This project started with an observation that the current context of enhanced European border security challenges calls for innovative theorizing and policy and social engagement. The scholarship and policy analysis on border security and reform are considerable but they do not incorporate the lived experience of border guards as agents who are the closest to the daily implementation of border security practices. The project focused on the case of the Polish Border Guard service because of its particular history of reform – from the military body to law enforcement – and the current function on the Eastern flank of the European Union of both protecting the European realm and translating EU border management practices to third countries.
The project relied on the researcher’s previous research experience and access to Polish border guards. Its scholarly and social engagement aim was twofold: 1. To study different approaches to the notion of reflexivity and ‘reflective practice’ by tapping to the existing reflective attitude among the practitioners, and to then 2. develop an innovative relational methodology based on the psychosocial perspective as a contribution to border guard training geared towards promoting the ethos of ‘reflective practitioner.’ Such ethos has wider societal implications in the times of increased migration and humanitarian challenges at the border, including in the treatment and integration of migrants in European societies
The main methodology of the project was twofold: 1. Interpretive fieldwork with practitioners which relied on taking interviews and life stories, supported by archival work in the Polish Border Guard archives and desk research; 2. The researcher’s own training in relational psychosocial methodologies to share this knowledge with practitioners. The expected dissemination plan needed to be amended, however, because of denied access to active Polish border guards by the Commander-in-Chief in September 2018. The main adjustment was a redirection of fieldwork and sharing of results towards retired border guards who work as consultants on EU border assistance projects and/or in civil society initiatives which seek to influence border security policies in Poland, as well as the training of Polish border guards. This is also where the impact of the project can be located.
Conceptually and empirically, this impediment further steered the project in two ways, as exemplified in deliverables described below: 1. Towards a focus on interpretive and psychosocial methodologies in fieldwork research but also in the study of academic practice where, arguably, the ethos of reflective practitioner is also urgently needed; 2. To study the backlash against the liberal notion of open intuitions in today’s Poland. Towards this end, the project has been extended to interpretive fieldwork with liberal intellectuals in Poland who reflect on the local and regional backlash against liberalism. Exploring this condition is crucial for understanding the current condition of EU societies and their political future. This task stands at the core of the book manuscript that arises from this project.
