Boundary Work: Police in West Africa

在延长期内，该项目将研究向西非跨国转让警察模式的过程及其在当地的挪用情况。警察工作的结构条件和模式--更广泛地说，西非的国家机构--不仅受到殖民遗产的影响，而且还受到警察组织之间目前的跨国关系的影响。欧洲、美国和中国的联络官与联合国教官一起进行警察培训，组织警察行动和提供装备，从而泄露某些警务做法和社会专业规范，或者换句话说，转移不同的和部分相互矛盾的警察模式。然而，西非警察并不是简单地照搬这些外国警察模式，而是选择特定的元素，将它们与现有警察模式的片段结合起来，并根据当地情况进行调整。这些调动和挪用的过程构成了该项目在第一个研究期所研究的警察边界工作的不同形式的背景。该项目的比较方法与在加纳和尼日尔进行的研究相结合，可以分析这两个国家、西非和其他地区这些转移过程的特殊性。最后，西非的警察工作也产生了创新，可能产生相反方向的移交进程。

In the extension period, the project will study processes of transnational transfer of police models to West Africa as well as their local appropriation. The structural conditions and patterns of police work - and more generally state institutions in West Africa - are not only shaped by colonial legacies, but also affected by current transnational ties between police organisations. European, US American and Chinese liaison officers, together with UN instructors, conduct police training, organise police operations and deliver equipment, and thus divulge certain practices and socio-professional norms of policing, or, in other words, transfer different and partially contradictory police models. West African police officers, however, do not simply copy these foreign police models, but select specific elements, combine them with fragments of existing police models and adapt them to local conditions. These processes of transfer and appropriation constitute the backdrop of the different forms of the police officers' boundary work which the project has studied in the first research period. The project's comparative approach, with research in Ghana and Niger, allows to analyse the specificity of these transfer processes in both countries, in West Africa and beyond. Finally, West African police work also produces innovations that may generate transfer processes in the reverse direction.