me, during conversations on the field, and, though sporadically, to the guards:

I’ve said to Abel ‘I push for all the liquids. Either inside or outside [the baggage], even if separated, I push before sending it back and checking it. ‘Cause I don’t know whether it’s the real or the fictitious one. I push.’ – ‘Yes, no, you’re quite right.’ he said. [Fidel, 11 November 2014]

Finally, notice that the new practice did not disappear after the abandonment of the sanctioning policy.

I push in any case ‘cause I need to be sure. I mean, I cannot say ‘Who cares’ then there’s a TIP, then I receive the contestation letter – I mean, the formal letter, because now… [Fidel, 11 November 2014]

‘Second order’ effects

The TIP new order fostered various forms of resistance, from traditional ones, such as union meetings and legal actions, to context-specific ones, like advertising contestation letters and pushing to be s(ec)ure. Such a phenomenon has been noticed in other cases of techno-organizational change (e.g. Balogun and Johnson, 2005; Szymanski and Whalen, 2011; Thomas et al., 2011). The change incoherence with respect to the local working order constitutes the cornerstone of resistance (Bassetti, 2012). This holds not only for the introduction of new technologies but also for the modification of the working features of an extant one, and this means that there is no such thing as ‘mere technicalities’. Further, when dealing with highly-institutionalized interorganizational workplaces, we are not confronted with one decisional entity but multiple, both public and private ones. They can be in conflict with respect to general goals and values – interorganizational mission ambivalence – and more specific issues alike – think of the security company and the police vis-à-vis airport management with respect to guard/officer-passenger interaction, or the security company vis-à-vis the x-ray provider with respect to the new TIPs. Furthermore, they can introduce changes – simultaneously, without coordination, and sometimes even without communication to fellow organizations – that may be directly conflicting or, probably worst, that may intertwine in such a way that derived ‘second order’ effects emerge in an undesigned, uncontrolled and unmanaged manner. And those ‘second order’ effects are the change effects, or outcomes, to which workers may react most vigorously.

In the case at hand, resistance might have taken place anyway, but it ‘exploded’ as it did given the intertwinement of technological and organizational variations impinging on the interorganizational workplace (Figure 4). Resistance was due neither only to new debatable TIPs introduced by the x-ray provider, nor only to new illegitimate sanctions applied by the employer on the background of working conditions such as high control, low wages, employment insecurity, and scarce prestige and authority. Sanctions were more numerous and felt as even more illegitimate given the debatability of new TIPs. On the other hand, having certain kinds of objects in the library became a moral and emotionally-charged matter. The new library, in the guards’ opinion, undermines by itself the rationale behind TIP, which they generally approve; prevents them from properly doing their work, which they deem important for passengers’ safety as well as guards’ own enjoyment and satisfaction (e.g. putting oneself to the actual test with TIP detection); and does so even more given the new sanctions: in fact, guards-as-employees cannot entirely disregard TIP (they push to be sure), yet for guards-as-screeners pushing to be s(ec)ure, although legitimate, is not best practice – with all that this entails in terms of self-fulfilment, self-construction, and self-presentation. Furthermore, the intertwined variations must be seen on the background of the contradictory pressures stemming from the interorganizational context, with the threat such pressures pose by themselves on guards’ occupational identity. It is not surprising then that they felt ‘taken for a ride’, with both occupational identity and personal face at stake, and reacted accordingly. OPEN IN VIEWER